Fire Immunity

Invulnerability to fire.

Flame-Pyre Reincarnation

The ability to reincarnate upon a pyre from death by old age. Memories are lost and gradually regained with each life.

Shapeshifting (Human)

The ability to shapeshift into a human form.

Telepathy

The ability to communicate mind-to-mind.

Verbal Speech

The ability to communicate in spoken words.

When Ji’mau returned to to the Abstract Destiny, it was only natural that her bond would be the first to well and truly greet her. She slipped through one of the technomagical archways that served as a “front door” from the landing bays, had time just enough to adjust to her shifted perspective of the corridors beyond as the enchantment reduced her to a size that could fit them, and then Dumahar was upon her. The bright yellow hybrid butted his beaked muzzle against her own full beak, and she ducked her head into his attentions as he preened her feathered ruff.

::Are you alright?:: he wanted to know, which surprised her not at all. ::I know you didn’t win the flight. How are you feeling?::

“Yes, Duma, I’m alright,” she assured him, chirruping a moment of laughter. With her ability to fly at the speed of sound, she imagined she could have out-raced any one of her ‘competitors’ in terms of sheer speed if she had really been inspired to try, but: “I had it all wrong, you know? He was interested in firelings, not just fire!”

“But you still thought he might like you, right?” Exchanging thoughts for words as he pulled his head back, Dumahar’s brows were furrowed as he studied her closely. “You thought you might be liked.”

“Yes. And someone did like me,” Ji’mau assured him, a smile curling the corners of her beak as she glanced aside for a moment. “It just wasn’t Ialeserth. Instead it’s someone I’m thinking about going back to see.”

Dumarhar’s scrutiny went on a few moments longer even so. She didn’t have to wonder why.

Ji’mau wasn’t Dumahar’hashmel’s first bond. He was very sensitive to feelings of loss, of abandonment, of being cast aside. He had to be sure she wasn’t feeling any of that before he could relax.

When his feathers finally did so, lying flat against his neck and wings, she knew he’d reached that point and believed her.

“Then why are you already back? You could have stayed at the Nidus longer, I wouldn’t have minded. You came back so quickly I thought—”

His words broke off but his thoughts didn’t. They ghosted along their bond, instead. Feelings of hurt, of heartbreak. Had Ji’mau come back so swiftly because she needed comfort in her loss? Neither of them said anything, but now it was the fiery whorling’s turn to preen over Dumahar instead, making sure to focus on the long, ornament plumes arching from his brow.

“I came back so we can go back together,” Ji’mau answered, as her bond sighed and leaned his head against the solid feathers of her breast. “We should ask around for candidates so that they can come with us…and then when we go back, you’ll be there to meet him, too.”

“Sure, of course,” Dumahar agreed without lifting his head. “Who is ‘him’, anyway?”

Ji’mau twittered a musical little laugh before answering, “Valane.”

The first (more than) willing accompaniment that they found was Dumahar’s own brother, Krishya’yauni. With his flawless white fur and stark black patterning, Krishya had grown up to be utterly vain and absolutely captivated by their phoenix ancestry. Once upon a time he’d even had a crush on Ji’mau, or at least something approaching it, but it had flared and guttered as quickly as a struck match with nowhere to pass its flame. After all, Ji’mau wasn’t a phoenix at all, despite her fiery and birdlike form, and that revelation had immediately doused his “romantic” interest in her.

(She’d hardly been offended, for the record. It had been very characteristic of him and she’d at no point considered reciprocation anyway.)

But Dumahar and Ji’mau shared the thought: bonding had helped lift Dumahar out of his own pits of despair. Maybe a bond could help ground Krishya in turn — or maybe he’d get the unconditional admiration he was constantly seeking?

He was a narcissist, yes, but Ji’mau didn’t think that meant he was unworthy of finding a bond. She might have even played to it a little.

More than a little.

“Nidus Aven will have a clutch with phoenix blood on its sands,” she murmured without preamble, finding the white hybrid nestled in their family quarters.

As predicted, his eyes fixed on her immediately, the book in his padded hands quite forgotten. She glimpsed the title, The Many Lives of the Phoenix, as he clapped it shut and gave her his undivided attention.

“Beautiful phoenixes just like me?” he asked, orange eyes sparkling.

“Well of course we can’t see them yet because they haven’t even been lain yet,” she admitted, voice lilting to tease his interest, “But their mother is very beautiful! She’s all aflame, just like me, but in a blue as clear and pure as the sky!”

“Another phoenix!” Krishya gasped, leaping up from his chair. “You said Nidus Aven? I have to get there immediately!”

And that was all Ji’mau had to do to secure the first of the handful of applicants she wanted to bring along back with her to the Nidus. But who else, she wondered.

Recalling the verdigris hides that she had raced through the sky in pursuit of provided her next bit of inspiration.