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The day itself was warm and given the amount of moisture rolling in from the ocean, means that the cloud cover is spectacularly thick today. All the better for their task at hand. The crimson Cloak snaps its hems as the Sorcerer takes off at a blistering pace, aiming for a patch of thick cloud cover. It seems as if he should bounce off its surface, given the the inability to see through it, but — swish, in he goes, leaving an indent for his passing.
Squinting until he reaches another pocket of open space, he then halts, turning about in the clear air. All around, sunlight makes the stratus billows glow in softened gold. The air is crisp, clean, the potential for rain quivering with it. The Cloak flows about his legs, fluid silk, as he grins at the Witch.
"This is the perfect weather for them. I think all we need to do is wait. They rest in spaces like this," and he gestures to the ballroom-sized airy expanse.
Not everyone has the advantage of a magical cloak, though she is still summarily inspecting all the closets in search of the fabled Blue variation. He has one. She knows this. One day she will find it and take to the air with equal aplomb, a carelessness evident in no actions whatsoever. For even in the air, the Witch remains true to her nature: direct, doubtful, wickedly pointed, and incredibly suspicious. Under her own power, she can fly reasonably well, anyways. The flit of telekinesis is more of a drain than a relic doing it for her, but not everyone has a loving argyle patterned relic wrapped around their shoulders all the time.
Arms outstretched, soaring around like an airplane? That's Pietro. She is much closer to Billy in terms of how she moves, unconsciously lifting from the ground and willing herself here to there or anywhere, the pearlescent skies parting for her as she swirls through one of the vaporous masses dotting her long claret coat in a sheen of Pearl drops and diamond beams refracting the sunlight.
Such beauty, raw and palpable, must be balanced against a sigh and a cooler pocket chilling the skin. She rises straighter on an angle, languishing like an odalisque in a harem. A look over her shoulder is nearly violet, except for the inclusions of scarlet red: a glow that marks her. "You should."
"I should?" His laugh, with barely any hard surface to bounce from, seems flattened for it, though it's no less bright and full of affection. "You don't intend to linger? This migration happens once every three-hundred years, «Beloved». Neither of us existed then."
He floats over, lean form elongated for the gentle point of booted toes in natural inclination to streamline himself for aerial maneuvering. Aureate light plays off angles and storm-blue, glints from belt-clasps and accents the planes of his face, including that twinkling grin.
"Afraid that you'll get cold waiting? Or tired? I have no issue helping, you know this." A plucky, cocky tease dances through the tone. With arms outstretched and spread to an open angle, the invitation to slip into his personal space is clear.
"Maybe I do remember the last time?" The look over the burgundy slant of her shoulder gives a shimmer of those glowing eyes, and the odds of a smile resting on her lips be rare. Her countenance so rarely maintains the radiant joy that comes easily to others, even the guardian of the dimension itself. "Perhaps they walk the Witch Road more than the sky."
Her slight rotation follows the currents bobbing and buoying her round, like a small sailboat in the middle of an unprotected harbour. The swell of the air wills her to bend her knees and sway among the rocking turbulence, the sliced edges of her coat wrapped around her black legs. "Cold? To hear Pietro I am all snow and ice, no heart."
The Snow Queen, Wanda Maximoff. Her descent leaves a small gap between them, an encounter between two extraordinary figures briefly paused. Is that the shimmer of motion in the clouds, a distant call bubbling up? Yes, yes, it might be…
Let him turn, let him look, and then the danger lies in the parabola arc throwing her high into the air and pouncing down on Strange.
A snort at the first rhetorical question granted to him — and yet another for the self-titling of lacking a heart. Utter nonsense that, pish-posh, and Strange shakes his head, chuckling to himself.
Then comes the clarion cry, faint, like a windchime rimed with ice crystals, and of course the predictable man rotates on the spot, hands half-inclined to defensive precursors to spells as his usual reaction to unknowns. At the far side of the bowl of open space, indeed — a swirling of cirrus fluff drawn along by the movement of air behind some emphemeral creature.
"Oof!!!" Tumbling butt-over-tea-kettle for all of a startling, heart-jamming two dozen feet or so, it takes the crimson Cloak itself to turn Strange aright and by this point, he's got at least part of the Witch firmly ensnared within his grasp — be it limb or torso — hell, she might even be upside-down, things were momentarily so very willy-nilly for up and down.
Oh, pithy complaint, you know nothing of truth! For the twin can never be wrong, no?
Wanda's dark hair streams over her shoulders and teases along her back, a banner of a knight galloping into battle. The paint streak of a bomber leveling off and entering its dive, prepared for its barrels to bark retorts at incoming fighters, and to drop its payload before getting the hell out of there.
No horse yet, no auroral lion. Just her, colliding with her beloved, sending them both somersaulting and spinning through the air. The Cloak knows which way to go, but she's got the speed of momentum with her, turning over and over. Captured, yes, but momentum won't give up to hold perfectly fast. Her urgency lends her to dance on the sky and push on.
Puft — into the cloud cover and out into another pocket of open, sunlit air for the momentum of the impact. The Cloak fights it, likely responding to its master's implicit complaint of inner ears attempting to realign.
A peal of his laughter follows regardless. A timed shove, disentangling of limbs, and for the skill of utilizing motion against a combatant, he attempts to send her onwards, into another wall of thick cumulus globs in glowing gold.
Oh, she'll know this one. Round two of such an effort:
"Tag! You're it!" Back into the cotton-candy fluff he attempts to retreat, the relic about his shoulders a blatant means of tracking him within the high-sky fog.
Clouds wrap around them, enfold them in an insubstantial blitz of shape and colour and form. Mostly white with hints of buttery cream passing through, a lancet of the sunlight making its way through the spectrum until reaching a dusty gold. They are colours and hues she knows.
"Tag." Good gods; he wants her to play. Play is something she simply doesn't know how to do. She stares at him quizzically as he lets her go. Strange backing up leaves her arching her eyebrows, head tipped. "But you will miss them."
Eminently sensible to suggest that. She floats, patiently awaiting their arrival.
A controlled sharp bank brings him shy of the cloud bank. The crimson Cloak swishes for the aborted flight, half-wrapped about him from lower ribs and down to conceal to his toes. The Sorcerer eyes her thoughtfully before nodding and sighing. He assumes the douty dignity of the mantle once again even as he attempts to fix air-mussed hair.
"Yes, that's true," he admits, smiling wryly. "Wouldn't want to let the chance escape."
It turns out that their ruckus — or what counts as such within this fluffy world of airy sculptures — has drawn the attention of at least of said migratory creatures. Nearest to Strange, it emerges from the cloud cover head-first. Bulbous translucent eyes with a pearlescent sheen blink thin eyelids across their width as it snakes into view. The whole being itself is air woven to enough thickness for human vision to perceive, more like cirrostratus than anything else. The wings are but glancing light itself, the mist of tiniest hailstones gathered together to form a method to flight. It's streamlined and lengthy, about twenty feet in total, and guilelessly curious as to them both. Two antennae, tipped in wisps of white, quiver as it seems to look between the two, coiled gracefully in place like some dragon from the Eastern heights.
The cumulonimbus shield for the two sorcerers serves to conceal them from those strange, interesting creatures in the sky, but that will not entirely stop Wanda from gathering an armful of magic, in a sense, and hurling herself full bore at the Sorcerer Supreme. Let Strange absorb that excitement while he can! What dangers doth muster themselves in the likeness of sheer adversity, an illusion defined by the quarrelsome uplift of telekinetic magic and the flip of colliding with him by bouncing over his shoulder to firmly enshroud his neck with her arms and press the carmine collar of the relic against her cheek for a proper hug. Thus might the creature espying them realise it's a matter of play or possibly vaunted escape on the back of a man much more than he appears.
"«Hello!»" she calls in Tibetan; her other choices are limited, at best. Is it a Russian speaking cloud strife? "Be welcome o honoured guest." Might as well try German, for all that it seems most unlikely.
The curvature of her smile is a devastating glory for those not subject to it.
Another attack! Not really tag after all, more like 'test the Sorcerer's ability to foresee such a pounce'. He fails, as he usually does when in the charming innocence of the Witch's presence, and the creature is privy indeed to a swirl in place that enshrouds them both with the Cloak argyle-side out for all of a few seconds. The fickle relic wiggles its collars and returns the affectionate hug with a tickling flickering pass along her cheek even as she speaks.
Strange has a gently-firm grip on her wrists at this point, content to indulge her as well as allow the piggy-backing. It's little stress on him and, secretly, allows him to take the brunt of any attack should this creature feel threatened.
Threatened? No — intrigued. It sinuously swirls closer, blinking those lids again across the otherworldly gel-filled eyes, and inside, one can spot the myriad twinkles of captured ice crystals. The Witch greets, it tilts its head from side to side.
Emotions flicker instead of words. Greeting, curiosity — confusion, as they are different — the subtle drop and rise of one's stomach to indicate flight along with more plain confusion. Flying humans? Since when?
The piggybacking is something familiar, and it likewise does not impede the billowing crimson garment from achieving its unearthly size, in part because the brunette can support herself at fairly plausible speed and ease. She's just his soap bubble, riding for fun. Let them both divulge their secrets to one another later, and laugh about the response of the being peering at them.
For it is quite the being, a sentient roiling ribbon of shape and colour as imagined inside an opal's heart; a triple rainbow, as it were, worthy of grace and charm. Glittering hues slough off every turn executed in a meandering flood, and dazzle the eye. Reason for her to narrow her eyes and shield them as she can.
"It means a good thing, yes? You can speak to it?" The curiosity is mirrored in questions of her own, though the Doctor gets to answer; his companion hovers in place.
"I'm not certain, it seems to be communicating in…feelings, not words. I can certainly attempt it," he murmurs over his shoulder to her, likewise needing to squint back at the being for the refracted light through its body.
Thus, he tries. Greetings, neutrality — calm followed by an undulation of excited energy, the adrenaline rush in a freefall controlled — and then a flickering of his aura coming into view, visible on all spectrums. The creaure tilts its head, flickers an insubstantial tongue, and then darts back into the cloud cover. Strange's shoulders drop. "Hmph. Must have scared it. Dammit." Grumble-grumble.
Strange goes home.
Strange has left.
"Feelings." Great, the one thing she totally sucks at. Wanda nods to the creature, and tries to focus on something other than the bubbles of mischief and something darker, softer, and more appropriate for the dusk than the daybreak. Affection lies there, strong as vibranium, and she rests her cheek against the side of Strange's temple. Clearly the two of them are separate beings, twined together.
It may be trying to decide whether to flee, and she murmurs, "Your aura is a very big space. It may not like finding something larger than its skies in a man. I however have no such trouble." She pokes his side, finding his flank and tickling.