The scene was rather amusing to those looking on it from the outside. A young woman, completely unarmed, bouncing on her toes and threatening a giant bird that must have been at least five times her size with lines like, "Come on! I'll beat you so bad you'll crawl back into the egg you hatched out of!"
Empyrea simply cocked her head to the side and listened to Emily's taunts without reply, think that this young thing certainly is excitable, isn't she?
"What's the matter, scared!? Come on, take your best shot, I'm way too fast for some stupid bird to hit anyway! I'll punch you straight to Mars! Let's go!"
Even with her motherly patience, Empyrea doesn't really take too well to being taunted by children and lowered her head to look Emily straight in the eye, "Calm down, will you dear? You're only making yourself look like an angry child talking like that."
By way of response, Emily punched her in the eye.
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Emily screamed for what must have been the hundredth time as she stared in horror at the sight before her. Fine red dust and a crater marked landscape as far as the eye could see wasn't the most reassuring of views in the best of times, and right now she was also trying to struggle out of the talons of a massive bird.
"Now I believe you had expressed an interest in seeing Mars, dear?" Empyrea craned her neck down to look at the woman struggling in her talons, "And if you don't stop struggling, I will set you down. Do keep in mind that the only reason you can breathe right now is that I'm holding you."
Doing the math, Emily stopped her squirming very quickly and stared back up into the examining eye of her avian captor, "Um...um..."
"Yes?"
"I'm...I'm sorry? Please don't drop me...."
Empyrea laughed, "Well, at least you show some potential to learn manners. Shall we return to the league then?"
Her passenger could only nod mutely.
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Emily spent the next few weeks inside. And only inside. Anytime she had to go out, she moved quickly and kept her eyes down, seeming to be rather afraid of the sky all of a sudden. Especially at night.
Her friends of course noticed this, and talked about it. Word got around and in a random act of jerkery, Guilliame thought it would be great fun to paper the walls of Emily's room in astronomical charts.
Cecile was later quite surprised to find Guilliame stuffed inside the castle's mailbox with a package label addressing him to the moon covering his mouth.
Well, in fairness, it WAS Guilliame. After the initial shock of it, she wasn't really all that surprised...
