Summer 30 124
"Lumina, good to see you!" Sjal said with a smile as she walked over and opened her arms for a friendly embrace. They had become good friends, after all. They were now in the Frostlund, on Sjal's quest to visit as much of the country as she could to expand her teleportation network.
"That it is," the funny hatted woman said with relief. "You sure took your sweet time getting here."
"Well, you know how things go. Gerrald and I had an adventurous journey to the area, and I've been swamped ever since I got here. Sad to say that I'll probably have to head back sooner rather than later. I'm actually thinking about returning today. Gerrald is probably not going to join me, I think he's going to come back a little later. Or maybe he'll stay here, I don't know." Sjal stretched, thinking about how limiting being committed to a job made her time off. She had hardly had time to adjust to the new area before it was time to get going.
"I bet," Lumina replied, looking Sjal up and down. "My trip was uneventful. I didn't spot anything interesting either so it was boring all around."
"Speaking of interesting," Sjal said contemplatively, "we ran into something strange. We met a group of aelven hunters that were going after large flying birds. I'm sure you've heard of or seen them?"
When Lumina nodded, Sjal continued, "well, we ended up fighting them, long story, but the point is the birds had something special inside of them. I've no idea what kind, but we ended up getting of them."
"Really?" Lumina asked as her eyes widened. "Let me see it! I wonder what kind of bird it is."
Sjal rifled through her things until she came across a section of a blanket that was wrapped around the strange organ the bird had. She took it out and handed it to her.
"Interesting," Lumina said as she examined it. "I am familiar with most creatures in this area. I've read about some rarer creatures but I've never worked with them or even seen them. This one… I think it's some kind of bird that has wild magic that makes you more buyant. It kind of makes sense that it would come from a bird that doesn't look like it can naturally fly with all that fat."
"Wild magic," Sjal mused, "I'm guessing it has the ability to use magic to keep itself afloat? Kind of like how a dragon can shoot flames?"
"Kind of, a wild magic like this could emit a gust of wind and can maybe even use it offensively."
"That sounds useful," Sjal said, "perhaps I could make use of the ability of I can get my father on board."
"Not a bad idea. Though, I imagine that the beast magic has other uses. If your father transfigured the ability into you, you might find that you feel like you weigh less. A powerful ability."
"Really? Now that's interesting. I figured this thing was valuable, but now I see it is much more than I thought. It makes me want to go hunting fat birds for more."
"What's stopping you? If you're travelling out of the area then you might be able to shoot them along the way."
Sjal paused then realized that it was a good idea. "I think I'll do just that. Do you want to join me?"
"For a chance to find rare birds? I thought that'd be a given!" Lumina said with her usual bubbly smile. "I'll meet you back here in a bit with my horse!"
An hour later and Sjal had her things packed and her own horse was ready to get going. Lumina came along a little while later and then they were off.
It didn't take long for the pair to spot some of the fat birds. They kept their eyes on the skies and it was hard to miss something so out of the ordinary.
"See, the problem is, how do we get to them?" Sjal explained. "We basically stole the carcass off of the hunters. We weren't able to successfully hunt down one of the birds."
"You what?"
"Long story," Sjal said with a chuckle. "Let's focus on the problem at hand. I might be able to shoot one out of the sky, but it'd need to be a hell of a lucky shot. I've been practicing, but this longbow I have… it's not the best quality. I've been practicing a lot but I don't know if I could shoot one down."
"All we can do is try," Lumina replied, pointing at one. "Can you hit that one?"
Sjal shrugged and tried to get her horse to stop. It didn't see any reason to stop so it fought her a little until it finally halted at the side of the road. Sjal waited to make sure the horse didn't start walking again before hopping off and tying it to a tree.
Sjal grabbed her bow and a handful of arrows and tested the tension in the bow a few times. She took aim at the bird as it flew and tried to angle her shot such that it would intercept it as it flew. She tried to take into account the speed of the wind that was making her hair rustle. Then, when she thought she had the perfect shot, she fired the arrow. It whizzed through the air quickly but it was easy to see that she'd missed by a wide margin. The bird, thankfully, was none the wiser of the shot.
There was little pause between Sjal's first and second shot. She fired another arrow then yet another, trying to hit the bird before it caught onto the fact that it was being attacked. One of the arrows passed right in front of its eyes and it squacked. It let out a shower of poo and sped off. There was no hitting it after that. Sjal was unable to account for the sudden burst of speed before it flew out of range of her arrows.
Sjal let out a sigh, but didn't feel terrible. "That was actually a lot better than I expected," she said.
"I was about to say… not bad. I think the question isn't whether you can hit one, but whether the organs would survive a fall to the ground."
"There's another one," Sjal said, pointing in the distance. It was a good ways away, so they had to wait a good ten minutes before it got close enough to shoot. The archer's fingers twitched in anticipation as it drew near, then she drew another arrow. She let it fly and was ready to shoot even more rapidly than before. A half dozen arrows darted into the sky and two of them grazed the bird. It squacked and flew off, just like the one before it had.
"Darn," Sjal said. She looked to the skies to check for more of the strange birds, but didn't see any more coming.
"You hit it, didn't you?" Lumina asked. "I couldn't quite tell, but it at least looked close."
"I don't know," Sjal admitted. It was so far away that she couldn't tell either. "I think I just need to keep trying. But I don't think it's going to be as easy as I thought it would."
A couple travelers passed by and nodded to the odd pair before continuing along. Sjal blushed because she felt like an idiot, standing there and shooting at birds. There had to be a better way, but hunting the birds had not proved very fruitful either. This explained why there were so many birds that hadn't been dealt with yet.
"Maybe I should try shooting even faster," she mused as she allowed her body to relax. It would be some time before another bird came by so she set her bow aside.
"I say we give it a few more hours," Lumina said. "When I agreed to come out, I was expecting a little more excitement than target practice."
"I don't blame you," Sjal said with a light hearted chuckle. "That's why we ended up having to steal one. Though that wasn't really our goal from the get go. We just wanted to reduce our competition a little."
"I'm going to find out what happened during that trip one of these days," Lumina said with shake of her head.
"So, what would you make, if you got your hands on the appropriate beast magic?" Sjal asked her.
"Hmm, that's a good question. Personally? I think I would settle for the idea that I put forward earlier. If I was making something for you, I'd definitely make some kind of use of the weight reduction if that's how it works. There's just so many possibilities."
"Those do seem like the obvious choices. But if they reduce the weight of your body, then maybe it'd be better used on something extremely heavy. Being able to wear heavy armor might be thinking too small. Maybe you could bring more gear to a battle because your own body weight wouldn't encumber a horse."
Lumina cocked her head to the side and had a thoughtful expression. "You're right, there are a lot of possibilities."
The two of them chatted for hours and hours waiting and hoping another bird would fly by…
