Soaring
The feeling of flight, the ultimate freedom, unconstrained by the forces that tether one to the soil, this she felt. Borne aloft or pressed down, swaying side to side as the currents bayed her lithe form to dance with them. The elf relaxed in bliss, giving control over to their direction as they swirled about her. They rushed, sighing over her, tugging at her limbs or caressed more intimately than a lover. Then whispering, laughing, susurrating on they went as new drafts embraced her.
The pads of her fingers pressed to a stone smoothed by time, the soft grip all that kept her free-floating figure from flowing away. Trails of light skipped across the stream floor from the rippling water’s surface in hypnotizing arrays. The elf could almost let them put her to sleep; after all, why else was it called a riverbed?
Release.
Letting go of her anchor, she flew away down the stream. Twisting and tumbling, gliding through the clear water, she reveled and laughed with the stream, watching glistening pearls of air float away. Limbs and body twirled in a weightless dance and took form that land would not permit.
At last, when her lungs ached painfully for air, she surged upward in a shower of silver droplets and breathed deep. Immediately, the ache dissipated, but her limbs keenly felt their own weight as gravity hung on them once again. Yet the elf heaved a sigh of contentment, emerging fully, bare to the world. But what remained of the river on her still hugged her, slipping down her skin to regroup around her soles. She smiled, but she could not join it again now. Allowing her feet to trail in the water along the shore, she ambled back to where her journey had begun. The last drops alighted from her in a vapor, leaving cool kisses on that pale skin.
She could not stay, as much as she wished, and reaching the start she leapt upward. Catching a limb, she swung higher, two, three, four more branches up to where her clothing and weapons rested. Once garbed, she sent a last loving look toward the waters below before flitting off into the deeper shadows.
