Aurora on the airwaves pt 1 -Bird Guest

Aurora on the airwaves and the Spirits they call.

  "And that dear listeners is all we have time for. Get yourself some shut eye before Debron makes its way back to the sky and I'll see you next nightfall." Mistress Silence - MS to friends, writes the rune that disengages her from the magical systems that run Radio Luna. She stands, stretching aching bones as she smoothes down the leaves that curl in protest at her elbows. She moves from the Sending room, stretching her ankles and toes with each step, almost walking on pointed step as she pulls the mostly sleeveless gown around her midsection the massive midnight pink fabric painted with deep purple flowers and shinied outlines. The arm holes billow down to her hips with fabric that hangs in loose waves off her shoulders, as she pushes the thin filament connecting the bridge over her nose to her ears, an act of focus as she seeks to uncurl from her own thoughts and the work she is walking away from.
  A basket of donations lies at the edge of the inner studio, and MS picks it up without stopping; it contains local payment for her services, and a list of suggested topics, though she swears Eucyy puts 'talk about religious cults' just as an excuse to write to her, knowing she will never talk on air about that. She sees a succulent stone fruit with her metaphorical name on it and plucks it from the basket, biting into it as juice runs down her arm to her elbow, staining the leaves and the path it takes orange, as well as her lips and chin. She eats unabashedly, thinking about her time in the booth, even as Br1n's protocol play bardic music all over the Levis subcontinent.
  MS steps on something soft, feeling it squelch between bare toes, the bangles on her ankle jingling as momentum brings her to a stop. She looks down and sees the squashed berries on the pressed dirt, the layer of soft dust disturbed by the mess of someone else's messy eating.
  She frowns and looks up from carefully kept toes, hearing the cry of corvids on the wind along with the curious chirp of gathering salit. MS wrinkles her mouth in worrying disapproval, looking around for the mess maker - whether they be on two legs or four. Taloned feet make themselves known on too long legs, each toe clacking down separately as tap tap tap tap tap, the delicately powerful foot makes its way closer to her. Her eyes travel upwards, critical and analytical even as her mind takes in every detail that screams Spirit! Her adornments are sparse, a cloth shawl that screams of the barest coverings to placate those of the city, while her mind is suspicious that a creature-kin from Brambleberry or the like could easily manipulate such simplicity. MS is aware of her influence as late night broadcast voice, and while everyone lifts to enhance the community - there are communities other than her own.
  She notices the lanky body and the odd, inquisitive posture in this moment of time before the spirit speaks, and she notes to be careful with her verbiage lest she leave herself open to wordplay or trapped agreement. There's the hint of wings from forearms, though MS can't see anything that would allow the bird spirit to directly fly, just feathers all over the lankiness that is all it. And to break the visage of it all, a tiny bone broach at its collar, like a trinket she could not help but find and collect.
  "Speak, or step aside." MS says with a deliberate coldness, dropping the hand with the stone fruit to her side and dragging her forearm over her mouth, eyes never leaving the spirit.
  "Mistress of the ethereal nighttime, I come seeking audience on urgent matters." tap tap tap tap as she stalks towards MS, blocking her path.
  "That's close enough, speak your piece then let me get to my bed and rest." The radio-host places the basket down, laying the fruit atop, sensing this may take more than a moment.
  "I am Nincho, of the restless flight. I speak for those of wing and those who are lost. Sometimes at the same time." Feathers are flicking up and down all over her body at random and MS's eyes are absently drawn to the movement as she takes way too long to get to the point. The host's busy mind is already thinking a million things, from what she wants for dinner, to which of yesterday's subjects she can talk about tomorrow night. But most of all she can't help but try to piece what the spirit is after before she says it.
  "Go on," is all MS says aloud though.
  The host pulls her midnight pink robe tighter around her shoulders as she waits for the spirit to carefully arrange her words even as her own thoughts and observations come so easy to her. Like the restless hop that is building up in birdlike bones that make her sure that she thinks her topic will put MS ill at ease. Or the way the spirit's eyes flick to the tower behind her of the academy, and the antennae that houses the magic that sends out to all of connected-Levis. The white and purple makeup has stained away from Silence's mouth, smeared by her wrist, revealing the green skin beneath that holds a thin line, ready to give no ground.
  "It is the night-song. It drives the midnight birds mad. The day birds are equally unhappy, but theirs is an anger of absence, the night birds drive themselves away from the path of your hypnotic sound." Nincho stumbles over words, beak click clicking between syllables as her cadence has to stretch around sounds usually made by lips and tongue alone. A whole vocal range stretches and contorts around midnight and something, and MS considers that this might be much too much effort for someone to get one up on her. So she keeps listening.
  "The threads of magic that link tower to tower, the aurora plays havoc with their senses, driving them to the merciless ground and the endless sky in patterns of crazed fever and it pulls at my heart and mind with every needless injury. I ask that you turn off the music of the night and leave your needless prattling to the days."
  The towers, the radio is connection, information, a progress unheard of and MS considers the sheer loss in culling the connections now made between the towns and cities of Levis and it hurts her very heart. But.... the people of Levis are proud of their connection to the land and the waters and the skies and to do nothing, to say nothing would be a betrayal of that core knowledge that lies inside her heart. She pulls her robe around her and thinks, clenching and unclenching hands in fabric as her mind runs like an e-pede across open plains. Infernus' Teeth.
  "Come. We have some research to do." She grabs the spirit by the elbow as her other picks up the basket - they were going to need some technomages.
 

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  MS and Nincho the spirit perch on opposite cushions, binding laid between them as Nincho reads slowly and MS scans rapidly, skimming information on a broad hunt. Around them three technomages are assembled; models of ideas around one with a mess of static charged hair, char-stained skin molding clay into effigy; another traces paints onto the ground of the library, working complex spellwork to play with the effects - glowing mahogany skin contrasted with a mess of mundane tattoos; the third reads aloud to the first two, seeking answers to problems sometimes offered by MS and Nincho. Each has taken a stance in the debate, knowing this must be solved, but neither having the knowledge, or the tools to fix the problem - hence the experts.
  The buzzball crumples another effigy, discarding the clay briefly before wetting his hands, picking up the clay and starting again. "If we could measure the interference, we could build a study around the variance and alter the sending mechanism to perform a narrow band broadcast that does not affect the bird life. And we would be better handled to know if it was a celestial current issue, a visual one, or something else."
  Painter looks between her technomage peers, keeping her gaze from the squatting spirit, "Have we even recorded data, or are we going by feelings and emotions alone?"
  MS feels guilt as she gives a grunt that tells the mages all they need to know, she cannot say the words aloud and give these people who are here by concern and curiosity alone an escape to ease their frustrations and permission to set this matter down tonight. She passes each a fruit from her basket to raise their mood instead, biting down on another stone fruit, using the cover of the eating to hide the swirl of emotions threatening to overtake her. Of course they would not have a solution after one night, but keeping the spirit tied to here, with the promises of maybes and what-ifs does not sit right, especially to a bird spirit who feels like she needs to be free and not forced to stare at the swirling images on bindings.
  MS watches a taloned hand rub at bleary eyes and she realises that she is the most nocturnal of those arranged, and even she is starting to fade as Debron begins to cast its light across the world with its wife-sun. Through the membranes she watches pinks fade to the pale white of the world under the lover's shine, and she can't help but let out a long, drawn out yawn - that she quickly covers behind the top of her robe and she brings it up to hide her face.
  "Alright team, that's the sign that we all need a nap, and more data before we reconvene. Miss Silence, can we trust that you will help our spirit friend find sanctum until we can meet again?" The tattooed one asks her. Well 'asks'. MS looks to Nincho, tilting her head in silent question, only to meet with a tired but cheeky mimicry. Ok, fair.
  Study and solutions would have to wait, sleep called them all like seductive mistress.
 

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  The next week has Nincho be hosted at her place, a nest of fungi cushions soon making their way from the corners of her abode to end up curled around her sleeping spot under the open window, feathers and down stuck to the nest from a week of restless sleep. The radio host's mood is touchy, feeding her new guest from her own larder of gifts, her garden long ago traded for access to a tank of warm sand to scrub herself clean each morning, and the assistance to keep it topped up.
  Still, even with the daily scrub, the scent of bird was slowly permeating her everything and it frankly drove her mad. The membranes on her windows were always unfurled, she would go through most times, when the suns were high in the sky, with a large rigid board and fan the air out of her abode, turbulence that had whirled itself a pocket of scent away from the building vents and olfactory freedom.
  She kept seeing the research team when she went to broadcast, watching them move with binder and weird esoteric measuring devices, tracking city salit and travelling bird, trying to both establish a baseline, and to observe their behaviour around the Natare side of the tendrils into the ether. Light sparkles with each broadcast, and Nincho has joined her each night, squatting between each magic circuit as MS locks her knees and focuses on each tale she has to tell.
  Nincho is learning her life, even as MS is learning back, how she speaks to birds passing through when they move in the city. How the injured or the lost seem to find her when they stop, always something to fix or guide or tend to. Silence feels the empathy and responsibility oozing off her, and has grown to know how much staying in one place must be hurting the core of her. But a long-term solution is much more this spirit's goal. Still, one week turns to two, and it was much surprise that the next development came at the hands of a witch.
  But you'll have to come back the next night to see how that develops.