[h3]Alexander[/h3]

"WHAT?!"

Sumi was a nonsense kid. He'd known that. She'd made it abundantly clear from her very demeanor since the day he'd met her. And nonsense kids tended to be a little... out there, in word, deed, and thought. But nowhere in Eleanor's lectures on nonsense versus logic had it been mentioned that they tended to [i]ask someone to use abilities they did not have.[/i] He knew how to read air currents, how to fall through them and weave around them, and how to find the fastest slipstream in the immediate area, but understanding the wind and knowing how to use it and outright COMMANDING IT were very. Different. Things. Maybe in Sumi's home the wind was more affable, but in Sylvent [i]nobody[/i] told the wind to do anything. And here she was, asking him to just do it offhand as if it were the most natural thing in the world. 

"Sumi, I can't-" he was interrupted by a snarl of wind that tried to flip him over as he fell. It took some doing, but he did right himself.. and then recognized that even if Sumi could hear him, she'd probably ignore what he was saying. 

"You've gotta be kidding me..." he muttered as he closed his eyes. It was no big deal, he tried to assure himself, except he had no idea how to begin. Well, when he had learned how to fall, so to speak, one of the things that had been drilled into him was to think of the air around him as an extension of his senses. That was as good a starting place as any, even if it would be taking the lesson just a bit literally. Alright, he thought, let's see. Extend your senses, read the wind, feel it, see what's doing, but instead of playing by it's rules tell it to take us to the Index-

"WHOA" he yelled as a sudden howl shattered his thoughts as the winds flared up and roared, tossing him and everyone else out of their freefall in a violent tempest. Alexander found himself being battered about in the wall of the windstorm as he fought to keep himself aright, but it seemed that in every second he gained some balance it was immediately torn away from him again. He knew it had been a bad idea, and here was the proof. The air had bucked him off like a wild stormwing, and now it would do who knows what with them. Why had he even tried? He wasn't some master of the sky! He was just a poor, lonely, lost boy who'd been flung far from home.

[i][color=00aeef]CAW![/color][/i]

Wait, he thought as his eyes snapped open and his focus hardened instantly. He knew that noise. He'd heard it in his dreams, almost every night since he'd stepped off the ship. But this was no dream, of that he was certain. He struggled his way to a stable fall again, and immediately threw his head around in every direction. She was here. He heard her, the sound was more clarion than anything in his life, but by the clouds [i]where[/i]? 

Quietly, with an almost serene certainty, he began to feel her presence get closer. He turned his head to the side, where the outer wall of the tempest still raged, and as if it had been cued he began to see the shadowy silhouette of a great bird, wings splayed out in a grand glide come into form on the other side of the raging winds. 

"Julie," he dared to breathe. 

There was no mistaking it, not now that she was so close. He began to reach his hand out toward her, but he soon realized there was something in the way. Not just the howling air, but something like a veil, a shroud that came between them. Something told him it would be easy enough to breach, to rip straight through. And he so badly, so dearly wanted to do it, to reach out and touch her, to grab the feathers at the back of her neck and nestle his knees in the small of her back... but that would leave them all falling through an empty sky, and only he and one other he chose to catch would have salvation from the drop. Besides which... Sylvent was his home, but not anyone else's. They would all be stranded, unable to get back home or even to the school. To say nothing of their current task's completion. Tears welled up in his eyes only to be flicked away by the upward rush. He was so close, SHE was so close, yet still a world apart. 

[i][color=00aeef]Caw.[/color][/i]

Julie spoke to him again. It was no tongue known to man, but he understood her perfectly. Even through the veil, her feelings resonated in his heart. And he knew the opposite was true. He couldn't give up. Whatever was troubling him, he could handle it. And... one day they would meet again, and soar as they ever and always had. Those were Julie's feelings. Alexander closed his eyes, etching the moment into his mind and soul. 

"I'm coming home," he whispered, "I promise. Just not today." 

[i][color=00aeef]Caaaaaw![/color][/i]

"Thank you," He said as he opened his eyes again, a fire lit within them now. "Alright then, let's see where this goes!"

With a mustering of will he reached out to the air again. It had been his uncertainty, his fear that drove it wild before. Now, he was calm and determined. These winds WOULD listen to him, and they WOULD take them to the Line. And they would do it swiftly, gently, and without incident or loss. Those were his orders... and before his eyes the wind listened. The tempest slowed, growing tranquil by the moment, as Julie's shadow faded back into nothingness. And then they began to shift again, but this time in a structured fashion, forming a tube of winds further down that ran perpendicular to their current course. 

"THERE! INTO THE SLIPSTREAM!" he yelled for the rest of the group to hear as he shifted his weight to align with it. He rolled himself to disperse the force of the direction change as he hit the streaming winds himself, and as a pack they were whisked away at incredible speed to their destination.