S: Queen of Skyspirits - Redraw

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Self Improvement Contest: deviantart.com/journal/Spirit-…

In 2009, I drew this: sta.sh/01mzdm670fvr

For the past two days, I have redrawn it, expanded it; in canvas, color and lore. It was a nice escape from reality. This picture is based on one of the adventures Alix goes on from an unwritten story I now call 'Skyspirit'.

Drawn in Paint Tool SAI--Edited in Adobe Photoshop CS 6
Grunge overlay:

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<sub>'It's said that it is the Skyspirits that bring on the heavy mists of Morlue, right into the face of a coming storm. Those that live here mention the Skyspirits centuries past in history, telling tales of magnificent creatures that dance with the mist, urging it to follow them. But for what purpose? To challenge the coming storms, or help them along? As I ventured to Morlue to find out for myself, the villagers closest to the sea warned me to not go any further, that the oncoming mist would make me lose my way, and even plunge off a cliff into tempered waters. Did I listen? Of course not. As the villagers headed further inland, I took the threaded paths to the cliffs.

The wind, at first, tried to push me back, but soon changed direction and prodded me forward through soft, ankle-high grasses. In the distance was the darkening of the horizon, edging darkness onto an otherwise colorful landscape. I had stood there for just a few moments when a thick fog began to roll in to my right, obscuring everything it touched. Already, it had hidden the paths back to the village. Waves roared and slapped at the rock of the cliff, and grass whisked in the tumbling breeze. I figured I ought to sit down and hold on for dear life, but the thought completely left my mind as, in the distance, I caught on to blobs of color in the distance. One green, the other purple with a kissing of sunlight. There weren't blobs, but rather, the Skyspirits I had been longing to see. Their fins spread delicately into the darkening sky, and I couldn't tell if they created the mist, or that it followed them like extensions of their tails and hued fins.

As the fog bank threatened to overcome me in moments, bursting out from the thick billows was a Skyspirit. She, as I could feel at once, was the Queen of the Skyspirits. Her colors of majestic pinks and royal golds speckled in what sunlight reached her, and my breath was whisked away. She angled herself to come and hover before me, wisps of fog breaking from her fins, and the bank that had threatened to consume merely edged around me, giving me a better view of the Skyspirit. As she gazed upon me, it was then I'm quite sure I felt something from her. Warm amusement, perhaps from the fact I had wandered too close to the cliffs during a gathering storm. Even as she turned away, I knew I'd see her again. Even as the breeze became a brisk wind and the fog finally collapsed around and above me, I knew I'd be just fine. Indeed, the fog parted just enough to show me a direct path back to the village...'

~Alix</sub>