Sure, there was resistance at first, but once you got past that mountains shifted along the ground quite smoothly. Elda noted this as she sent the mountain in question - Mount Firestone or something fiery anyway - another few feet. She didn't feel any better. Her temper was burning as strongly as it was when she first decide to take out her mood on the geographical feature in question.

Then, of course, the mountain ran out of space to be shoved. But Elda kept going and the mountain didn't touch her. Forward she pushed and gradually the mountain warped. 

When Querida yelled at her to stop, the mountain was less a mountain and more an arch.

"Oh do leave me alone," said Elda crossly. "Everyone else did."

Querida crossed her bony little arms and glared at the griffin. "That was my best view, you know. There's not a great many views here in the Waste and you've gone and ruined it."

Elda hunched down, her wings low to the ground. A twinge of guilt pulled at her anger.

"It's not <i>fair</i>," she said. It was plaintive.

"Nothing's fair. What's not fair now then?" said Querida. 

"They've gone off! They left me! They said I couldn't come," wailed Elda. She hunkered her head lower. Her crest drooped. The mountain, thankfully, stayed up despite its new shape. 

Querida rubbed her snakelike face. "Oh, that bloody war. Right. If you can't control yourself enough not to destroy the landscape, I don't see any sense in bringing you along."

"That's not fair!"

"It's perfectly fair. Look what you've done. Is Callette with them?" Querida asked, trying to make that last one sound idle. If Callette had been left behind too...

"Of <i>course</i> they took Callette," said Elda. "I've got ever so much magic but it's Callette they took!" 

<i>Damn</i>, thought Querida. Another opportunity lost.

"And I don't want to stay with mother's friends, I want to go to the West Continent with them and help with the war and use my magic and--" 

"Silence! I'm calling your parents. Stay. Here." 

Querida turned and shuffled back to her little home. Behind her she could hear Elda trying to put the mountain back into shape. She sighed. She'd liked that mountain and now it would look all strange.

Summoning up Mara was simple enough. Mara answered quickly, like she'd been expecting a call. But her face showed distinct surprise when she beheld Querida.

"I'm-- I'm sorry, I can't talk right now, we're looking for Elda," said Mara. In her arms was a sweet little toddler with downy soft pink wings.

"I found her," said Querida. "She's ruined a perfectly good mountain."

Mara looked so relieved she either hadn't processed what Elda had done or considered a mountain acceptable collateral. 

"Put her on?" she asked Querida.

The mountain looked no better for Elda's efforts to fix it than her efforts to break it. Querida hobbled out and placed the sphere in front of Elda.

"You mother."

Elda fluffed in panic.

And rightly so. 

By the end of Mara's lecture, Elda was in Querida's temporary care before she could be sent off to university. 

Querida clapped her hands.

"While we wait for admissions to open, I believe I shall give you a few lessons in landscaping," she said. 

She was going to get her view back, by the gods.