The same thin Tall had followed her, had caught her. The Tall's grip was more immovable than the Talls' cold metal shackles. The woman's weight was easily double Didoozy's modest size and the Tall had the leverage of the railing to aid her as she pulled at Didoozy's arm, trying to haul her back onto the airship deck.

Didoozy was dead. She was doomed.... worst of all, she was caught. She would never be able to live this down. If she moved quickly, there was a chance she could surprise the woman... if she was lucky.

Didoozy pulled her last handful of poppers out of an inner jacket pocket and threw them as hard as she could at the Tall's face. She twisted her legs, pulling her feet up to brace against the side of the nearing airship. The poppers went off and Didoozy pushed against the airship's side with all her might.

The momentum was enough to put her life in gravity's dependable hands. The only problem was that the Tall had never let go of her. Even with a face full of poppers, her dark cheeks stained pink and yellow, the woman had held on like a vice; her slender form pulled from the airship in Didoozy's wake. She had startled enough to lose her grip on the ship, just not Didoozy's small wrist...so much for luck.

Worse was the fact that Didoozy's glider was built for her and a bag of loot. Not for hauling an entire Tall through the sky. But really at this point, it was attempt the glide or surrender to a quick and splatty death. Didoozy apologized for her snide dismissal of the Fates and let out a quick prayer to not die, then palmed the glider's release.

The glider wings flared out from the thin pack on her back and unfurled toward her wrists, the frame smacking roughly into the Tall's hand where she clutched at Didoozy's wrist. A wingtip jammed against the Tall's body jabbing her in the ribcage. Her soft grunt was the only indicator that the experience was unpleasant but the impact jostled the glider; twisting one side loose of its ties and sending their connected bodies into a spin. After only a moment the glider had become a bigger problem than asset in their plunge towards the ever-nearing ground.

Didoozy pulled and tugged against the fingers that clutched her; they might as well be made of metal for all the good her tugging did. She expected that if she did somehow survive this she would have a bracelet of bruises where the Tall clutched her. There didn't seem to be much hope of survival at this point though. They were too close to the cliff face, another moment or two and their bodies would crash into the jagged rocks. Their bodies spun streaking the dangers together into one nauseating blur of impending doom.

Didoozy had often wondered what it would be like to die. She had tried many times to imagine the feeling one would have when life was squished out. When she had been old enough to bear children, but young enough to not need any, her family had been home at the burrow; all of them. She had gone off to the midden to sulk after her father had said his nasty words. When she finally returned home she had found their remains; well some of them anyhow.

The Talls had used her family's land as a landing pad for one of their largest breeds of airships. The kind of airship that might blot out the sky when you looked up at it. They had placed that behemoth of metal, wood and magickal machinery on top of the ancient burrow of her ancestors. Eighteen generations had been raised in those rooms. Twenty seven cousins had come calling that morning for the twins' naming day. Her whole family gone in an afternoon.

She had often wondered what the Talls had come for that day. It might have been the small patch of cadary, an attractive purple flower that the Talls were down right obsessed with. Grandma Ennie had grown some at the edges of the pasture, between the burrow and the bird pond. Mayhap they had come for some old relic or bit of treated metal? Many things had been missing, including the flowers.

The truth was the airship's landing could have torn the fragile flowers from the ground and it was impossible to be certain what had been taken. They had collapsed the roof of the ancient home, crumbling the walls and the bones of her family to dust. She knew of not one blood relation left alive after that day. Taking from the Talls was all she had left. It was strange, the things she thought about in the moment before dying.

The air around their bodies filled with a soft blue glow and their descent slowed drastically; the terrifying plummet becoming a lazy drift between one heartbeat and the next. They floated downward, slower now than any glider. Didoozy was tempted to ask the Tall if it was her doing but it was best to assume it had been; and that it did not bode well for Didoozy.

If the tall was slowing them both down in midair then Didoozy was still caught. She could not allow herself to be captured; she would never live it down. With the glow slowing them there was no more need for the glider wings. She snapped the straps that held them to her body and made yet another quick prayer, this time that the glider would hit the Tall right in her plump lips. If her prayer was answered there was no indication; the Tall a silent unwelcome bracelet.

Their bodies floated in slow circles, twisting and spinning them apart from one another, the motion forcing the Tall to finally release her. The strange circles slowly rotated them both until their feet were facing towards the ground, Didoozy spun to face away from the Tall, then a gentle bump as they landed. The blue tinged glow began to dim as the Tall's magick completed its effect.

Didoozy prepared herself to run, the spell might release her any moment and this could be her only chance to escape. The last tinge of blue faded and Didoozy pushed her small frame into a sprint, running as fast as she could from the Tall with little regard for her surroundings. Anything would be better than capture by the Tall; a freefall off a cliff might be more survivable.

She fingered the release for her glider; if the Fates will was kind to her today mayhap the Tall hadn't completely destroyed the delicate device. Truthfully she was not overly tempted to test its condition after their midair tussle. She had been asking luck for a lot today, at some point the Fates might get tired of answering.

She heard the Tall's footsteps behind her, the woman's long legs eating distance faster than Didoozy could make it up. Mayhap a race was not the best tactic. Didoozy swerved left, ducking under an ancient fallen tree now turned nursery for shrubs and wind beaten weeds. The highlands did not have standing trees anymore. The Talls had cut them all down. It had been one more insult on the pile of abuses from the arrogant invaders.

The stones and boulders of the highland were not quick to budge as she clambered up first one rise then another. If she could find an old cliff tree left to rot she might have a ladder to help her get higher. The idea was to use the Tall's mass against her. If Didoozy could clamber up terrain with her light frame the Tall might be foolish enough to try it herself. Though the woman was slight there was no way she was light enough to keep the stones from turning beneath her feet. The gravelly nature of some of the more deeply piled stones would surely twist her ankle or, better yet, break her leg.

Didoozy let another prayer out into the multiverse so the Fates might hear, 'help me survive this woman.'

She must have finally asked for too much because instead of an old cliff rope or even a gravel pit the next bit of land revealed was a dried up river bed. Likely it was an annual river for the winter runoff. What would have been a crystal-clear flow of snow melt had dried months ago when spring had fallen into summer and the days were too hot to find any more ice in the mountains. Of course the great sky held its reserve of snow. Buried above the cloud layer it was not to be taken lest you awaken the storm gods that coveted their soft white capped mountains.

'Not the time for children's tales,' Didoozy reminded herself as she pelted over the dried creek. She was not going to argue with the Fates and tried only to run even faster across the flat cracked ground, pushing her body through a stick in her side.

'I will not look back,' she told herself, 'I will only run.'

The overgrown sage brush that drank at the river's edge in spring might be enough to slow the Tall. Didoozy darted and dodged her way through withered sage and old crumpled willowtails that had wilted with the drying of the land.

There, past the browned stalks and fluffy heads of dead reeds, in between the thick branches of sage: a silverbush. She had heard through the Gossip Ladder that the Talls hated silverbush. Like a child with a nettle allergy they would avoid the stuff upon sight...or, so a few Tellers had claimed. It was better than taking a plunge off a cliff unexpectedly, she was fast but a glider still took a moment to deploy. Her retractor had worked well enough but that did not mean it wouldn't jam after all that roughhousing.