Maria hovers in the space above Juoil. She stares at the high-tech bridge before her that stretches ahead into the exotic colors of Outer Spacetime toward the planet Oliju that is just a spot from this distance. She thinks about the Ice Prince’s instructions for Ryding cosmic Wynds and she thinks back to her time on the surface of Juoil that is like a winter wonderland, complete with mounds of violet soft snow and furry herbivorous animals that like to make friends of newcomers to their snowy, woodland paradise. Juoil is cold, but not unpleasantly so. The winds that do move over the snowy land and between the trees with green needles that thrive, are gentle and don’t affect the temperature.
To learn the most fundamental aspect of Wynd Ryding, the Ice Prince took Maria skiing. The Juoli are expert skiers and they use skis to travel long and short distances. The entire planet of Juoil is covered in snow, except for the thawing season when half of the planet melts and lush grasslands and prairies dominate the thawed lands. The Ice Prince carved a home of silver sandstone in the permafrost lands on a mountain of violet ice. When Maria first saw it, she was perplexed. Garoa was biting her tongue because she had managed to actually hurt the Ice Prince’s feelings with her well-meaning jabs. Maria hovered next to the Ice Prince in her full Wazad gear, and she looked at him sideways.
“So you live in the mountain?”
“Surely you see the silver sandstone,” the Ice Prince said and Garoa seemed to explode with laughter. She bobbed up and down quickly as she lost control of her laughter. “It is of Aifyn, I fashioned the stones and arranged them artfully in the mountainside. I tried my best not to disturb the natural environment of these violet ice mountains. Why are you laughing?” he asked and shot a look at Garoa.
“I actually think it’s beautiful,” Garoa said, trying not to condescend the prince. “I was laughing at Maria. It’s clear you put a lot of work into this home and she sees right past it. I’m sorry, I hear how I sound, but I have never spent so much time with beings who are not Therosi gods. I am having such a wonderful time with Maria, and the characters we are meeting, it’s all so much fun. I will be quiet now.”
Maria and the Ice Prince made fun of Garoa’s godly distance, even from other gods of Outer Spacetime because the Ice Prince is a God of the Aifyn Line.
At the home of the Ice Prince, Maria and Garoa woke before the sunrise every morning to meet the Ice Prince on the icy slopes. Maria had never skied before, and she had never been interested in trying it, but she took to it easily enough. Garoa was a natural, she was an avid surfer on Theron in the Perpetuating Pools, and she had a knack for balancing on strips of wood at high speeds.
“Your goal is to build your confidence to jump that,” the Ice Prince said and he pointed at the slope of slick ice that descended down the side of the mountain near his home. The slope dipped down before curving back up to a sharp cliff, and the trajectory of jumping off of that ledge led down to lower elevations of the mountainside that weren’t as jagged with violet ice boulders.
“For the Wynd Ryders of Juoil, that jump is the first step to communing with the wynds.”
“You can’t train on it,” Garoa said to Maria, “it’s all jagged ice pit right underneath it and for a ways down.”
“I didn’t intend to train you on it,” the Ice Prince said, “there are plenty of smooth slopes…”
But Maria was already eyeing her goal, sizing it up and judging the speed necessary to clear the jagged ice.
“He said to commune with the wind…” Maria said to Garoa.
“Wynds, but go on,” Garoa interrupted.
“…and if it is similar to Wazad’s Set, then I can use the rotation of the planet to my advantage.”
“It doesn’t rotate,” Garoa countered. “It revolves in step with all of the other planets.”
“Oh right,” Maria said, ignoring the Ice Prince who was trying to get her to practice on a smaller slope. “That’s fine, I can compensate and tap into the movement of this planet. I just have to really feel for it. Ice Prince,” she said, acknowledging him for the first time in a while, “tell me more about making allies of the winds.”
“Ok, its not a big deal, but you’re pronouncing it wrong. It’s Wynds.”
“That’s what I’m saying, winds,” Maria said with annoyance and looked to Garoa.
“That’s not it at all, its Wynds,” Garoa said slowly. “Can she commune with them if she can’t properly identify them?”
“They’re not complicated,” the Ice Prince explained, “they are like the swarms of birds that move around the planet as it revolves around the sun. They move by instinct. They will let you hitch a ride if it is not an inconvenience to their normal movements. You coax them by feeling them and nestling into them, and if they accept you, you can guide their natural movement.”
“It is very much like Wazad’s set,” Maria said, still staring at the large slope. “He found a way to commune with existence, to take advantage of its regular, spontaneous movements. But you’re saying that Wazad uses these wends…”
“Wynds,” the Ice Prince and Garoa said simultaneously.
“He uses, I use, those things, against their will. We seize them with arcana.”
“Yes,” the Ice Prince nodded, “and that is where Wazad is limited. The Wynds are naturally arcane and by befriending them, Wynd Ryders allow them to pay the cost to wield their magic. Cosmic Wynd Ryding requires an extremely strong report with the wynds to travel such a distance. A Wynd Ryder becomes the Wynds they tame.”
The view over Juoil is stunning and Maria can imagine her very tiny place among the cosmic vastness in the space of the Aifyn Line. She feels herself as a spot of color against the brassy red of the cosmic background, dotting it like so many other things that are practically nothing on a large scale. From this vantage, Maria can see the formation of things, the way that they naturally cluster in Outer Spacetime and she can discern what seems to be the currents of existence, the cosmic Wynds that move throughout existence. She is not sure if the wynds form as a result of the clustering of celestial bodies with gravity to bend spacetime, or if the celestial bodies cluster because they are corralled by the wynds, but she can sense them, and then she can feel them move against the thin but sturdy barrier around her body that protects her in the void that she summons with her powers as Wazad. She lifts her arms and the wynds move around her and she can almost see them, phantoms of the exotic space of Outer Spacetime, made of the brassey red that houses the cosmos and glittering with celestial bodies. The wynds are like long and wide ribbons of Outer Spacetime itself and she caresses them as they move along around her. She feels the energy that animates them, it flows forcefully and steadfastly, and she aligns herself with it.
“When you master the wynds, a jump like this one will seem like nothing,” the Ice Prince concluded.
Maria tried not to be disappointed that mastering the wynds would be harder than she’d anticipated, but she and Garoa eventually followed the Ice Prince to the smaller slopes so that Maria could get her bearings making such a long jump. They started on small hills, and Maria had no trouble balancing on the slope down, and even when she launched off the peak of a jump, she held her body steady, but she could not land safely. She would have broken bones if not for the invisible barrier she created to shield her body.
“Failing to land seems like a lapse of concentration,” the Ice Prince suggested to Maria when they huddled with Garoa after several unsuccessful attempts. Despite her invisible barrier that shielded her, she was bruised from falling repetitively and Garoa made her tan hands glow teal then moved them over Maria’s body to soothe her aching. As the Goddess with domain over the waters of Theron, and the creator of all of the sea creatures, she had the power to generate vibration with her hands that she mostly used to create waves in the waters she commanded, but she could create gentle vibrations for massages.
“I don’t get it,” Maria said with disappointment and she shook her head. “Its such a surprise when I have to start preparing to land. The other parts are fine.”
“Maybe your mindset is perfect for the task,” the Ice Prince said. “I think you are thinking too far past this present exercise. When you learn to ryde, you won’t land like you do when you jump on skis, and the ryde is much longer than these jumps can replicate to allow you the time you need to really feel the wynds. I think this is my fault..”
“Yeah, wynd ryding expert,” Garoa said sarcastically. “Should have deduced that before you tenderized the Transverse.”
“Calm down,” the Ice Prince said, “this is a good thing. Maria, try the big slope and trust your instincts. The wynds are stirring here, they feel you and they are eager to carry you.”
Maria sailed over the long jump and she cleared her mind, was greeted by the wynds, and then she cooperated with them so that she was able to traverse the planet Juoil twice in the blink of an eye. When she landed next to the Ice Prince and Garoa, she ran and hugged the Ice Prince.
“That was amazing! I have never experienced existence like that. It was amazing.”
“You are a natural if I have ever seen one,” the Ice Prince said. “I wonder if you are a better ryder than me. May I accompany the two of you on your journey to become the Transverse? If Garoa will have me?”
“I will not have you,” Garoa said and tipped her head back, squinted her eyes as she scrutinized him with her glare. “But this is not my journey. I will tolerate whatever immature amusements the Transverse requires to fulfill her duties. I am merely her witness.”
Maria was happy to have the Prince join them and after Garoa struggled for a day to commune with the wynds, they took their training to the cosmos.
Maria is ready to go. She is prepared for this journey and the Ice Prince and Garoa are just behind her. She lifts an arm as a signal and they all ready themselves. And in the blink of an eye, all three of them disappear.
The Halfyn Heir is a strapping young man. Halfyn is the largest planet of the Aifyn Line, and the Fyns who evolved there became thicknecked with wide, solid feet and strong muscled legs to support their solid stature. There are few Wynd Ryders on Halfyn because of the intense gravity of the planet, but Halfyn is a premier destination for Wynd Ryders still in their training who were eager to test their abilities in the natural, woodland landscape of Halfyn with its intense gravity.
The Ice Prince met the Halfyn Heir on Halfyn when he was making his way back to Juoil after ryding the streams of existence for the first time. After such an experience, the Ice Prince was usually very lethargic and hungry, so it took him a long time to get back to Juoil where he made his home. After his first trip, he stopped at Halfyn and because he was the Ice Prince, he had to stay at the home of the richest family on the planet who controlled all of the natural resources that had been primarily used in the construction of the Aifyn Line bridges. The family didn’t exactly own the resources of Halfyn even though they had been the first to settle there, and the fyns didn’t exactly exchange money for goods and services. Fyns traded for goods and services with promises of positive stories told of the exchange, and the wealthiest fyns enjoyed the best reputation for helping others, which meant they deserved the best home that could be built by the best builders on the planet and made from the best materials. This was true for all fyns on the Aifyn Line and it fostered peace among them and a deep desire to please one another.
The Halfyn Heir was the son of the oldest patriarch of this family and others only told good stories of him. He appreciated his standing on Halfyn, but he had truly fallen in love with the Ice Prince and had dreamed of a future where he would leave Halfyn to make a home with him on Juoil. But the Ice Prince was always wynd ryding when he wasn’t in the Halfyn Heir’s bed, so the few times that he insisted on joining him away from the Heir’s quarters, the Heir was forced to wynd ryde, which was difficult for him to master because he was much larger than the Ice Prince who was about the same height but much more lithe. He just couldn’t keep up with the Prince.
Because many wynd ryders train on Halfyn, it wasn’t hard for the Heir to find a ryder with skill. They used the great forest with tall trees that grew in neat rows for their training and the Heir found many there who were eager to teach him. But the Black Ryder swept him off his feet, high up over the ground and laughed at him.
“If I can teach a thick boy like you to ryde the wynds, I’ll show everyone that I’m the best wynd ryder since your boyfriend.”
The Halfyn heir grew angry. “Put me down!” he yelled and the Black Ryder acquiesced. “Do not mention the Prince again. But if you can teach me to ryde, I will be forever in your debt.”
That was music to the Black Ryder’s ears.
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