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Chapter Text

The golden hawk girl danced, and Julian did not care.

While his ona and other royal kin watched, tensed and waiting for Anhamirak’s children to dance and to burn the world, Julian watched a different girl, though near enough to the sunshine queen that his elders hadn’t noticed his distraction- yet. For while all eyes were turned to the fledgling Wyvern’s Court, poised on the knife’s edge of greatness or destruction, Julian couldn’t bring himself to care. The coming wyvern was destined to fail, they all knew that. If her magic didn’t kill her, the Empress would.

No, Julian watched something much smaller, and much more precious.

While hawks danced with cobras, and falcons schemed, Julian watched a simple sparrow take her first steps into a doomed new world, learning avian ballads alongside serpiente rills. He watched her spread her simple brown wings under forbidden skies as the avians ventured further and further south with each passing day of peace. He watched her play simple children’s games with ravens and crows, and mambas and vipers. He watched as the simple children built a good life, heedless of the glittering sword that hung over their heads. 

He watched, and decided to keep her.

After all, a simple sparrow did not carry enough of Anhamirak’s fire to doom the world, even if she blazed with it every time she rose to meet the sun. Any other magic would overshine hers, would smother that beautiful spark of light. She was no royal hawk, to carry fully half of the chaos goddess’s gifts, dancing madly with its mate in the serpiente prince. A sparrow could be no threat to the Empress, and the White Isles that succorred and trapped them both.

A sparrow was but a single mote of sunshine in a dark, cold world.

She would be nothing to ona ’Cjarsa, shining lady of the White Isles, frozen priestess of dark Ahnmik.

She would be everything to him.

So Julian watched, and waited, patient as any falcon hunting. And his little sparrow grew up. And his time grew short.

Chapter Text

Jenny was having the butterfly dream again.

She wandered lost through an oppressive mass of wings, so dense and thick it was a wonder they were able to keep aloft at all. She knew her cousin, Zach, was also lost somewhere in the press, but no matter how she pushed forward, there was always more. If she opened her mouth to call for him, they would only swarm her, filling her so she was all butterflies from the inside out. They burned, the press of so many wings scorching her like fire. The air was hot and tight, and it was only a matter of time before one small spark caught the whole thing ablaze.

“Ugh. Not the damned butterflies again.”

Dee muttered in her sleep, her serpiente’s sensitive aura disturbed by Jenny’s nightmares. She wrapped an arm around Jenny’s waist and snuggled back in, determined to cuddle the bad dream away. They were all napping in the sun, after a picnic lunch on the cliffs high above the Wyvern’s Court, where no hoverhawk adults could care that she was sleeping in a big pile with her friends, boys and girls alike, serpiente and avians alike. No telling which would be considered more scandalous.

Dee would happily spend the whole day lounging about doing nothing, arms and legs draped over her friends and telling stories out of the pictures they found in the clouds. Jenny didn’t mind the touch exactly, not now that she’d gotten used to it, but her avian blood already ran so hot, and the burning dream left her sticky and restless. She sat up, knowing Dee would just roll over into the group, melting into the hole made by her absence.

She wasn’t the only one already up. Audrey sat with her back to the group, posture dancer perfect, crossed legs so very near to the cliff’s edge. Jenny recognized it as a prayer posture, and sat down quietly next to her friend so as not to disturb her friend.

Both looked out over the whole of Wyvern’s Court spread out below them, though Jenny didn’t think Audrey actually saw any of it. When she went like this, Audrey’s gaze went hollow, like she was watching the echoes of ghosts no one else could see. Jenny looked too, imagining the future ghost of what Wyvern’s Court would become - sakkris, her serpent friends called it. No one spun the old magic of the Dasi anymore, but more and more, stories of them were coming out, as the serpent dancers and the avian loremasters came together to compare notes.

What Is stretches in one long line, Michael had once explained, sketching the rune that his teachers had called Ahnleh and hers called Alasdair’s Seal. And What Could Be and What Might Have Been spiral off of it in elegant arcs. What Never Could Have Been watches from the shadows, and What Is Made By Our Will pulls at the line of Fate.

Each line had its own corresponding name and god in the old Dasi pantheon, but most of the group had grown bored of Michael waxing scholarly by that point, and were easily pulled into Audrey’s distraction of shaping each line in the dancer’s gentle stretching dance to greet the dawn. But the image of it had stayed with Jenny, and she thought of the thirteen Dasi every time she looked down onto Wyvern’s Court, and tried to see the lines the city was being built on. One long, strong, proud line dividing north from south, growing blurry and less distinct around the edges as folks - like her parents - took advantage of the natural formations in the rock as they built, and cared less about which side of the line they lived on. The main street of Wyvern’s Court would bend and be blended, like the elegant lines of the Ahnleh being pulled away from the rigid course of Fate by people’s will.

“I thought I was supposed to be the one who was always lost in thought.”

Audrey’s cultured voice broke through Jenny’s musings, rich and rolling and musical. Avians were taught to blend their voices in the elegant harmonies of a chanting chorus; serpiente were taught to make their voices carry through the close dark of a sleeping nest. The feathers at the nape of Jenny’s neck raised to hear it. It wasn’t fear, not exactly, though there was an edge of that to it. It was more… an unknown promise. A serpiente’s voice held promise, whether that was the promise of violence, or sex, or something else entirely. Jenny liked it, she just didn’t have a lot of context for it. Not yet.

“I didn’t want to disturb you.”

Her own sparrow’s voice was light and airy, a trilling chirp so like the call of her second form. Zach’s voice was the harsh scrape of his dark crow, Tom’s the husky croak of his raven. Jenny didn’t know yet if Dee’s grumpy rumbles were an affectation or part of the difference between her python and Audrey’s viper, or if serpiente voices didn’t carry the element of their animal halves like avian’s did. Maybe their second forms showed in other ways, like Dee’s thick, corded muscles, and Audrey’s lithe dancer’s form.

Audrey’s thoughtful hum cut through Jenny’s distraction again. She was always a little distant after the dreams.

“Not to sound ungrateful, but the dreams you and your cousin bring our afternoon naps are more disturbing than your mere company. I’ll take waking Jenny over dream Jenny any day.”

Audrey dipped her head to rest on Jenny’s shoulder, a gesture of comfort. It was more for Aud’s benefit than Jenny’s - the casual affection of this group was relatively new to her, but not unwelcome - so Jenny leaned over too, rubbing her jaw along the top of Audrey’s head.

“I’m sorry. They always seem to be worse when Zach and I are both here, don’t they?”

Her crow cousin had been spending less and less time with the group as his training for the Wyvern Guard took up more and more of his time. Jenny also thought that maybe he didn’t want to subject everyone to the weird dreams the pair of them had shared since childhood. When they’d shared a nursery as children, Jenny would often crawl into bed with him, each taking turns soothing away the sweats and shouts of that awful dream. It was probably why they were both so comfortable sleeping in the serpiente style now, all curled up together and atop one another. She wished Zach would still allow himself the comfort of it now. But as he grew older he grew distant, shaping his softer nature into the hard, disciplined mein of the soldier he was trying to become. She wished he’d stayed an artist; it suited him better. But the Thornbrush’s had all been soldiers, and even though there was no war on, it was still an honorable profession to serve in the Wyvern’s Guard that kept peace in the city.

“Don’t worry about it, lalintoth. You know we’re always glad to have him. He so serious of late - is he alright, or just trying to look good in front of the princess?”

She wasn’t surprised the serpiente dancer had noticed the shadow of worry on Zach’s already grave demeanor. The avians of their group did their best to let their reserve - a habit of holding their auras close and shielded- drop around the auratically sensitive serpiente. It was considered just as rude in serpiente culture to hide your emotions as it was for avians to be overly demonstrative in public. Just one more drop in the sea of differences between them. Still, it wasn’t that hard to make concessions, if both sides were willing to actually talk about it. And the gains were more than worth it. Like Zach having a place he was actually allowed to wear his worries, even if he wasn’t ready to talk about them yet.

“It would mean a lot to him,” Jenny said slowly, “to be accepted.”

Her surface words meant “into the guard”. But unspoken was his desire to fit in. His foundling status was not one their avian nestmates had ever let him forget, though they’d never been coarse as to speak of it directly. No, they’d needled at him in the subtle, sideways way of the avian courtier; they always found ways to turn the talk to the long, proud, unbroken lines of their families, and how Silvermedes and Aniketos had always been guards and soldiers and of course they would be trying out for the honor guard which was of course really a step down from the Royal Flight but such was the price of peace, and so on.

It was small wonder the pair of them had sought out better friends.

The group had come together slowly, from Dee working with Zach to get his skills with the serpiente spears on par with his proficiency with the avian bowl. From Michael working with Tom to chart out the best goods to bring to the central market from their respective sides of the court to stock their little stall by the fountain. From Summer dragging Jenny down to see Audrey dance, the younger girl too shy to go watch dancers alone but loving the beautiful twirling colors of their melos. From Jenny baking each of them a special cheres cake for their birthdays, because these people were important to her, and she liked the excuse to bake. Each unique person made up a sparkling facet of the jewel that was Wyvern’s Court. She loved their little group more than anything else in the world, and was grateful they’d been born in a time where they could be friends instead of enemies.

“He’ll be fine,” Audrey said, pushing away from Jenny with a stretch. “Dee won’t let him rest until he’s in. That is, if she ever wakes up from her eternal nap.”

The way Audrey pitched her voice made it clear she knew Dee was awake, and so their ceaseless teasing fight could resume. Michael had informed Jenny that this type of flirting was common between the dancers and the guards, the friendly rivalry left over from a time when each vied for importance in the eyes of the royal cobras. Now, with both the royal hawk and the captain of her guard taking lessons from dance master Aisha, and the war between their two peoples finally over, the dancers were enjoying basking in their superiority. That didn’t keep Dee from carrying on like she was Anhamirak’s gift to the world, however. And watching both women move, Jenny had to admit choosing between them seemed an impossible task.

So she didn’t. That was the point of Wyvern’s Court, wasn’t it? To have both and have more than the sum of its part in the sharing.

“It’s my day off,” Dee groused, but she did come over to sit with the pair of them, dangling her long, dark legs right over the cliff’s edge. Jenny wasn’t bothered by heights - why would she be, when all she had to do was think it and her gentle sparrow’s wings would carry her to safety?- but Dee seemed to flaunt anything that others might consider a source of fear. Like she could cow fear itself into backing down from her. Jenny admired her indomitable spirit in the same way she admired Audrey’s grace, as pieces of beauty she wanted to take into herself. She didn’t understand Beauty as Divine in the same way the serpiente who had grown up with Anhamirak did, but she liked the idea of it, and liked the idea that enjoying things that pleased her could be an act of honoring the gods.

Tom thought her devotion to a goddess she’d never grown up with was silly, but he was more than happy to capitalize on the serpiente desire for beauty. He and Michael poured over the jewelry he brought down from Hawk’s Keep when they came to visit, like he had today. Jenny didn’t mind so much having an alastair that lived so far away, and if Tom cared that she lived in Wyvern’s Court instead of the “safety” of Hawk’s Keep, he never commented on it. She liked that he wasn’t a hoverhawk of an alastair, even if he didn’t quite understand her fascination with the serpiente she shared her city with. He did his best to understand them, and appreciated her friends because they looked out for her, and planned to be courteous when he moved to the Court in a few years when he’d finished out his apprenticeship with the Aureate jewelers.

Everything would change then. They all knew it, and none talked about it. By then, Zach would be in the Guard with Dee, Tom would be in the Market with Michael, and Jenny would be at home, raising their little ones. She would probably still see a lot of Summer, who lived next door and would have little ones of her own. But these lazy afternoons of sunny naps on the cliffs would be gone.

That was alright. That was growing up. She didn’t mind it, not exactly. It just made her savor days like this while she had them. Will might pull Fate a little, but not fast enough to change the life Jenny had laid out before her.

And what would she do different, anyways? It’s not like she had any big dreams of becoming a dance master like Audrey, or a caravan head like Tom. Her biggest dream was to watch Wyvern’s Court grow, to see it sprawl and overflow the valley it had started in. And to make her friends birthday cheres cakes every year.

Chapter Text

Jenny didn’t know which was currently hotter, the oven or her temper. The midsummer sun made both nearly unbearable, but she could abide the one as a source of sweet treats and nourishing bread. The latter was intolerable, and had yet to lead to anything productive.

“The Namir-da is less than a week away!”

Her mother kept calming shaping Festival cakes, an avian holiday that was also less than a week away. The market square was adorned with banners for both holidays, each side of Wyvern’s Court trying to outdo the other – and possibly fill the square with so much décor that avian eyes would be shielded from serpiente displays. It was the most tense time of year, as the heat and cultural pressures put everyone on edge.

“I already told you you’re more than welcome to go watch your friends dance after the First Choir sings,” her mother said calmly. Too calmly. She usually wore her emotions more casually, saving her avian reserve for visits back home to her family still living at the Keep.

“I want to dance with them,” Jenny insisted, gritted teeth the only concession to any sense of decorum. “Even Summer is going to dance – Summer!” Though admittedly, Summer was only going to be dancing in the public ring that opened the ceremony. What Jenny wanted was a bit more risque.

But was it, though? Tom had been her alistair since they were six – a ripe old edge for an avian baby, but her parents were fairly liberal, for avians. Not liberal enough to allow their daughter to go walking alone with her intended, however. And certainly not liberal enough to allow her to dance for him.

The Namir-da was a lot, that was fair. It’s ripples and thrusts shaped clearly the act it was meant to commemorate. But Jenny loved the way she felt during practice, skin flushed and prickling from the heat of the dancers’ rsh, body loose and languid from moving in ways it never did outside the nest. When she danced, she could almost understand what her serpiente friends meant by aura, that extra sense that revealed to them the emotions of those around them. When she danced, she felt connected to the group, connected to the earth, connected to herself.

She wanted to feel connected to Tom.

His apprenticeship was coming to an end, and soon they would be wed. Jenny had long since learned from her serpiente friends what came next, but her mother had yet to say. How long would she wait before filling Jenny in on the expectations of a newly married pairbond? Would their parents really just turn them loose and hope they figured it out?

Was that how it was done at the Keep?

Jenny would be terrified to go into marriage without the frank but giggling conversations she’d shared with Dee and Audrey. Her serpiente friends had frankly been shocked that she and her alistair had only ever kissed—just as her avian friends had been scandalized to learn that they had done so much. To Jenny, Tom’s blend of polite daring was one of the many things she loved about him. It frustrated her that she wasn’t allowed to do the same.

“I want Tom to see how hard I’ve worked while he’s been at the Keep doing the same,” Jenny pleaded.

Finally, he mother looked up.

“You think your alistair would be proud to see his pairbond put herself on display for the whole world to see?”

Jenny had to swallow hard before she could speak, choking on her surprise at the chilliness in her mother’s voice.

“It’s a form of art…”

The passion had gone from Jenny’s speech, determination faltering under her mother’s stern disapproval. She’d thought her parents were better than this, understood what it meant to live in Wyvern’s Court. When the serpents danced to avian accompaniment, the stones themselves seemed to shiver and sing with them. It was the most beautiful thing Jenny had ever seen. She was proud to be a part of it. She’d thought her parents had been proud, too.

“You can appreciate serpiente art without needing to imitate it.”

Ice filled Jenny’s gut. She didn’t imitate the dancers, she was one. Granted, she wasn’t as skilled as Audrey—how could she be, when she’d only been practicing a fraction of the time? But the nest let her dance with them, and Aisha painted the wyvern’s wings around Jenny’s eyes just the same as she did anyone else in the nest. She had earned the right to do this; she had spent countless hours memorizing the complicated steps and willing her body to twist into new shapes and forms. She didn’t imitate the dancers, she danced.

And she was going to dance for her mate.

“If you don’t like it, you don’t have to come.”

Jenny held her head high, stretched her spine long and straight like she did when she moved through the dancers’ prayer before practice. Reach for the sky, reach for the earth. Fill your entire self.

“If you think your alistair wants to see his pairbond degra--”

“He does!” Jenny cut her mother off quickly, not wanting tot hear what she thought of her daughter’s dancing. “He is going to come watch me dance, and we are going to exchange our vows at Festival, and then you never have to worry your feathers about what your shameful daughter is doing because I won’t be your problem anymore! I’ll be his!”

She fled the house before her mother could answer, racing through the skies. She wanted to be well away from Wyvern’s Court to do her crying, where none of her friends could hear or sense it.

Chapter Text

It was nearly high summer, but that didn’t stop the cliffs from being cold at night.

Jenny curled her knees to her chest, demi-wings folded tight around her arms like a second embrace. She was cold, miserable, and empty, her chest hollowed out like a stupid Festival bun. No amount of fluffy, sugary dreams would fill her up. She was stupid for thinking she could dance, stupid for thinking Tom would want to see-- No. She’d chased these thoughts around in circles for hours. She’d had a fight with her mother, not with her alistair. Tom would come to court for the holiday, they would talk, and if he truly didn’t wish her to dance—well, then she’d just dance for him in private. It would be fine. A part of her would be heartbroken if he told her no, but, well, he was her alistair. It was his duty to protect her. It was her duty to make that job easier by not courting trouble.

Which was why she was on the cliffsides, in the middle of the night, fair away from the warm, winking lights of the town below.

She should go home. Her mother would be asleep by now—assuming she wasn’t sitting up, waiting for her wayward daughter to come home. Ugh. Just a few more minutes, just to be sure.

Her limbs ached from the cold and from the prolonged sitting. Jenny was never still, couldn’t sit for hours in quiet meditation like Audrey, or pour over the same book like Michael or pleasantly sit and embroider like Summer. No, in this she was like Dee, always moving, always looking forward to the next thing. She stood, arching her back as she slowly found her center of balance, muscles shifting minutely til felt that perfect balance. She stretched her limbs in the long, graceful arcs of a dancer’s warm up, the rose to the balls of her feet, reaching high, pressing low. Connected in a strong, centered line.

She began to dance.

She wanted to dance for Tom, but only because she wanted to share this thing that moved her so with him. She wanted everyone she loved to feel how wonderful dancing made her feel. But just because they weren’t ready to share it with her didn’t mean it was spoiled. Jenny could dance for just herself, so she did.

She started small, with the simple, gentle steps of the dance to greet the dawn. For serpiente, the dance reminded their sluggish blood to pump, enticed the heat of the rising sun to come down and fill them. For Jenny, whose avian blood ran hotter than her scaled counterparts, the dance reminded her own heart to beat, proud and fierce, and soon any lingering tingles from her stillness were chased away. She was her own sun, and as she moved from one step to the next, she threw in a little trill of a song, just a few quick notes, to really stretch her lungs and make them work.

Her arms shaped nameless arcs, bits and pieces of things she’d worked on but never mastered. Audrey could tell her all their names, the symbols they represented, but Audrey wasn’t here. It was just Jenny and the music made by her pounding feet, her lilting voice, and the gentle rushing of the night wind. She closed her eyes and imagined that rustling to be the roar of a crowd, cheering and eager for her to perform.

And perform she did.

She only knew two dances from start to finish. The dancer’s warm up, and the Namir-da.

Her body slid easily into the low position, a slow, sinuous roll. She started on her knees, an ancient priestess pleading with an immortal power to bless her people with magic. She imagined Tom’s eyes, gaze going slightly soft as he beheld his pairbond, saw her in this new way, understood what she was ready to give to him, to share with him. The priestess danced with power, spinning charms to entice her immortal partner, to bewitch and beguile him. Jenny danced with abandon, letting herself feel and be everything she was all at once, instead of portioning herself out piecemeal, holding back parts of herself that weren’t appropriate to the task at hand. The Namir-da was about power, desire. But it was also about putting your whole self out there, using it as bait and promise alike. Here I am, this is me, come and get it.

The full dance required a partner, someone to hold her as she dipped and bent backward, exposing herself. Dee had always been more than happy to dance with Jenny, making suggestive comments and lewd jokes that always sent Jenny spilling to the cushioned floor of the dancers’ nest in fits of laughter. Now, Jenny used her wings, improvising in a way a serpent would never think to teach her, balancing and lifting herself with that second set of limbs that gave her freedom in the skies. It wasn’t perfect, but it was hers, and she loved it. Even if Tom might never have any interest in dancing with her, she could dance with herself, give herself this gift, and revel in the power of it.

“Come to me, O mighty spirit,” she sang, improvising words where a serpiente flute lilted. “Come, behold she who might be your queen, if you can tame her. I have the gift of wings, the kiss of the sky and the embrace of the wind. What more can you give me that I cannot already claim for myself?”

“I can give you your dreams.”

Jenny faltered, dropping back into the kneeling position that the dancers took when someone else had a solo. Her wings curled around herself protectively, but she lowered them so that she might look around.

“Who’s there?”

No answer but the wind.

She should go home. She should sift and fly down to the waiting lights of the houses below. She should do as all passerines did and flee, using her true gifts of smallness and swiftness. She was no mighty priestess. She was a sparrow, a single sparrow without a flock to hide in, utterly alone.

Alone.

There was no one here. There was no more answer from the whispering wind. She had gotten herself all worked up and started imagining things. Her grandfather used to craft small illusions when he sang, ghostly images, faint impressions of sensation, the leftover bits of avian magic. In the nest, dancers sometimes called bits of the power their dances shaped, discovering more and more all the time as scholars worked together to piece back bits of their shared history with the avians. Maybe… maybe Jenny had finally gotten good enough to work a bit of magic like that herself.

She needed to go back to the nest. She needed to ask for help.

She needed her friends.

Jenny threw herself backwards, shifting shape as her body found the open air. That moment of freefall was exhilarating and terrifying. Hopefully she could blame her pounding heart and racing aura on that when she sought out her serpiente friends.

Chapter Text

The nest never slept, though it had its ebbs and flows. In the middle of the night, folks still danced and told stories, but they were most certainly of the sort an avian lady shouldn’t see. They also did …other things that an avian lady shouldn’t see. But at least they did that mostly in small groups, mostly in private rooms. Still, Jenny took a side door, entering the nest not through the main floor but the kitchen, also warm and bright at all hours. Serpents loved rich foods, heavy on meat that need to roast low and slow for hours to perfect. That meant hours of someone constantly checking and adjusting, and that meant a kitchen that never slept.

That also meant that someone was up who could fix Jenny a hot drink to help her chase away the last of the chills. A lovely python woman-- Vini? Viri?--settled her by the fire and wrapped Jenny in her shawl. She didn’t need it, but she appreciated the comfort of it, thick with the familiar scents of spices and musk. It wasn’t the yeast and downy smell of home, but it was a different kind of familiar. Something that was still Jenny’s, but more grown up.

The python left to fetch Audrey, who brought a sleepy Michael in tow. Audrey looked as elegant and put together as ever, but one look at sleep-rumpled Michael and it was clear that Jenny wasn’t interrupting anything intimate. Not that sleeping next to each other didn’t feel incredibly intimate to Jenny. Not the big puppy pile of the hill, but alone in the dark with just her alistair…

Jenny shook herself, resettling the feathers at the nape of her neck. She’d taken her wings down before entering the nest, not because she felt she ought to, but because the kitchen was close and tight. No room for extra feathers. She pulled the borrowed shawl closer, mimicking the comfort of her wings.

Audrey knelt before her. “ Lalintoth , what’s wrong?”

Michael grabbed some sweetbreads and a pot of honey butter and sat beside Jenny, offering her the support of his bulkier frame. He smeared her a generous dollop of honey butter and held it between Jenny and Audrey.

“What butter and spirits cannot cure there is no cure for,” he said sagely.

Audrey chuckled and took the bun from him. “She’s drinking tea, not spirits.”

“I bet I could talk Viti into giving us some,” he teased back.

“Ugh, no spirits,” Jenny said, taking the half of bun Audrey offered her. “I’m already doubting my senses as is.”

Audrey glanced around the room. The handful of people were mostly engaged with their own tasks, but dancers loved gossip. Matrons loved gossip, too, and at least three people in here were both. Jenny followed her friend’s logic.

“Michael, do you still have that book Tom lent you?” Jenny asked.

His gaze flicked to Audrey, who gave him the barest nod.

“Uh, yeah. It’s back at our stall.”

Jenny took the shawl from around her shoulders. “It’s a nice night for walking. Escort me?”

Michael gave her a grin, equal parts kind and mischievous. “On Tom’s honor - he’d destroy me in a duel, unless I can talk him into pastry eating at dawn.”

Jenny laughed, cheered by his joking. “He’s got a worse sweet tooth than you.”

“And a mate who will keep him well supplied in delicious delights. Come, let’s walk.”

Viti reclaimed the shawl, but let Michael keep the buns. With her friends close, Jenny went back into the night, settled and more secure.

-

“Jenny! There you are!”

Summer - with Zach and Dee in tow- latched onto Jenny’s arm from the shadows. The northern hills were never dark, but the other half of her friend group had been posted up in the dimness between houses, clearly worried.

Summer wrapped her in a hug, more for her own comfort than Jenny’s. “Oh, I heard the fight, it was awful! I came over to cheer you up, but you were already gone…”

In that way, Summer was an awful avian lady. She wore her every emotion on her sleeve, and was always there to comfort Jenny or Zach whenever either of them would admit to having troubles. She didn’t ignore or talk around delicate subjects like she was “supposed to”. Jenny hugged her back, glad for the support.

She looked a question over Summer’s head at Zach and Dee. Dee shrugged.

“Summer came to find me when she couldn’t find you,” Zach said.

“And I came along in case you were somewhere feathers feared to tread,” Dee added, needling Audrey with an eyebrow waggle.

“Not all feathers,” Audrey hissed back, stepping closer to Jenny and Summer. “Anyways, Jenny came to the nest looking pale as death--”

“--that’s rich coming from you, my alabaster queen,” Dee chuckled.

Audrey ignored her. “--and was going to tell us why, once we got to somewhere more private.”

Dee nodded. “Only gossips worse than merchants are dancers.”

“Because guards call it “gathering intelligence”,” Michael said with heavy sarcasm.

Dee’s grin flashed in the torch light. “Exactly. So let’s go gather our intelligences.”

She offered Jenny an arm, but Summer was so shaken that she didn’t let go, so Dee offered it to Zach instead. Zach rolled his eyes and took up one of the torches, leading the way to Michael and Tom’s market stall.

-

The space was small and cramped with all six of them in it, but it had a small fire grate, and privacy. They had used it as a gathering space ever since Tom’s father had gifted it to him for his birthday last Spring, an investment in his middle son’s future. It felt strange being here without him, but he would be in town for Festival soon enough. Still, Jenny wished dearly that he was here now to hold her, to wrap his wings around hers as she tried to shake the lingering cold of the cliffs. Zach at her back and Summer at her front was the next best thing.

Dee crouched over the fire grate, willing her magic to spark. Audrey corrected her hand shape and pronunciation, which Dee ignored, finally giving up and getting out her flint. Michael dug through the small storage closet in the back, usually kept locked, trying to find the book Jenny had mentioned. She hadn’t really needed it; it had been a ruse to get out of the nest. But once Michael was on the scent of a book, there was no stopping him. It was one less pair of expectant eyes on her, anyways. Now that she was surrounded by her friends and safe, embarrassment was starting to color over the fear.

“You said you were doubting your senses,” Audrey prompted.

Jenny sighed. “I probably just scared myself. I went out for a flight to cool my head, then sat up on the cliffs to avoid my mother.”

Zach’s arms tensed around her, an unspoken reprimand. It wasn’t safe to be out alone at night, she knew that, he didn’t have to say it. As children, they’d roamed all over those cliffs, in pairs and groups. She felt safe there, even as the matrons cautioned unmarried folks from going anywhere without an escort. If only they knew the sort of trouble one could get up to with an escort with an eye for mischief. Her eyes flicked to Dee then away, heat coloring her cheeks.

“Anyway, I was cold and stiff, so I decided to do some warm ups, and I was singing because it always feels so awkward to dance without music, and… I thought I heard someone.”

Her skin broke out in gooseflesh, and Zach rubbed at her arms to chase it away.

Audrey’s gaze narrowed on her. “What were you singing?”

“I dunno,” Jenny mumbled, suddenly wishing she wasn’t sandwiched between her friends. “Just… words that went with the dance. I just sort of made it up as I went.”

Audrey looked like she was going to press further, but Dee cut in. “She only knows the one dance, Aud.”

Audrey blinked, then curled her lips in over her teeth as understanding dawned.

“Jenny….”

Jenny buried her face in the back of Summer’s hair, cheeks flaming. The warm scent of feathers did nothing to soothe her embarrassment.

Michael came out of the back, leafing through a tome. “Which names did you use?”

Jenny peered from above Summer’s head, eyes wide and owlish.

Michael seemed oblivious to her discomfort. “You were dancing the Namir-da, right? Which version? Were you Kiesha dancing for Maeve or Maeve dancing for Leben?”

Audrey hissed. “Michael! Don’t invoke their names like that!”

Michael blinked at her. “Why not? They’re only fairy tales.”

“Don’t let the Diente hear you say that,” Dee scoffed. “The whole royal family swears up and down they’re bloodkin with the original cobra herself.”

Michael rolled his eyes. “Royalty always claims divinity. Doesn’t make it true. If we believed everything the legends said, it would make the Empress of the White Isle over a thousand years old--”

“Anyways,” Audrey cut in, with the firm sharpness of a dance instructor, “we don’t know what those old names might invoke. Charms and spells for small fires and little gusts of wind are one thing, but it’s best to let sleeping gods lie. Whether you believe in them or not,” she added, sensing Michael ready to argue behind her. “There’s just so much about the Dasi we don’t know. So much that’s been lost under the tides of blood…”

Michael put his book down and wrapped his arms around Audrey. Even Dee put their usual rivalry aside and bumped her head against Audrey’s shoulder. Jenny watched the knot of serpents over the small flame in the grate between them. Even now, they were lined up, birds across from snakes, as each group sought comfort amongst their own kind. Jenny loved her serpiente friends, loved the vibrant chaos of the mixed court. But when she was frightened, it was feathers that made her feel safest. She had gone to the dancers’ nest first because she knew Audrey would have the most knowledge about magic. If she hadn’t scared herself with her dancing, she’d have probably flown down to Zach’s window and climbed into bed with him. Maybe she should have done that anyways. It seemed like all she’d done was frighten Audrey for no reason.

“Don’t worry about it, Audrey,” she said, forcing a smile. “I won’t sing any more when I dance.”

“And you won’t go anywhere alone at night,” Zach rumbled behind her.

“And Tom will be here soon,” Summer said brightly, trying to lift the mood. “Your alistair will take good care of you.”

And she would take good care of him, by not courting any more trouble, Jenny thought. Maybe this time, her promise to herself would actually stick.