Something Told the Wild

    SkEye looked to the near cloudless sky from the thick branch she knelt upon; almost as thick as she was tall and at least 60 feet up the length of a thick old, elegant pine tree.  The branch above her created a natural canopy or curtain with its lacelike prickles, which swayed gently in the breeze as it borrowed their essence and made the rest of the forest smell of perky, yang pine.  SkEye breathed in the old, friendly smell deeply.  Overhead, gaggles of geese and ganders squawked their displeasure at the approaching Winter.  SkEye smiled lightly, watching a few pass overhead (More like a few dozen!).
    The Winter was setting in at quite a decent pace: the trees were already hoisting their sleepy, yearly burden against the accumulating snow, a few icicles clung weakly to the underside of those same branches, and heck, snow even dared to cling to the Death Manor's roof!  It was a wonder that all the demons and whatnot inside didn't make it melt the second it touched the house.  Despite all the snow, however, grass was still the majority on the forest floor and Death Manor lawns, with patches of snow fading to frost here and there.  A cool, fresh dampness clung to the air like chlorine in the air of a hard-floored room after the floor was scrubbed with some harsh-smelling, modern cleaner.  
    It was warm enough for SkEye, anyway.  She was trarumpsing around barefoot (all the better to climb with) with only her usual black, big-billowy-witchy-sleeved vest over her usual, purple-collared, blue sequined-in-the-shape-of-a-snake shirt with a pair of pants similar in color to her baggier summer ones, (a sort of Navy-blue-dashed-with-black color) except these pants were a warm leather (for once) –an especially tough and thick leather-denim fabric Julie was fascinated by when SkEye took them out of her enchanted bag --  and reached to her ankles.  Other than that, she felt,
"-- fine in the chill.  Actually, I find this sort of chill quite awakening, or, invigorating, or, like, uh, refreshing, sorta?"
    SkEye smiled to the sky again as another pretty-big-sized flock glided overhead.  My, there's just oodles of them here, aren't they?  This must be along a migration path. She recalled the physics of their flight that she'd learned at a nun school in a monastery, how they fly in angles so the beating of their wings creates a sort of vortex to lessen the burden of flight on the next goose back.
    Something about this, these past few seconds, sent the 'hair-tentacles' that normally rest on her shoulders like content, perching birds into a tizzy, a twitching tizzy!  They never usually moved, not even in the strongest gale.  The shapeshifter's eyes went wide as she registered the twitching.  SkEye blinked.
    Suddenly her sight was flooded with the slight red tinge, tinged more so around the edges, of instinct colliding with memories of another life, collapsing back into her consciousness like puzzle pieces made of malleable clay and giving her a headache for even shorter than a split second, so short she may not even have registered it.
   
    Something told the wild geese it was time to go,

   You see, when SkEye lived in the wild on her own nomadically, she would watch the yearly migrations of different animals and creatures, especially the geese, and sometimes, in her earlier years, she'd migrate with them.  In her later years, she'd follow them to the edge of whatever habitat she was currently in – usually a forest or woodland – and watch them diminish away over the horizon.  
    She felt reverted to her old, Feral self that she'd always felt so ashamed of.  She shook her head to clear it out, which worked a good bit; only a very slight twinge of red still layered the world as far as she could see it.  She had been hunched over, holding her head and rubbing at her eyes after her hair-tentacles twitched, but now she stood coolly from her knelt position.  Her huge, round, green irises flecked with blue and yellow flashed their main, neon green for a second, not that she noticed the subconscious flash of magic.

    Though the fields lay golden, something whispered…
   
Although, earlier, she had been thinking about maybe following them to the Death-Life border (something that was quite easily smellable and locatable; the wind always seemed to blow directly from it).  Because really, it was her own sort of little tradition, and it'd be fun anyway, probably!  Right?

    Snow.

    She smiled, looked to the sky yet again, and gave a tighter grip in eager preparation to the walking stick in her right hand, as if she were giving it a lively squeeze, maybe even one for the heck of it.  The stick was a very odd one, carved almost all over and a little thicker and rounded at the top, like a club.  Apparently, it was something of a special object to the shapeshifter, because it was always with her when she was outside; otherwise, it was propped against a wall in her new room at the Death Manor.
    The female looked down to the ground – a dizzying-to-anyone-who-didn't-spend-half-their-lives-forever-up-a-tree sort of drop – and leapt off the branch a few feet up-and-away-forward before letting herself plunge down.  On the way, she'd hook the tree's ancient trunk, spin on it for a few milliseconds and a foot or two as she seemed to skip downwards from branch to branch before, at about 10 feet off the ground, she just let herself fall to the frosted dirt and grass.  Her landing was just as peculiar; it was catlike in nature, where she hit the ground and crouched with one knee down and a hand moving to touch the ground in some sort of steadying position as well.  It looked as if she'd manipulated her momentum, and it also looked as if she was expert at it and the maneuver.
   
    Leaves were green and stirring,

    SkEye started off at a lighthearted, Asiatic-styled run (arms back like an arrow with swift, agile running and the body leaned over somewhat) under the flocks and flocks of cawing birds, along their path, with them, as one of them, almost; one of the uncountable whole.  She darted among the trees, leapt sideways to and fro a few, laughing all the way (hahaha~ Bells on bobtail ring...) and looking like a kid having the time of their life.
   
    Berries luster glossed,  
    But beneath warm feathers something cautioned,
    Frost.

  ~*~  ( : ) ~*~

    It may have been less than an hour, at least forty minutes, before SkEye's date with the ganders came to an end.
    They had made it to the edge of the territory; approximately 30 feet from the smelly, windy boundary 'line'.  The edge of the forest, really, since the rest was quite scrubby in this area.  She was almost too enveloped with her own little migration run when she scented it – Life Manor.  
    Ever since she had first smelled it, she would know it right away: a sappy, sweet-bloody smell.  Maybe not quite bloody, but it was an odd smell, nonetheless, whether she could ever describe it to the others or not.  
 
  All the sagging orchards,

    SkEye only wound up smelling it because, before she'd decided to take her newest instinct-high for a joyride, she'd had her sense of smell at a decently high level and hadn't changed it back before she'd bolted, since she liked the nice, refreshing, chilled smell emanating from the world that noon.  Otherwise, who knows what – or where – she'd have run.
    She stopped dead in midstride, one leg freezing midair behind her.  

    Steamed with amber spice,

    The Death Manor.
    How could she have forgotten!
    That was her home now.
    152, Julie, Ciyanna, Nicole, Arbaadon…and yes, even Zenobia…
    She finally had a permanent family.
 
    But each wild breast stiffened

    SkEye relaxed her body, standing slightly sideways, and looked back the way she'd come with hardened, green eyes.
 
  at remembered Ice.

~*~  ( : ) ~*~
 
  "There you are, SkEye!" Julie exclaimed, her English accent frantic.  "152's fallen down the stairs again!"
 
   Something told the wild geese it was time to fly,

    SkEye stopped short. "What do you mean 'again'?!"
         
         Winter,
    Winter,
Winter in their Cry…