When her area of vision failed to reach the top of the opposite bank, Tien's wings immediately started fluttering at a ridiculous pace. It raised her about a foot off the ground, but they were still damp, making steering awkward. She continued to hang in the air, waiting for the little bar of sunshine and the breeze she created to disperse the moisture, observing the various refugee insects as they decided to head across the stream. They didn't normally move very far in their droves like this, and as she bobbed around uncertainly, she beckoned a particularly loud wasp over. She couldn't ask what was wrong without shapeshifting, so she settled for looking at the wasp intensely. After a few moments, it began to twitch a leg here and there, darting around her in circles. All she could glean of its movements was that Something was over there; Something that was making the smaller inhabitants nervous. Curiosity began to boil over, and Tien slightly recklessly considered herself dry enough to go and investigate.
Green wings thrummed through the air as she fought to gain height and get past the water in one relatively dry piece. It only took a few moments, but she could feel the drag of the air trying to tug her off-course. As she reached the other bank, she let herself onto land again, scrambling up the side with an uncanny, insectile speed. Straightening up at the top, she brushed the odd drop of water from her leaves and started forward, easily trailing the path of the fleeing flying things. It wasn't long before she found the cause of the commotion, and for a few heartbeats, the Sedora stood and stared at it, stunned. When her senses came back, she darted under the nearest bush and shivered. It had nothing to do with being cold or wet.
Tien tended to chase hunters out of her patch. They weren't part of her food chain, after all, and where men hunted, men would cut down trees and anger elemental spirits, and they tended to take out their frustration on Sedora who weren't doing their job. But more than that, it infuriated her that they killed for no reason. They could eat what she ate! But no, they had to have her animals, and her trees, and sometimes they just wanted fur. Much as she found the odd passerby interesting, she knew better than to let them start using her forest as a buffet table. Sure, she wasn't the most intimidating figure the forest had to hold, but she had her methods.
Decision made, Tien scuttled out of the bush and took to the air. She started in a wide, sweeping circle, pretty sure that she could go fast enough to prevent the human from seeing her, and then she opened her mouth. Instead of a tinkly fairy voice, an eerie, echoing boom came out, sounding echoey and directionless.
"Get oooouuuuut," she intoned, trying to copy the voices of a couple of short humans who'd told her something called a Ghost Story. "The spirits of the forest are aaaangrrryyyy! Leave nooow, or prepare to meet your dooom!"
It was very impressive, if she did say so herself, even if she was getting slightly dizzy from all the circling.
"This is your last waaarnii- woah!" Mid-word, the voice changed, to a rather more ordinary - if admittedly slightly tinkly - tone of voice. "Woah, woah, flight failure, goin' down, out of the way!"
A combination of dizziness, speed and slightly wonky wings dragged Tien into a plummet, spinning her figure around and around before she began to tumble. Everything passed by in an incredible blur, and before she could register which direction she was nosediving in, her shoulder struck a branch. She bounced off, hit the following branch, and was unceremoniously tossed down from twig to branch, leaves floating down in her wake. The collisions stopped briefly during another plummet, and the Sedora hit the ground. Being fairly sturdier than she seemed, she managed not to die, but she was pretty sure that she shouldn't be seeing stars in the daytime.
"Unn," she muttered, blinking heavily and trying to sit up.
