She stood upon the icy cliffs and staired out at the tossing seas as the storm raged. her ship could not sail this night, and she felt the crushing weight of loss as she realized all hope had abandoned her...
"I shall never get there in time." she sighed in defeat, her tears carried away by the chill winds that roared against the stony walls around her.
"Yes, you shall." said a rasping voice behind her.
she turned then and beheld the raven who had been her only companion on her long and fateful journey.
"But how?" she pleaded. "No ship can sail in weather such as this without being smashed to splinters. i have come all this way, endured so very much and i have failed..."
He smiled then, a small ruefull smile, the chimes hanging from the fringe of his eyepatch shimmering in the wind. "Have you forgotten what i am?" he said, and closed his eye, bending his will in the art of the Shadowcast. "Evectainum..." he intoned, and his feathers rippled, his body swept up in a malestrum of mist and fury and there emerging was the greatest raven that she had ever laid eye upon. as tall as an oak, as broad a wing as a man o war's sails "Climb now upon my back and i shall bear you forth through this ill and bitter tempest." he said, his voice like the rasp of woodwinds. he stood there waiting, a darker black against a grim grey sky. His single eye upon her.
"Take heart, and you shall win through." he whispered to her, his voice bearly coming to her over the roaring wind around her.
she strode to his side and lifted herself upon his ebon wing, pulling herself to sit upon the back of his neck there among the thick feathers of sable black.
Without another word he flung himself from the tall cliff and she cried out in suden fear but with a great beat of his mighty pinions he soared above the world, higher and higher into the storm above. lighting flashed, thunder roared, the sky made war against them, the seas churned below as if to reach up and crush them in an icey embrace, but the great raven surged on, always on, never faltering, never pausing. his great wings cutting through the grim veil of mist even as the storm forced them to skim the very waters below until he finally reached land and alighted upon the craggy rocks that sat at the foot of the castle. The great raven rested there, head down, the rain dripping from his once proud feathers, now ragged and torn from the storms fury. She reached out and touched the side of his face and his eye opened to look into hers. "I..." she murmured, at a loss for words, suddenly feeling an emotion she had not expected stir within her as she gazed into that grim visage before her. He turned away then, looking out to sea...
"Go... you have little time." he rasped
"But.. I... Let me.." she stammered, now uncertain of everything, of her entire quest to come here, all of it lost in a moment.
He turned back to look down at her and then lowerd his great head and pressed it against her breast. She held him, stroking her cheek against his feathers until he pulled away and turned back out to sea, climbing to the top of the craggy rocks to turn and look down at her once more. "They are expecting you, you should go now..." he rasped, and then lifted his wings and with a great gust flung from there ebon pinions he leaped into the air... she watched him grow smaller and smaller until he dissapered into the clouds, a tiny speck of ebon far above. she turned then with a sigh and made her way towards the great castle before her, in her hands a single great feather of shimmering ebon...