1.
NAKED SPACE. TWIZZLE. Dizzying heights of incessant swirl transformed into eddies of vicious wind, whirlwind that swallowed. Pulsing white alternated with strident black. Ivory Storm gasped inside a vortex with a drop kick. She caught glimpses of the medicine woman gliding in and out of an avalanche, transforming in shade from ebony to dazzle, no grays.
Suddenly, they were together, flying like swallows, soaring side by side. Even as they glided, Ginny Woorilla's hand stretched out. Ivory reached and clasped it. Together, helpless, they were flung round a steep corner and spat out of roiling surf. Though their hands clutched, distance stood between them like a pillar, always distance. For Ginny was an impossible woman.
Out of the whirlpool, an aroma of the exotic crept nearer and then swelled. Ivory took a deep breath that felt like honey; a new world headed her way. But for all the trappings of her flight, as she tried to focus on motion control, she could not get it right. An elbow struck her rib, a foot clipped her heel. It was Ginny, rocking big time, her shawl billowed, limbs all over. A new wind swallowed her whole and, unable to clasp, Ivory lost her.
Detached, Ivory fired forward in a tight, compact line. Flip, triple flip, forward burst. Time hung. Time spun. An air stream slapped her face, and then came a sense of cohesion with wind. Solidarity with environment. Suddenly she was wind, soaring effortlessly. Then whirr! And the grace was lost. She started falling, tumbling in ungraceful loops, the dominant whir in sync with her heart. Powerless to change it, what was happening, Ivory could not hold back a cry as she broke from an edge or a cliff or the crown of a hill, and catapulted face down into a labyrinth.
A sudden grip on her elbow, a very calming grip, broke her fall. Ivory embraced Ginny with her head, her heart, clung to her like a pillow, until the quivering inside calmed and the swirl fell behind, away, away ... Now there was skylight, an elongated purple cloud in the horizon, microgravity, a new cosmos, a borderless world. Together, inside muted wind, they soared endlessly, through energy fields that pushed or pulled, high, higher, above a crag, into a burst of song. The wings of a bird, one that resembled a golden deejay, flapped at Ivory's face. A wisp of blue under-wing, a yellow tail whistling ahead, and the bird sailed out of reach.
The second break of clasp came as they veered towards an emerald river. White rays of light danced across the water's face, casting shimmer in circular ripples, outlying modular waves. And then Ivory was in a different vortex. Alone. Dim light touched her head and the miasma, churning like a vicious sea, swallowed her whole.
)
