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Below me, the sea roars, slaps against the sides of the cliff. Saltwater sprays the soles of my shoes. Flapping – a seagull lands on the shelf next to me. It puffs its feathers like a boa. I stare, and it probably senses my gaze, because it stops preening. My murky yellow eyes meet its beady black ones. The familiar connection gropes at the edge of my consciousness, and I grasp ahold of it. The bird squawks. I know these animals, can feel what they feel, but I never know how they’ll respond to what I do: so, curiosity drives me to mimic its cry.
My voice comes out hoarse from disuse, a toad’s croak.
I might have said something it doesn’t like, because it puffs its feathers even more indignantly and takes off. I kick my legs too, and as my heels hit the rock, I imagine springing from the shelf and diving, but never falling. Skimming right along the ocean’s surface like a flat stone, letting my wings slice through as I turn from side to side. I’ve observed enough of others’ movements to know how. If only I could just…
Suddenly, a flutter of black – a tall figure plops down next to me. It’s my brother.
He tucks his wings in. They’re big, the biggest of his cohort, and raven-dark and sleek as silk; his primaries shimmer in the sunlight as he moves – they’re really green, but they look black. I feel a stab of admiration. He’s a good flyer, and a good fighter, a good thinker. It feels silly for me to be proud of him, because, well, he’s Lloyd, and I’m just a fledgeling, albeit late, but I am, all the same.
“Dreaming again?” Lloyd says, reaching down and ruffling my hair – it’s uncomfortably short, not yet braided, not yet a curtain I can hide behind. It makes me look like a boy.
I try not to feel stung by his words. Dreaming. Even he believes I will never fly.
“I’m wondering,” I say instead. “What it’s like to fly. What is it like, Lloyd?”
“Constant movement," he answers immediately. "Like your heart and body are on the edge of an abyss. Or running on a tightrope. You can’t slow down or you’ll fall.” He mimics the movement with his hands. He loves doing that. Flitting gestures with his hands. I like it, too – it makes his stories more mesmerising. I close my eyes, try to imagine what he was describing. Comparing it against my own imagination. “Or drift, I suppose. But that’s letting gravity control you. And in the sky, you must seize control. That’s how we fought the dragons. We stole their domain right out of the sky.”
“I know, brother,” I say quickly, sensing he’s about to go on one of his tangents. I don’t mind usually, but I already know this. It’s in all the history books. And since there are a lot of classes in which I can only watch… well, I am quite familiar with the history books.
“What were you doing just now?” I change the subject, opening my eyes to the stark grey sky, the churning ivory foam, the salty taste of the sea.
“Oh, you know. The usual matters.” His eyes roll in mock ennui. I smile, though I’m not sure if I really mean it. “I had tea with Mother, then popped down to the boring realm – sorry, I mean the mortal realm – and stopped this cult leader, collected some offerings…” he trails off, becoming thoughtful, “honestly, I think Her Divinity is finally taking my suggestions seriously. I never really liked dealing with catastrophic events. I’d much rather do a small mission like today. Humans are much more interesting than an erupting volcano or some evil overlord.”
“Mm,” I respond. I never really understood his… strange way of thinking – I’d give up my left eye for a chance to even attempt a major mission when I’m of age – but Lloyd’s right about most things, so I believe what he says.
He’s also an empath, so he must sense my dimming mood from his earlier words, and he interjects hastily. “No, no, don’t feel bad about that, Eurus. You know… I have the perfect story for you. Just perfect.”
“No, you’re right,” I say, and curse me, my misery bleeds through. My voice comes out small. “I should stop dreaming. I’m a curse. I could hurt people even if I was able to fly. I don’t know, knock them out of the sky or something. Maybe you’ve enlightened me today.”
His eyes twinkle. I stop, hold my breath. Waiting for the magic to happen. “You didn’t let me finish. It’s perfect, because… this one is real.
“Do you know that the mortal realm—” As fast as I had drawn breath, my heart deflates, “has wingless birds?” and inflates again. He bears a grin, knowing he’s caught my attention. “They have a great many birds, a much wider variety than here. Big ones, small ones… flightless ones. So many that I believe I have not seen every species of them. But the ones I have seen—” suddenly he crouches, shrinks into himelf—“the kiwi.” Then he ruffles his feathers without fanning his wings, flicking his head in an exuberant fashion; it draws a giggle from me. “The peacock.” And then. And then he positions himself on the edge of the cliff, draws himself up to his impressive height, spreads his wings so that they angle steeply backwards. “Ostriches.”
He makes a clicking, twittering sound from the back of his throat, unnervingly bird-like. I sometimes forget we have that particular set of vocal cords as we only really need them for Tournaments – peculiarly, I don’t know why we still have them, since history books have no record of battles spanning the last thousand years.
“Ostriches can run really fast,” my brother adds. “Probably as fast as one of us can fly.”
I frown, thinking of my weak knees, my fragile bones too light even for flight. “I can’t. Be either.”
“You don’t need to be. Birds are all predators, you know, even our less evolved ancestors. And the smallest ones – like you, Fluff – are the fiercest. A kiwi can scratch both your eyes out if you so much as look at them the wrong way. That’s because they must compensate for their lack of flight. They’re all have their own quirks and characteristics.” He spreads his arms, and his wings with them. They blot out the Sun with their inky darkness. “Birds have endured for so long – through floods, earthquakes, eruptions, predators. Through mass extinctions. They’re incredible. We’re incredible. We have the blessing of the Sun, of course, and it is only through Her benevolence that we can reign the skies, but – evolution, Eurus, that is the key to survival. And you know the ones evolution was the hardest on? Birds like you. Small, fragile, flightless. So, they evolved in other ways. They survived.”
Suddenly he grabs my wings through the binder. My gut curls as he starts to unravel the dressings of one of them. I don’t dare to thrash, but force myself out of his grip. “What are you doing?”
“Trust me.” I settle disconcertingly, allowing him to unbind it. Cold air stings my skin, and salt with it, through some of the still-open wounds. He gently unfurls the tension I haven’t realised they’d been holding; but heat rises through me as my shame unfolds.
Pink, wrinkly skin, like a molerat’s, but dry and rough to touch. Pink, wrinkly skin, like a molerat’s, but dry and rough to touch. Pockmarked with the little pinpricks I embedded yesterday, enough to hurt but subtle enough to avoid questions. That didn’t fix the disgusting rolled-up folds of fat and featherlessness. Save for a few patches of down that my peers missed – dull, beautiful, feminine plumage that I so envied in its natural form; the result of what looked like a botched dye attempt. That’s what I would tell Mother when – if – she asked, anyway. Though I felt an itch whenever I thought about this, like I had just stolen someone’s nest trinket. She has been nothing but good to me, so it is only right she expects nothing but good from me, in turn.
But that was not the excuse I had used on my brother.
“Look what they did to you. You’re a survivor.” He looks at me softly, pityingly. I love him but moments like these make me want to tear my wings off because they are so wrong, even when they are dulled like this. “Evolution – you’ll go through it someday.”