Solira: The Ocean: Albatross;

N I C O D E M U S
Hero(noun)- a man of distinguished courage or ability, admired for his brave deeds and noble qualities.

Nicodemus hears screaming.

His eyes flash open and they glow, Flames leaping in them, a glazed over look. Truly his eyes paled him then. Imagine seeing the eyes of the hunting wolf in the dead of a December starless night. Imagine you are the prey, and the hunger, the intensity that emanates from those seething eyes. Now you have a good visual for the way that he looks now. He springs forwards, and now he is truly predator, muscles coiling and springing out to their fullest extent. I thinks vaguely of a cheetah sprinting across the savannah. But the sand of the ocean made things a little different. It was now that any doubts of him ever being a warrior put your mind to rest. He was beautiful, but totally and completely lethal.

But the screaming was lost. Nicodemus slides to a halt, his eyes searching the stars, mane flinging back as the wind caught him then. Keir had been hunting when he had left, and now the wolverine crashed into his leg, a muffled growl falling from his lips. Nicodemus, what the hell are you thinking? But then the mixed colors of browns and blacks upon the mustelid’s back stand on end. The screaming started again, but this time it wasn’t really screaming. The call was frantic, no doubt, but it was too beautiful to be a scream. Too elegant. Nicodemus is unsure then, frozen to the spot, not knowing whether to move or not.

The answer came to him in a blur. Soon he was not alone. Soon his eyes fell to the beautiful white bird, and soon he was thinking too much of Hawthorne. His crane. But hope blinded him, and he stepped forwards to the bird slowly. Maybe it was her. Maybe she had been reborn as the very thing she had been called so fondly. But the fervent calls of his name then were not Hawthorne’s or the crane’s, and they brought him down to reality so suddenly.

His brows raised in surprise. His friend Albatross was frantically pleading with him, wrapping herself into him despite the burn of his neglectful flames. “It’s true.” He sighs, though he is unable to understand her denial. “To protect them.”

He doesn’t need to say their names, because Albatross would know enough about him by now to know the two he called family. And she would know his undying need to always save the world. That had always been a part of him. Nicodemus had always been a hero at heart.

FIRE III; AIR I
phoenixsong
iriase
SLAVE of Saphira