Skylight Stories Kawena

Volume 1: Child of the SkyEarly Text

Skylight Stories: Kawena is my current Illustrated Fantasy Novel Series and the basis for my Master’s Thesis. Featuring elements of classic Western Literature and a flare for nature (particularly Wisconsin topography and birds) and animism, Skylight Stories Kawena is a literary New Adult coming-of-age story.

Melding Romantic writing styles with those of traditional myths and legends, the story focuses on creating an easy-to-digest yet immersive and cinematic experience where readers experience characters’ emotional highs and lows in their many forms, and feel the impacts of sacrifices and decisions both great and small.

With many concepts taken from the Hero’s Tale or Monomyth, this character-focused story is set in a world high in the sky, and presents unique challenges most typical fantasies either gloss over or ignore. The basic concept is simple: find individual meaning and survive in a world where every path seems to end in destruction.

I promise to stay…

…only if you promise to return

It’s difficult being small…

In such a large world

Art by SUOMAR

Teacher once told me, “There’s no difference between water and air.”

Just like then, I have always found his words to be true.

Whether it’s weightless wind threading my wings or water cupped in my webbed fingers as I propel through that dense world… in both water and air I always feel at home, and hardly recognize the moment when I traverse that line.

In the glittering slate-gray lake beneath me dozens of fish swished their tails back and forth in unhurried rhythm. They swam unaware of me hovering not too far above them in flows of wind so persistent I needed to only shift a single feather to hold myself steady in flight.

My pale grey reflection, covered almost entirely in the skins and scales of the very same sort of fish swimming the pocket of water below, was pierced only by a pair of vibrant golden eyes staring back at me as though I too were a fish being hunted. Instead of a tail or fins though, a long braid of silverblue hair lashed the air and occasionally struck the backs of my knees while my still wings blended almost seamlessly with the frothy white clouds and blue sky above.

Even if the fish had bothered to look up, they would have thought of it little more than they would when seeing another of their kind.

My reflection, hovering atop the lake’s calm surface, was accompanied by another far more conspicuous one nearby.

Although I’d once ridden his back when I was a nestling, nowadays Rüppell’s body and wingspan were barely half of mine. While I’d grown quicker and stronger with age, Rüppell seemed to do the opposite; while he could fly higher than anyone else in the grotto, the dwindling numbers of terrestrial animals made it difficult for him lately finding enough carrion to sustain himself. We’d only hunted together a few times now, but our arrangement—him watching and selecting the perfect prey, and my catching it—was finally becoming second nature to the both of us.

Once, twice, three times Rüppell traced a circle in the air. It was Rüppell’s signal he’d made his selection.

I looked up at Rüppell and gestured toward the fish to confirm.

Rüppell’s healthy caw bounced off the mottled black and gray float stones of the grotto. Mist and dew continually formed on the cool rock faces to collect in this healthy lake fed by web-thin streams rich in minerals, moss, and algae that fed the fatty fish sucking the water’s surface. Unlike regular rocks which would plummet out of existence into the raging storm clouds below, float stones lumbered like giant boulders, drifting apart and clustering at random within the confines of the grotto.

Rüppell stiffened his wings in the soaring updraft and went high as I rode the air into position over the fish.

The fish Rüppell chose was undoubtedly the largest. Watching it was like watching a single gray boulder among many smaller pebbles and rocks that all refused to sink to the bottom of the lake. The fish’s pulsing, membranous tail propelled it forward through its watery world as other, smaller fish swished violently to get out of the way of its gaping maw that could no longer be satisfied by the generous, food-rich streams.

I watched this behemoth of a fish terrorize its smaller kin as I waited for the right moment to strike.

Eventually it came upon one small fish that wasn’t fast enough, or that didn’t notice while it focused on its own ravenous feeding as it too strove to get bigger than all the rest. The larger fish opened its mouth, and in a single beat of its tail overcame and swallowed the smaller fish.

The big fish stopped in the water, satisfied at the feeling of prey thrashing in its mouth and throat on the way down to its belly.

Tucking my wings at my back, I angled myself toward the water and dove.

My oily wings passed without note from cool air into icy water. A wake of air bubbles were sucked beneath the surface of the lake and trailed me as I slid through the water until I overcame the fish from below. The fish noticed the cloud of bubbles rising up around it, but before it could regain its balance I notched a hooked piece of fish bone into its mouth and pulled, lodging the bone into the fish’s flesh.

The fish’s giant tail and fins beat the air-soaked water, but its efforts only further entrenched it in the bubbles that choked its breath and movements. Though the fish pulled with all its strength, its struggling only served to drive the hook deeper. There was no escape.

My webbed toes and hands cupped pure water, then gray pebbles and sand as I hefted the giant fish to shore.

Rüppell circled down as I hauled the fish from the water. Rüppell landed on a ridge behind me and craned his head to watch as the fish emerged from the shallows and exhaled its last full liquid breath.

Rüppell hunched his head between his bent wings and watched me muscle the fish further onto shore. My feet emerged from the soft sand collected beneath the waves and padded onto the hard grey face of the float stone. The blue-grey color of my skin shimmered glossy and wet against the dark color of the stone that only became darker in the wet footprints I left behind. The area closest to the pool had been washed smooth by the variably high water and coarse grinding of the sand over time, but as I got further up the stone became darker and more treacherous with sharp ridges and a near-vertical path on the way to the small plateau where Rüppell waited. As I got closer to the plateau it looked like a boulder-sized chunk had been broken off sometime in the past, leaving it less of a smooth plateau and more of a ragged, though still maneuverable surface.

The fish’s weight more than doubled once it was clear of the small lake. Its sides heaved in and out as the fish lost its cylindrical shape without support from the water. I climbed the short ridge between path and plateau in a single big step and held the fish up before Rüppell. He responded with a pitching whistle and flap of his wings.

“Nice choice, Rüppell,” I said as I hefted the fish by the red-stained hook protruding from its gasping mouth.

Rüppell danced around with his wings half-opened, whistling and cheering not much unlike Teacher did when I caught my first small fry. I shook my head at his childish display of delight, but couldn’t keep myself from grinning. While I didn’t have a difficult time hunting on my own, teaming up led to even greater results worthy of a little excitement and was made all the better by being a shared success with a friend.

The fish trembled as opaqueness began to enter its eyes. I knelt on the craggy ground, ignoring the pain of the hard rock lancing me through my fishskin clothes as I spread my wings and prostrated myself before the fish. The few remaining droplets of water rolled off my wingtips and oiled clothes, leaving me warm and dry. I held my hands out to the sun and recited the words of thanks Teacher taught me when I was young.

“May this flesh of your flesh, Cressa, join with this flesh of Nassima’s, and reunite the two brothers in one breath and blood.”

The sun blazing high above, I grasped the bone hook and raised the fish off the ground. With the extra weight in tow I waited for an updraft to form on the rocks, jumped into it with wings outspread, and headed for home.

My feet touched down heavy with the extra weight of the fish in tow. I set it flat on the ground as Rüppell landed not far from me. He hopped over and eyed the fish as he awaited what was to come. I glared at Rüppell and shook my head.

“I don’t want a repeat of last time,” I reminded him.

Rüppell looked up at me and balked his wings and neck as if trying to say he had no idea what I was talking about. He looked around pretending he no longer had any interest in the fish. However, I saw his eyes fix back onto the fish the moment he thought I wasn’t looking.

“I’m back, Teacher!” I called. I walked over to a stone painted white with more layers of fine, downy ash and bone powder than I could recall. Although it still wasn’t quite right, the color was finally starting to match the pure white Teacher’s feathers and hair had been.

“Thanks for watching over everything while I was gone,” I said as I stripped down out of my fishskin clothes and exchanged them for the clothes laying folded beside the stone that were made of warm, rabbit’s fur-lined buckskin. I bowed deeply in the direction of the stone.

I couldn’t remember exactly what Teacher looked like, but here, in the last place I’d seen him, was where I remembered him best. I could almost hear him say the same thing he always did when I came back from a hunt, the words that always waited for me regardless of whether I’d been successful or not:

“Welcome back, So-Rin.”

After properly greeting Teacher and receiving his welcome, I took up the pair of knives—a thin filleting knife and a thicker hunting knife—I’d left beside the white stone with my clothes before heading out.

I turned back toward Rüppell and the fish and pretended not to see Rüppell jolt away in an attempt to convince me he hadn’t been gazing at the fish like a starved fledgling. I stuck the point of the thicker knife into a crack in the rock and wheedled the blade underneath the inch-thick plate of stone. The stone made a low, grinding sound as I pulled it back to reveal a bed of hot red stones collected from the fire veins that ran through many of the float stones. I used the two knives together to remove a dark stone from their midst. It was a fire stone that’d lost its heat, leaving the pile smaller and cooler than before as Teacher’s collection of stones slowly dwindled down to a fraction of their prior number and barely filled the pit to the halfway point. How to find and collect strong fire stones was one of few things Teacher never taught me how to do. It was the number one thing I wanted to ask him when I saw him next.

Heat billowed from the pocket of red and grew strong enough to toss up flames into the wavering air. I heaved the fish over by its tail, brandished the long, scale-thin filleting knife, and began cutting.

Under the fin, around the head, along the backbone and underbelly…. On the way back to where I started I nicked the guts, which excited Rüppell as they started oozing out onto the black stone.

It took only a couple minutes more to muscle the fillet loose, divide it into smaller portions, and skewer them. Only one thing still needed to be done before I would start cooking.

Setting the larger knife beneath the fin, I pressed down until I hit resistance. Once the blade seemed unable to go any further, I forced it down with all by weight and heard one loud crack after another as the bones severed.

I removed the head, fins, and tail, and threw them into the blaze where they were instantly engulfed by flames. Rüppell started to let out a low-pitched disappointed caw, but stopped when I sent a glare in his direction. We watched together as the wet skin popped and sizzled as the water and oil burned away first. The eyes popped and oozed onto the hot rock, and the thin membranes of the fins and tail curled and shrunk before being reduced to ash that floated away on the hot thermals. Soon enough all that remained was bone which too eventually reduced to white powder before being lofted away on the wind.

This way, the fish would be able to swim the sky and carry messages between Nassima and Cressa.

With that final duty taken care of, the remainder would be the reward: a gift from Cressa to Nassima’s kin.

As the first strips of flesh broiled by the fire I pulled the guts from the fish and set to work on the other side, cutting it down and placing the pieces in a long, shallow divot in the rocks that was filled with salty brine in preparation for smoking. The moment I set the guts down Rüppell ripped through the soft outer membrane with his hooked beak to get at what was inside.

Once I was finished cutting, I made sure to wipe the blades clean before holstering them against my left thigh. Unlike Rüppell I had a soft-lipped mouth rather than a beak, and my fingernails always grew short. They were also soft and not good for much even if I did try to sharpen them into something more useful. Teacher used his long, blade-like fingernails as skillfully as any knife, and made me promise to carry at least one blade at all times to make up for what I apparently lacked. The only time I didn’t have a knife on me was when I went swimming to protect the animal skin hilt from cracking and crumbling.

As the flames and heat transformed the second batch of fish from tough and translucent to milky and soft, I took two of the cooked strips and returned to the white-painted stone. I leaned back against the rock and used it to support me as I stretched before settling down to eat and relax after such a good day’s hunt. I looked over the two pieces of fish and set the better piece aside as an offering to Teacher

“I did it just like you taught me, Teacher,” I said as I eyed the slightly charred white flesh of the fish. I used my short fingernails to pick off the hot bits of char until all that remained was the hot white fish.

I bit into the mellow, oily flesh and was greeted by a fresh taste thousands of times better than the dried fish from my previous catch I’d had just this morning. It’d been several weeks since my last fresh, warm meal. Although it was still a bit hot I couldn’t stop myself from gulping it down, my expression alternating between awkward pain and ravenous delight as the fresh catch made its way satisfyingly down to my stomach.

“I wonder how far the fish has gone,” I said after swallowing the last hot morsel. I crossed my arms behind my head and looked up into the blue sky. “Do you suppose it’s already carried its first message from Nassima to Cressa? Hopefully it’s a strong enough fish to make up for last time,” I said. I tried to glare at Rüppell, but I couldn’t help smiling at the sight of the old bird undulating his neck and stuffing his beak with raw entrails like a fledgling tasting his first meal away from the nest. I tossed the empty spit toward Rüppell but it just rolled off his quivering brown and white feathers without him breaking his stride.

“You should have seen it Teacher! Rüppell tried to act like he didn’t eat one of its eyes while I wasn’t looking,” I chided him as I threw my hands up, at a loss. “I explained to Rüppell it would be difficult for a one-eyed fish to find Cressa and Nassima, but I don’t think he really understands why he can’t eat the eyes of the fish we catch.”

The fire hissed and lurched in wild bursts as oil and fat from the strips of fish dripped into the flames.

“Don’t worry, Teacher, Rüppell may be sneaky but I won’t let him do that again,” I laughed. I spread my wings to catch the heat emanating from the warm fire pit.

Rüppell cawed and tossed aside a small fish he’d discovered inside the larger fish’s stomach.

I got up and walked over to pick up the small fish Rüppell had thrown aside.

An echoing peal filled the air. It was a cry I recognized just as well as I knew Rüppell’s. Rüppell’s fevered gulping stopped for a moment as he glanced over his shoulder. He bent down protectively over his meal and clattered his beak before he went right back to eating. I threw the small fish high…

… and a pair of sharp yellow talons nearly the size of my own hands grabbed the fish midair.

A dark bird even larger than Rüppell streaked the sky overhead. It cried out in long, piping notes even louder than before as it circled around and descended before eventually landing on top of the white stone.

“Enjoy, Ba’al!” I told him as he bent his white-plumed head down to his talons and shredded the fish with his hooked yellow beak. Blood spattered the white stone and colored it with pink and red splotches that would be difficult to cover over without adding several more layers, and would be nearly impossible to remove without a good amount of hard-armed labor. None of Ba’al’s feathers so much as ruffled during his meal, not even when he jumped from his perch and greedily pulled the cooked fish off the spit I’d set aside for Teacher.

“You know better than to eat Teacher’s share, Ba’al,” I said. I’d already long since given up on getting to choose another place to perch after he decided that Teacher’s white stone was the finest nearby—I had to agree with his reasoning as it was the very same as why I’d bothered moving it to begin with.

I rolled my eyes, but Ba’al ignored me. Instead he threw back his white-plumed head and swallowed the chunk of meat in two gulping bites. Once he was finished he spread his wings wide, showing off his dark underbelly and wings. Ba’al stared at me with his golden eyes, waiting.

“Teacher may be gracious, but if you think you’re going to beat me today you’re just being silly,” I said as I checked up on the second batch of fish to see if it’d finished cooking. Ba’al puffed out his dark brown chest and stared me down as I alternated between eating and setting aside fish for storage. Ba’al’s gold eyes beamed seriousness and pride as I laughed at his display.

I threw the remaining uncooked fish into the brine with the rest and would make jerky and smoked fish with it later. Such a large catch would be enough to last a couple weeks before running out and I would have to go fishing with Rüppell again. I turned to Ba’al and stretched my wings to their fullest in preparation. With my wings outspread I cast a shadow large enough that Rüppell and Ba’al together would be able to stand in it, wings outspread, without touching.

“To the Outer Rim and back. Think you’re up for it?” I pointed away from the setting sun and toward my favorite course, as was the right of the one to lose the previous day’s race. Unlike Ba’al’s favorite soar through the open sky, mine took us through a field of tight-packed float stones following a red-painted path painted by Teacher that varied as the float stones moved.

Ba’al flapped his wings, piping his agreement.

I placed my hand on the blood-speckled white stone. A long shadow cast by a distant float stone inched closer as the sun fell in the sky, but was still several feet behind me.

Ba’al glared at me, turned his beak into the wind, and took off high toward the Outer Rim.

Moments later I felt a cool shadow touching the back of my heel. I patted the white stone for luck as I remembered how Teacher would race anyone through any part of the Isla. No matter the challenge, not once did I ever see Teacher lose.

I thrust my feet and charged toward the edge of the float stone. The moment I spread my wings I felt myself lift even before I reached the edge.

“I’ll be back before you know it!” I called and waved behind me.

Rüppell didn’t even look up.

Without beating my wings I dove deep with the descending air, down where the smallest, slowest float stones rested for weeks at a time while hardly moving an inch. It was here that sunlight never reached and where the humid thermals were sapped of their strength by the cool black stone. Moisture froze to the white rabbit fur nestling my shoulders while my oil-coated wings remained dry and warm. I pulled the fur up over my mouth and nose to keep the damp cold out of my lungs.

Two red float stones hovered a few feet apart. I turned my wings vertical and slipped between the two, the first of many as I followed the path painted by one set of stones after another as they rose. Soon I felt the icy fur thawing and sunlight again warmed the backs of my wings.

The float stones grew larger as I went up. The field of float stones filled with grating noise each time the boulder-sized stones struck each other and created a broken, scarred path that became more disjointed over time. Larger stones in a variety of shapes and sizes rose while smaller ones would join those below and the entire grotto steadily fell over time.

I emerged from the field into the clearer, higher sky where only a handful of larger float stones dwelled. Almost immediately I saw a thin sliver of cloudy sky between two truly monolithic float stones in the distance disappeared. Remembering the noise heard clear across the grotto from when they split during a collision with another stone several years back, I covered my ears with my hands and readied my wings, only rocking slightly in the pulse of air forced from between the stones.

The gnashing stones made the air tremble with a screeching, grinding clash far louder than the noise of the storm clouds constantly roaring beyond the Outer Rim.

As I pressed ahead, I heard Ba’al’s piping cries coming from somewhere nearby.

It took several seconds to scale the height of the two monolith stones before I rounded them overhead. I could see clear across the grotto from this height, from the vast blue darkness overcoming the grotto from the east to the shadow-speckled rainbow-colored halo of sunlight falling below the storm clouds in the west.

I couldn’t see Ba’al from my vantage point right away, but when I looked up I spotted him circling directly above the fissure between the two stones that each stretched for miles in all directions.

The rule was that if a pathway closed all you needed to do was follow the fissure to continue on. But even after I’d closed the gap on his head start, Ba’al just kept circling.

“You haven’t given up, have you?” I called out as I streaked past Ba’al. A slight pressure sucked me downward as the crunching moan of the stones dissipated and the fissure reopened. I pressed my scarf down on my face and angled my wings upward. A mix of dust and small rock shards plumed from the fissure while larger stones trickled down the scarred rock faces to join the field below.

Ba’al never took his eyes from the fissure. He just kept circling.

I thought about continuing on, but it would be pointless going all the way to the outer rim and back if Ba’al didn’t want to race anymore.

I banked, meaning to ask Ba’al why he stopped the race. Before I could see what Ba’al was so fixated on, I heard it.

~ 1~

I wasn’t sure what I’d heard at first. It was a tiny noise that was nearly overpowered by the cascading, crunching stones and the storms raging in every direction. Somehow, among all that noise, a tiny, warbling call echoed from deep in the fissure.

It sounded nothing like Rüppell or Ba’al, nor did it sound like any of the other animals I knew. But somehow, I understood what it meant.

I’m here.

The float stones drifted further apart. Once the gap was wide enough I slipped inside where I was sucked toward the center by their parting pressure.

It wasn’t until I was almost halfway to the center that I noticed two streaks of a black, brown, and red paste coating the walls of either float stone. The paste smeared across the rock walls for a hundred feet in either direction. In some places the paste was more like a liquid and the walls dripped with it. When I touched it, the paste was warmer than the surrounding walls.

I didn’t need to see the events of minutes ago from close up. The fresh, bitter smelling poultice of flesh, bone, entrails, and blood was enough to know exactly what happened to whatever creatures didn’t notice the deathly movements of the float stones.

The sun fell in the sky. A dark shadow rose from behind a float stone in the distance.

Deep horizontal gashes in the uneven walls showed these two float stones only swiped alongside each other, yet these two streaks were nearly as tall as I was.

Ba’al continued circling overhead. His white feathers cast glimmers of light down into the dark crevasse with each turn.

Rüppell and Ba’al were the two largest fliers I knew, but the several sticky, mangled feathers I pulled from the cracks in the rock faces were comparable in size to my own.

Just as I was about to call to Ba’al, another chirp-like call—loud, yet faltering—sounded:

I’m here.

I rode the downdraft deeper. The pitching sound grew louder as I passed the halfway point.

I’m here.

A normal breeze stirred in the fissure as the two stones settled at a distance that let me fly comfortably as I scanned the faces of the float stones.

Moments later I noticed something unusual about one of the rock walls. I slowed my descent and held my altitude at a debris-packed gash in the otherwise smooth rock face.

Soot and pebbles forced their way out of the crack. A tiny hand with long, thin fingers reached toward me holding a small olivine pouch. A second hand appeared pinching a grass-bound book between chipped and uneven-length fingernails.

I immediately started hefting rock and sweeping sand from the narrow alcove. The space was no longer than one of my wings outspread, and in some places it was too narrow for me to fit my hands inside without angling them.

Once most of the rock was out of the way I peered into the dark crevice where for the first time since I was a juvenile looking at my reflection in the water I saw the smooth young face of another Avin.

The juvenile’s striking red hair glowed even without sunlight to illuminate it. Spiderweb-thin strands clung to his face and crisscrossed his eyes that were shut so tight it looked like crows had clawed gashes into the bridge of his nose. His red wings were tucked tight around him and were almost unable to fit into the narrow crack.

With every wingbeat the smell of fresh blood was driven out until it flavored the air just as powerfully as above.

His quivering fingers blindly thrust the notebook and pouch at me. I cleared more rubble from the opening and he slithered toward me on his elbows. The juvenile huffed wordlessly and coughed on the dusty air as the smell of blood grew.

He began falling from the alcove, so I grabbed onto him and pulled him forward.

The juvenile didn’t move. His round face pressed deep into the thick rabbit fur of my scarf. Though his voice was muffled and his pronunciation was slightly lilted, I thought I heard him say,

“Return to Nuva Isla.”

When I set my hand on his back, the juvenile balked. He let out a piercing, animalistic cry unlike the pleading one that brought me to him.

Although the sudden sound unnerved me and sent my heart racing, the warm, wet sensation coating my hand that was over his back kept me from letting go. I cradled the juvenile’s head in one arm and peeked over his head between his wings to see blood flowing freely from a gash nearly the length of his entire torso right between his wings.

While he’d escaped being crushed, the opposite float stone had sliced through the juvenile’s skin like a knife through a blade of grass. He would have been no more a hindrance to the motion of the float stones than a fly caught between two giants’ shoulders as they brushed past each other.

Blood bubbled up between the cut edges of his clothes and dyed the dried grass fibers a dark brownish red. His flying muscles spasmed and drove more blood out as his wings floundered at his sides.

I kept his head nestled securely against one arm as I gathered his wings and scooped him from the alcove as gently as I could.

The juvenile must have been either quite young or malnourished. His limbs were long but they were so thin that put together his two arms wouldn’t have matched one of mine, and his wings spanned hardly larger than Ba’al’s. Somehow he managed to keep from crushing his thick vermillion tail feathers that were half as long as he was tall. Carrying him didn’t even feel like it matched the weight of the fish I’d hauled ashore with Rüppell.

I thrust my wings and brought us upward.

Something stung my hip, and when I looked down I noticed two stone picks strapped to either of the juvenile’s heels with supports that bent his feet in a gentle curve emphasizing his sharp talon-like toenails. The points of the stone picks were sharp enough to cut through the thick hide I wore and draw blood just from grazing me as I flew.

As I passed the two bloody streaks on the walls the juvenile fell lax in my arms. His grip also relaxed, and the pouch fell down into the fissure below. The tiny book dangled securely from a thin grass cord woven in a circle around his neck.

I burst into the sky above the fissure.

Ba’al rounded his turn, his eyes dead set on me.

“We’ll have to finish the race another time. Go to the garden and bring me a forri plant with as many berries and leaves as you can carry,” I told him.

Without breaking his stride Ba’al rounded north toward the garden while I oriented myself west and headed into the shadowy wake of the falling sun.

I rose higher until I could speed through the open sky without having to worry about dodging any float stones. I raced toward home, my eyes kept peeled for the white-painted beacon that marked the hollowed-out float stone where Teacher and I made our home.

“Fill my wings Nassima. Drive me in your tempest,” I chanted as I withstood the wind’s uneven blows. Even when in the open sky there were barriers to smooth flight in the form of thermals and downdrafts as some stones cooled in the shadows while others stayed hot in the sun.

I repeated the phrase long after the painted white stone came into view. I only stopped once my feet touched down on the smooth black surface of the diamond-shaped and high flying float stone.

Making my way to the woven reed door that marked the entrance, I pushed it aside with my shoulder, shielding the juvenile every step of the way. The cold air of the open grotto was instantly replaced by the warm red glow of the fire veins heating the innards of the cave. Only once swaddled in warmth did I realize how cold the crumpled body of the juvenile felt in my arms.

My elbows cracked as I set the juvenile front-down on a bed of furs piled against the far wall. A cascade of cold, wind-dried blood flaked from my arms and legs like a dark snowfall.

The juvenile looked up at me, his wide amethyst eyes staring blankly. His entire body convulsed with each breath as though it were him who’d just flown half the length of the entire grotto, while I couldn’t feel myself breathing at all.

I shed the top layer of bloodstained furs and sprinted to the back wall to the dozens of rows of carved-out storage shelves.

I searched for some tiny fishbone needles I often used for mending and sewing pelts. The juvenile’s wound reminded me of a ripped pelt. If I could just get the skin back together again….

The only problem was, the needles were so tiny that they were difficult to keep track of and I often misplaced them. It wasn’t rare for me to “find” them again when they stuck in one of my feet, so I’d recently come up with another way of keeping them together.

“Where are they…?” My question was quickly answered when I found a piece of hide with varying curved and straight, thick and thin needles stuck through it for safekeeping.

I heard feathers rustling and turned back toward the bed of furs. The juvenile was struggling to wrestle himself up despite the pain that made his face contort and his thin arms shudder. The white and brown furs beneath him were already taking on the color of his blood.

“Where are Aure and Brid?” The juvenile moaned as he struggled to maneuver his wings. I grabbed several pieces of soft hide and knelt down at the juvenile’s side. He stared at me with his amethyst eyes stretched to their limit. He looked me over like a small animal that’d been stuck in a trap for days.

“I am So-Rin,” I told him as I stumbled over the name I so rarely heard, much less used as I tried to mimic the way Teacher use to say it. I set the needles on the floor.

 “I am Fallon of Nuva Isla,” he responded in a high-pitched voice that cemented him as a still-growing juvenile. The words tumbled from Fallon’s lips with clarity and bypassed the painful shudders that otherwise wracked his breathing.

 Fallon grasped blankly for the grass-bound book still hanging from the cord around his neck. Once he found it he forced the book in my direction as far as it would go. He pulled the cord so tight that the pale skin of his neck bulged.

“Please, there is a map. Return to Nuva Isla,” he began.

Fallon shrieked when I pulled shreds of his clothing out of the half-dried blood on his back. They were made with a soft, thin material that seemed like thin sheets of woven grass. As I cleaned out Fallon’s wound I realized just how deep of a gash had been cut. The cut was only inches from his spine and went so deep in some places the soft pink muscles connecting to his wings just barely managed to escape unscathed with their final whitish membrane intact. If he’d been any bigger and hadn’t been able to squeeze his way to safety in that tiny crevice, Ba’al and I would’ve likely passed him by without ever knowing he was there.

After I cleaned most of the shredded remnants of his clothes from Fallon’s still bleeding wound I set the pieces of hide over the cut in his back and started pressing down. Fallon seemed to understand what I was doing as he lay his head down on the bed of furs. The minutes sped by as Fallon struggled to get a full breath in, in part from me pressing down on his back and in part from his exhaustion at the sheer amount of blood he must have lost.

 I couldn’t even begin to imagine the fear Fallon must have felt being surrounded by the giant float stones as they clashed around him, slowly carving into his back as they ground past each other. Fallon must have been in excruciating pain, but he was holding it back well.

The reed door clattered. I turned and saw Ba’al had arrived with a large forri plant clamped in his beak. I continued holding Fallon down as Ba’al hopped over and set the plant on the floor beside me.

“Well done, Ba’al,” I said. Ba’al eyed Fallon as I lifted the hide from his back and took another look at his wound. “The bleeding’s mostly stopped. Can you get some salt from the back,” I asked as I carefully took pressure off of Fallon’s back and pointed in the direction I wanted Ba’al to go. As he searched for the salt, I picked up my half-full water skin that was lying beside the bed of furs. Fallon’s eyes stuck to Ba’al the entire time he was within his view.

 Once Ba’al returned with a piece of rock salt I crushed a pinch of salt into the water skin. Fallon sucked in a breath as I slowly peeled back the bloody hide. He uttered only a handful of tiny yelps as I poured the cold saltwater along the length of his wound. Tiny shards of stone washed out along with tendrils of red blood that spilled over the furs and onto the floor of the cave.

After the water had just about run dry, a careful inspection revealed that most of the small debris had been washed out. Only a few larger stones were left behind that I plucked out by hand. As I looked at it closer, the cut was of fairly even depth and had straight edges that may as well have come from the single sweep of a knife. The cleanness of the cut was probably part of why it was fairly quick to stop bleeding. Although it cut through his layers of skin, it luckily stopped just before it would have cut into Fallon’s flight muscles—an injury that, unlike this painful flesh wound, would be devastating for anyone with wings.

From the array of needles I picked the tiniest curved fishbone. I manipulated it like a delicate sliver cradled in my webbed fingers. Malleable yet strong, it would be the best needle to weave in and out of Fallon’s torn skin that was far suppler than some half-dried pelt.

I was about to pull one of the hairs from Fallon’s head to use, but the strands were so thin they likely wouldn’t be strong enough to hold his skin together in a single stitch. Not only that, his hair was far shorter than the wound itself and would have required me to rethread the needle several times. . Instead I pulled one of the thick, silvery hairs from my braid, rinsed it in the final drops of salty water, and barely managed to thread the tiny hole of the needle.

My hands moved with care as I made my way down Fallon’s back. Despite some initial awkwardness as I became accustomed to the idea of sewing living flesh, the process was second-nature after a lifetime sewing pelts and a single frightening occurrence when Teacher instructed me after he lacerated his leg in a place he couldn’t reach. While I’d barely been able to finish the job then, I knew exactly what I needed to do for this stranger who suddenly appeared.

It all happened so fast, I didn’t think about it until I was almost finished stitching Fallon’s cut that he was the first other Avin I had ever met other than Teacher. Even Ba’al seemed aware of the newness of the creature splayed out before him and perched himself nearby without ever taking his eyes off Fallon.. Eventually I lost track of how many stitches I’d done, and by the time I was finished I had used over two thirds of the strand of hair which had been nearly the length of my entire body.

While I looked over Fallon’s body for other injuries, I noted that this didn’t seem to be the first time Fallon had been hurt. Signs of past stitches and numerous scars of varying patterns and size, some of which were nearly invisible, covered his body. The worst scars were in places that would be difficult to care for without help.

During my search I realized that Fallon wasn’t as young as I’d first thought either. After removing his bloodstained shirt that’d been shredded along with his back I found his flight muscles to be fully developed yet small just like the rest of him, and removing the tiny fingerless gloves he wore revealed soft hands crisscrossed in even more scars than the rest of him had been. His body seemed to be dealing with the trauma to his back well, but his muscles were slightly swollen even on his chest where nothing else appeared wrong.

As I worked to clean the dry blood from his red feathers I noticed Fallon’s wingspan was somewhere between mine and Ba’al’s or Rüppell’s. The plush vanes of Fallon’s feathers wicked the blood deep below the surface and made it difficult to tell the dried blood apart from the color of his wings in some places. What gave me the most trouble though as I looked Fallon over were the two pikes lashed to his feet with tiny strands of grass and bark twine which required all the dexterity I possessed to remove.

By the time the morning sunlight peeked through the cracks in and around my reed door, I’d finished cleaning Fallon up and tending to his injuries. His breathing had evened somewhat, but his forehead was cold and dripped with sweat that couldn’t have been a result of the warm, dry cave. As a final measure I mixed the forri berries I’d had Ba’al fetch for me with a number of other things I had available, smeared it on Fallon’s cuts, and finally layered them with the forri leaves to help him heal.

As I worked through the hours, Ba’al still had yet to take his eyes away from Fallon.

“He said his name is Fallon,” I told Ba’al, savoring the sensation of a new word and name as it formed in my mouth for the first time. I swabbed Fallon’s damp skin with a soft piece of hide. It was a small scrap, but it was completely soaked. “I’ll be right back,” I said as I took the piece of hide, the empty water skin, and an armful of bloodied furs outside.I threw everything on the rocks where the night’s dew had already been swept away by the morning sun. With the sun beating down I was finally able to see just how much blood there was, far more than I ever saw on the pelts even when I skinned them fresh.

Though it still seemed to be less than when one of Teacher’s wings got crushed between the float stones, the fact that Fallon’s body was so petite made the situation just as dire.

I refilled the water skin from an alcove cut into the rock face beside the door and quenched my thirst before refilling it again. As I finished setting the pelts out in the sun I heard Ba’al cawing loudly from inside. I rushed back in and saw Fallon was awake and attempting to get up.

Fallon looked up, drawn by the sound of the clacking reeds.

“Where are Aure and Brid,” he asked. He tore the leaves from his arms, which caused many of his smaller cuts to reopen. Before I could tell him not to move, Fallon’s face twisted in pain amid the sound of numerous hair-thin sutures snapping.

“Fetch another forri plant,” I told Ba’al. He hadn’t stopped cawing and pacing the floor with his wings outstretched the entire time as he urged Fallon to stop. Ba’al headed for the door and left it up to me to persuade Fallon in his place.

“We need to find Aure and Brid,” Fallon insisted. He stared me down with his amethyst eyes, knitting his brows when I had him sit on the furs with his back to me. His soft tail feathers curled against the floor and overtop my feet as Fallon settled into a more comfortable position. He tried to turn back to look at me, but I had him face forward just in time to save yet another stitch from busting apart.

Before Fallon could do anything else I grabbed the needle still with a length of hair in it, and attempted to repair the handful of broken stitches. The cut was already showing signs of healing these few hours later, but Fallon simply moved too soon.

“You’re wasting your time! Aure and Brid –” Fallon pitched and cried as he tried to writhe free. Every time he moved it threatened to undo all the work I’d done stitching him up. When his thrashing made me prick myself I felt my temper flare.

“Stop moving,” I ordered, shocking both Fallon and myself into still silence. I turned back to my work and said, my voice shaky, “your injuries aren’t too bad, but you need to stay still for now.”

Fallon didn’t move or make any other sound as I tied the final knot and bit through the strand of hair that had by this time turned from a silvery-blue in color to a glistening red like Fallon’s.

As I helped Fallon back down onto his stomach Ba’al arrived, toting another mouthful of a forri plant glistening with morning dew. Fallon looked over, saw Ba’al, and started up again.

“You’re the one who warned us, aren’t you?” Fallon said as Ba’al deposited the fresh plant on the floor beside me.

Ba’al waddled right up to Fallon’s face and stared at him with his eyes zooming in and out, chattering softly as he tried to help Fallon relax.

Leaving Fallon to Ba’al, I began cutting the leaves into strips to replace the half-dried scraps still clinging to Fallon’s other minor cuts.

“You must have seen them with me, Aure and Brid…. You know where they went, don’t you?” Fallon’s dull, wet eyes lit up as he waited for a response.

I hadn’t been sure before, but Ba’al confirmed it: the ones Fallon was referring to, Aure and Brid, had been crushed.

“You will be fine with rest,” I said. I smoothed the final leafy strip over a tiny cut on Fallon’s shoulder. Although it was plenty warm in the cave and he was surrounded by thick furs, Fallon was shivering.

My stomach growled, reminding me of what I’d forgotten all about since finding Fallon.

I’d planned on eating more after my race with Ba’al, but never did get the chance.

“I leave Fallon to you,” I told Ba’al as my stomach grumbled again. Ba’al twitched his wings in response and continued staring at Fallon with his head cocked somewhat to the side.

I glanced once more in Fallon’s direction. He was stock-still like a deer who suddenly found itself staring at the morning sun, his eyes wide as he stared back at Ba’al.

For some reason, I hesitated to leave.

Each step I took toward the door made my stomach tighten and push back my hunger a little bit more until the thought of going out for food made me want to vomit. The feeling only quelled when I looked back at Fallon and saw him crack a gentle smile as he reached toward Ba’al and stroked the top of his white head.

With that image in my mind I finally found myself able to leave the cave. Just outside the door were several tiny hand and footholds that led up to the top of the float stone. These were the footholds I carved for Teacher after he lost his ability to fly, and actually were faster than taking flight over such a short distance. It’d been several years since then, and the rough-hewn holes had been smoothed out after being used several times a day by Teacher.

In less than a minute I’d scaled the height of the float stone to where I’d left Rüppell the previous night. Tiny scraps of entrails along with a small, footprint-tracked stain on the rock remained of Rüppell’s feast. The fire veins had cooled greatly overnight and glowed like embers. I packed as much of the salt-brined fish onto the spits as I could and propped up several rocks around the warm pit. My mind wandered back to Fallon as I went through the motions of setting the fish-packed spits across the warming stones. With the white stone lumbering with its blurry white presence behind me it felt like Teacher was standing there, watching over me just like when I was young.

“You won’t believe it Teacher—I met another Avin.”

 With the fish ready I reached deep into the brine and pulled out an armful of plump, waterlogged brush that’d been soaking ever since my last catch. I threw it onto the warm pit and it immediately began to sizzle and let out a satisfying plume of steam and smoke. I threw a scraped animal skin over the entire thing to trap the smoke around the fish. I only hoped it wouldn’t turn out too salty after sitting in the brine overnight.

“His name is Fallon. He’s hurt right now, but I’m taking care of him like you taught me. He should get better soon –”

But when Fallon recovered, what would happen then?

 “Teacher, Fallon says he is of a place called Nuva Isla,” I said. I shook my head, chuckling to myself at the foolishness of the idea as I picked up the pack of cooked fish from the previous night. “How can that be when all the world beyond the grotto is an endless storm raised by Zaiga?”

I stopped, stood, and turned around in a full circle. No matter which way I looked an endless wall of storm clouds surrounded the grotto. The impenetrable wall circulated constantly and reached higher than I could fly.

I hefted the full sack, reassured by Teacher’s teachings. Even amid that certainty, however, I was unable to keep myself from wondering:

 If all the world really was nothing but an endless, lifeless storm, were else could Fallon have come from?

It wasn’t long after I’d set a piece of fish beside Fallon, thanked Cressa and Nassima for the food, and took a bite of my own breakfast that Fallon spoke up.

“How can you eat that,” Fallon asked. He’d covered his mouth with his hand, which made it difficult to understand him.

I looked up at him from where I sat cross-legged on the floor beside the bed of furs. Fallon was looking around the room, his eyes wide like a small animal’s as he took in his surroundings. “This whole place stinks of dead animals,” he commented as he blinked back the water welling up in his eyes.

I continued eating as I looked around the room and tried to see what was upsetting him.

Several old pelts and hides were piled here and there, many of which were either lightly matted, soiled, or missing patches of fur despite all my best efforts to keep them in top shape. It had been a long time since I last felled a deer, so those pelts looked particularly worn down—but the smell was nothing like when Teacher and I spent two days breaking down a pair of particularly well-fed deer.

Compared to eating fatty fish day in and day out, the thought of delicious deer jerky and rich venison made me hungry in a way no amount of fish could satisfy.

I swallowed.

“This is a gift from Cressa. You should be thankful as a child of Nassima and eat,” I told Fallon. They were the exact same words Teacher used after we’d eaten up the last of the venison and had nothing but fish for an entire season. I tried to mimic the serious look that’d been on Teacher’s face at the time, but I ended up smiling instead until I covered it up by taking another bite of the cold, flaccid fish that was absolutely nothing like venison.

“Cressa and Nassima? Do they also live on this Isla?”

I nearly choked on my food.

“The brothers Cressa and Nassima are our ancestors, the very first beings to swim the water and soar in the sky,” I told him between fits of coughing as I pounded on my chest with my fist. But if Fallon was also an Avin, how could he not know?

Fallon shook his head, still covering his mouth and nose with one hand. “I’ve never heard of ‘Cressa’ or ‘Nassima’ before,” he said through his thin fingers. He shivered, though I couldn’t tell if it was because he was in pain or for some other reason.

“Teacher would certainly scold whoever taught you if they ever met,” I laughed as I picked up another hunger-abating piece of fish.

“Your Teacher seems to know many unusual things,” Fallon said. Fallon nudged his piece of fish aside with his elbow. “Does your Teacher live on this Isla too?”

“Teacher and I have lived in the grotto together all our lives. He’s the greatest there is,” I puffed out my chest as I spoke. I made a large gesture with my arms and couldn’t help but notice the way Fallon wove back and forth as my hand came near him with my piece of fish. Fallon must’ve really disliked fish. Maybe other animals were more common where he came from… maybe he preferred venison over fish too.

“He does?” Fallon’s voice pitched into an awkward squeak. He looked around again at the cave. “There’s certainly enough space for several Avin,” he observed. “Are there any others aside from your Teacher?”

“Sure there are. There’s Rüppell, Cray, you already met Ba’al…” I kept count on my fingers as I listed everyone off.

“Ba’al… you mean that Bald Eagle?”

“‘Bald Eagle’?” This time it was my turn to be confused. My head automatically cocked to the side as I waited for Fallon to explain.

Fallon nodded. He gestured to Ba’al who was nesting beside him on the bed of furs. Fallon was far more collected this time when he spoke. “A bird with a white head like this is called a Bald Eagle,” Fallon said as he pointed with his free hand towards Ba’al’s head. His other hand meanwhile remained cupped over Fallon’s mouth. “They’re rare though, and are such strong predators that they’re difficult to manage. You and your Teacher must be skilled trainers if you can manage commanding one so fine as this. He appears perfectly tamed,” Fallon said with apparent awe as he alternated his gaze between me and the sleeping Ba’al.

Bald Eagle? Tamed? Trainers?

I didn’t recognize any of these words.

“The others too… are you and your Teacher the only Avin occupying this Isla?”

I nodded.

“But even one… it’s more than I could have hoped for,” Fallon said. He sighed into his hand and his taut shoulders relaxed. Fallon’s hand fell slightly with his sigh and revealed the crease of his mouth at the corner of his bright red lips. His violet eyes gleamed brightly as he looked at me and said, “I apologize, but what was your name again?”

“So-Rin.” My name came much easier to me than it had the last time I said it.

“So-Rin,” Fallon repeated. He nodded and said it several more times as if each time he said it would make him less likely to forget. “So-Rin, for ‘soaring.’ It’s a beautiful name, and wonderfully fitting from what I can recall.”

I’d never really thought about my name having any sort of meaning before. If So-Rin meant “soaring,” it seemed odd that I had it for a name.

“Please, So-Rin, tell me about your Teacher,” Fallon said. “What is he like?”

My head cocked in the opposite direction as I crossed my arms and thought.

“Teacher is…” I began, but almost immediately stopped. There was so much that was great about Teacher, where could I begin? I smiled. “Teacher is the best – any question you could ask, he knows the answer. If you have any problem, he knows exactly what to do. He’s the best at flying too, no one can beat him.” I said. I nodded; it was the only possible answer.

“Is that so?” Fallon replied.

I felt my forehead furrow. Something about the tone of Fallon’s voice coupled with his blank stare seemed to imply he didn’t quite believe me.

“Yes it is,” I shot back at him. “Teacher knows everything – he taught me the best ways to hunt every kind of animal, he taught me how to cook and sew, and how to treat injuries too! He knows all about the Grotto, all about Cressa and Nassima,” I told him. “Teacher’s really kind too. He wasn’t that good of a swimmer, but he’s a great flier and can go super fast, way faster than even Ba’al,” I said and crossed my arms with finality.

“I-I see,” Fallon stuttered.

Ba’al stirred in his sleep.

I shot to my feet and reached over Fallon, startling him. Mounted on the wall behind him was a gigantic white pinion feather. I unlashed it from the ties keeping it there. The feather was stiff yet lightweight to hold, and was nearly as long as Fallon was tall. I brought it down so Fallon could see and his eyes instantly went just as wide as ever.

“It’s pure white… I’ve never seen an Avin with feathers this color before,” Fallon said as he touched the soft vanes.

I nodded, satisfied that Fallon was beginning to understand Teacher’s greatness.

Fallon entire body relaxed as he caressed Teacher’s feather. His skin glowed a pinkish color that was a huge change compared to his ashen complexion of several hours ago.

“You’re very lucky to have such a wonderful Teacher, So-Rin,” Fallon said as he returned the feather to me.

When Fallon said my name, it was in a tone as unfamiliar to me as many of his words. I mounted Teacher’s feather back into its place, and by the time I sat down on the floor beside Fallon again he’d pulled out the small bound notebook from before. It was still attached to him by the thin woven strand around his neck, and I watched over the top of the book as he opened it, and leafed through the pages. It was covered in flowing scribbles like the ones Teacher sometimes made in the past in his own tiny books. I’d always wondered why he felt the need to keep scribbles, but whenever I asked about them Teacher would just say he kept them to help him remember all the fun we had each day. Unlike Teacher’s scribble-books, Fallon’s had tiny drawings on many of the pages – one that particularly caught my eye was the picture of a delicious looking rabbit that seemed like it would hop off the page at any moment.

Fallon stopped on a page toward the middle. It was a page without any pictures of animals, but it didn’t quite look like it was just regular scribbles either.

“It’s three full days—I have until two days from now before the path reopens. I would like to meet your Teacher as soon as possible. I have many questions for him and would like to know more about the Grotto,” Fallon said as the long, uneven-edged nail of his middle finger skimmed the tiny page.

It was strange to see Fallon, an Avin whose face and body I’d seen contorted in varying levels of distress ever since our meeting, appear so collected. His voice was even and calm and his hands moved with purpose before coming to rest stock-still. The deep wrinkles on his face softened and the dark underside to his eyes lightened to reveal a face that seemed almost ageless somehow, a face able to shift between young and carefree and aged and troubled at the flick of a feather.

I shook my head. “I don’t think he’ll be back by then.”

Fallon’s finger fell toward the bottom of the tiny page. “Oh – where did he go?” When he looked away from the book I was surprised to find the battered, ashen appearance had returned. “He didn’t happen to leave yesterday at the same time I arrived, did he?”

I shook my head and crossed my arms.

“Not yesterday, but, I don’t know… it’s been a long time since I last saw him,” I admitted as I tried to think back. I went through each passing of the seasons in my head until I came up with an answer, but it was more than I could count on my fingers alone. “About ten and three seasons ago, during the dark season,” I told him.

“What? That long ago? But I thought….” Fallon’s voice cracked. The aged appearance of distress returned, and the scratch-like wrinkles reappeared in the tiny space between his eyes. “What happened before that? How was he when you last saw him? Did you see which way he flew? Did he tell you where he was going?”

All the questions Fallon threw at me were of things I’d long forgotten or never even thought to think about.

I closed my eyes and rested my chin on my fist as I thought back to the last time I saw Teacher. “One day when I came back from hunting, Teacher was gone. I couldn’t find him anywhere… he’d had an accident, and couldn’t fly very well,” I recalled as I stood up and was about to go for more fish.

My stomach suddenly tightened, and my hunger instantly disappeared. I felt sick, almost like once when I’d eaten an old piece of meat. The more I thought about the last time I saw Teacher the more my stomach hurt until I couldn’t bring myself to even look at another piece of fish. I plopped down onto the bed of furs beside Fallon, suddenly weak as I remembered it wasn’t just that Teacher had an accident and couldn’t fly very well. I didn’t want to believe it at the time, but he’d told me himself he would never fly again.

If Teacher couldn’t fly, how could he go anywhere else in the Grotto? And even if he did, it’s been such a long time… why wouldn’t he have come back by now?

I couldn’t remember exactly why or what happened. My eyes wandered as I thought, and when I saw Fallon’s red wings, all at once the image in my mind of Teacher’s brilliant white wings was replaced by the image of mangled, blood-soaked, and shredded wings even redder than Fallon’s feathers.

That was right… Teacher lost his wings when he saved me from being crushed.

“I’m so sorry,” Fallon said. Compared to how troubled he was a moment ago, he almost sounded relieved. His voice sounded distant as I realized just how long I’d been waiting for Teacher to return. “It’s not uncommon for those with weakened wings to fall, or to even take off without remembering they can’t fly. I can’t imagine anyone making it past that stream with an injury. If you haven’t found him by now, then he’s probably….”

I didn’t understand what Fallon said after that. The noises he made didn’t sound like words at all, and even if they were, I couldn’t tell if they were many or just a single word. I just didn’t know, and didn’t know where to begin asking.

“I’m sure your Teacher is very proud of you for surviving so long on your own like this, So-Rin.” Fallon said.

He set his hand on my knee, and a tingling wash cascaded down my body. The touch of another Avin was something I hadn’t felt since Teacher patted me on the back and wished me good hunting, only for him to be gone once I returned.

It was… nice.

After talking late into the morning, Fallon seemed to get tired so I left him to rest as I tried to perform my morning exercises in the open center of the cave where I could keep an eye on Fallon. Fallon watched for a short time before the quiet of his corner was replaced by the soft sound of snoring. As I moved on from the simpler stretches though, for some reason I couldn’t seem to focus.

Movements designed to sweep from one into another became bungling and awkward. Several times I forgot a movement altogether until I realized I’d frozen in space and couldn’t think of what I’d just done or how to move on. Even after going the entire night without so much as closing my eyes I felt a tingling tension radiating from my core out to my wingtips that kept me on my feet and got even worse whenever a stretch put Fallon out of eyesight.

When I finally gave up on my morning exercises and noted Ba’al still resting beside Fallon on the bed of furs, I sent an unintended glare in his direction. Ba’al wasn’t the type to sleep in front of anyone else and I couldn’t imagine what it was about Fallon that would make Ba’al stick so close to him.

Ba’al opened one eye as I approached and kept his watchful gaze on me as I checked in on Fallon. Fortunately he seemed to be sleeping well for the moment, and pink skin was already starting to connect the two sides of his cut as the forri berries worked their mysterious effects. Teacher told me once that forri plants were one very special gift given from Cressa. It was a plant that needed to be constantly submerged in water, but could grow several feet tall with flexible, thick stems if properly cared for. Teacher called it a “great tree” of a plant, but it made no sense to me to call it a “tree” when all the other trees of the grotto only grew a few feet tall and about a finger in thickness at the most before they would get uprooted from the sandy soil by the wind.

“Let me know right away if Fallon wakes up or seems to be in pain,” I told Ba’al, which he responded to by closing his eye and returning to his alert half-sleep.

My tired wings hung heavy on my back as I crouched down and began picking up the leftover scraps and medicines from the previous night. Fallon was safe for now, and so long as he kept relatively still would be flying again within a couple of days.

I rocked back on my heels and stepped on something sharp. When I bent over to look at what it was, I found the curved bone needle I’d used for Fallon’s stitches dangling from the sole of my foot. I worked the needle out of my foot, snapped off the remaining length of bloodstained hair, and stuck it back into the piece of soft hide. I swept the used up scraps of dry forri leaves with my wings and gathered them into a neat pile along with Fallon’s shredded clothing. I gathered up the needles and kept sweeping with my wings gathering fur, dust, and even an assortment of feathers on my way to the far corner of the cave. I set the needles down and had to use both of my hands to pry a piece of the stone wall loose, revealing a downward chute that opened up to the outside.

I would often leave it open for air during the warm light months, but with the dark months approaching it was far more comfortable leaving it closed. Aside from some extra air flow, the only other thing I ever used it for was when sweeping out garbage. I used to clean the cave out regularly with Teacher, but Fallon’s clothes aside, the pile of feathers, loose fur, and food scraps made me second-guess my personal cleaning habits. As I looked around the big open space from a new vantage point, I noticed the piles of feathers, loose fur, and dust in the corners. There were also an overwhelming number of and cracked and otherwise unused skins piled high against the back wall as I put of trying to salvage them. The more I looked around and tried to justify the condition my home was in, the more the feathers at the back of my neck stood on end.

Remember So-Rin, the best kind of nest is a tidy one.”

I scratched the back of my head, suddenly embarrassed at the state the cave was in. I may have been used to the way it smelled and looked, but how might it look to another Avin? Teacher always went into a cleaning flurry whenever he saw so much as a single molted feather mixed in with my bedding. As I looked around it became easier to understand why Fallon might not’ve had much of an appetite if he happened to be anything like Teacher.

Even if it was a pain cleaning out such a big space alone, with Teachers words and Fallon’s recovery in mind I resolved to occupy myself with some much needed deep-cleaning. It wasn’t as though I could buy myself with much else if I wanted to stick close to Fallon as he slept anyway.

It took a few times of sweeping a pile of dirt over clean floor or dumping something from a higher shelf onto a lower clean one for me to remember Teacher’s first tenet of cleaning: always clean from the top down.

The shelves were a total mess, with bags tipped over and the contents of several tossed-aside sachets dusting everything else. Teacher’s chiding voice echoed in my head and filled me with the urge to reorganize the shelves whose disarray could in no way be blamed on my haste from last night alone. I opened each pack and made a mental note of its contents as I reorganized everything, either for future reference or to remind myself I needed to gather more.

Then came the furs and pelts. At first I sorted them into “okay,” “good,” and “only needs a little work” piles. But after a while when I realized just how many hole-studded and bug-eaten pelts I was putting in the “okay” pile, Teacher’s chiding words again came to mind and wouldn’t go away until I accepted the fact that the pelts that passed for my “okay” condition were the exact same ones Teacher would always get rid of in favor of putting the same amount of effort they would have taken to restore into the better condition pelts. With that final thought I brought armful after armful of pelts over to the back wall and with a final prayer of thanks, pushed them through the hole that always seemed a bit too small.

Several hours went by like this, with my occasional mumbles accompanied by the regular shuffling, cinching, and folding of packs, hides, and furs as I properly stored everything away into its proper place. Eventually everything useful littering the floor had been sorted and cleared away, and all that was left was for me to give the floor a final go-over. I made extra sure to be quiet whenever I was near Fallon, but even the rustle of my wings as I swept up the feathers around the stack of furs—some of which were his bright red instead of the usual mix of silver and blue—seemed like it might be enough to wake him.

Right as I finished sweeping up the area around Fallon the reed door suddenly started knocking against the stone walls. I turned around to see what might have caused it and came face to face with yet another who, like Ba’al, rarely ever came for a visit much less stuck around.

At the door stood a blue-gray bird with long, twiglike orange and gray legs. His sharp-pointed beak was longer than the rest of his head and neck which sported a vibrant pattern of snakelike white and blue-black markings. A plume of feathers shot out from the back of his head that Teacher always said made us look exactly alike after I started growing my hair long.

“Good morning Cray,” I said. Immediately after offering the greeting I wondered if it was still morning. Cray strolled in like it was nothing unusual for him to be there, tracking mud the entire way across my finally clean floors. Without so much as a glance of recognition Cray lifted his long legs and stepped purposefully in Fallon’s direction. I was just about to sweep a pile of debris out when I noticed Cray was craning his neck at Fallon’s bedside and inspecting him from every angle.

Before I could ask him to keep away from Fallon, Ba’al woke with a start and lunged at Cray. The two of them rose a raucous cry of caws at each other as they batted and lunged at each other in a frenzy of beaks, feet, and wings.

Fallon woke the moment the clamor started. Unable to move far, Fallon watched as the two of them battled it out right in front of him. It was when Fallon moved to get out of the way of Ba’al’s batting wings that I realized what started the fight.

“Both of you knock it off!”

I beat a blast of air in their direction to knock them off balance. The burst of air sent several other things flying as well, including the fuzzy white and red down I’d collected into a tidy pile nearby. Dust, fur, and feathers again plumed into every corner of the room. As the dust re-settled and I let out a defeated internal sigh Fallon covered his nose right before he let out the tiniest squeak of a sneeze I’d ever heard.

Ba’al looked at me with an accusatory glare while Cray continued with his refusal to acknowledge me and instead searched out his prize. Cray raised an alarm and tried to get around Ba’al when he saw me going for Fallon.

Fallon’s face tightened and contorted awkwardly as he tried, but inevitably failed, to fight off another sneeze that was just as dainty as the first. I beat my wings to clear the air around him of dust both because I didn’t know if I could keep from laughing if he sneezed again and because I didn’t want his still-healing wound to get dirty or for him to loose a stitch after all the effort I’d put into cleaning.

Fallon kept his eyes closed as the air around him settled. Cray started up again when I reached toward Fallon and pulled out a tiny white feather from his hair with one hand, but then clammed up once I had the piece of Fallon’s uneaten cooked fish from earlier in hand.

“This is Fallon’s,” I said as I held it up in front of Cray. He took the bait and showed his intentions when he immediately snapped at the fish, but I snatched it back before he could so much as touch it.

I thrust the piece of fish in Fallon’s direction. He balked at the squished and mangled piece of meat again being presented to him, covered his nose and mouth with both hands, and shook his head violently from side to side. I glanced back at Cray and Ba’al and saw that both of them were watching the exchange closely.

“Eat it or they’ll keep thinking they can do whatever they want,” I sighed as I recalled another of Teacher’s lessons. Rüppell once took some food from me when I was a fledgling, and since then he’s always tried to get away with whatever he could. Whether it was stealing fresh rabbit furs to line his own nest or sneaking the eyeballs of the fish we caught together instead of properly offering them to Cressa and Nassima…. Rüppell alone was bad enough, but there was no way I was about to let both Ba’al and Cray feel like they could steal from Fallon.

Soon enough Fallon gave in and took the piece of fish from me.

Both Ba’al and Cray eyed him with intense expressions as Fallon hesitatingly brought the piece of fish to his mouth. His lips quivered as he looked pleadingly between myself, Cray, and Ba’al, but he had to know that he wouldn’t be able to hide the fish a second time with three watchful stares coming down on him.

Fallon shook his head the entire time even after he bit into a corner of the fish, gnawed it for several seconds until it broke off, and immediately choked it down. A gurgling noise came from Fallon and he covered his mouth with one hand the moment the fish hit his stomach.

I instantly regretted making him eat it, but I wasn’t about to let it show with Ba’al and Cray still watching. Fallon looked exactly like I did once when I found a piece of strong smelling venison in the back of the storeroom and ate it without understanding why I would be stuck eating fish for days while Teacher would reserve something that smelled so delicious for Rüppell.

Fallon somehow managed to keep it down, but from the way his stomach gurgled every time he so much as looked at what remained of the piece of fish that would take at least a dozen more mouthfuls like the one he initially bit off, it didn’t seem like he had it in him to finish it.

Unable to take the pitiable look on his face any longer, I took the rest of the piece of fish from him and ate half of it myself. It tasted fine and smelled normal, so I split the remaining leftovers between Ba’al and Cray. The sickly green color on Fallon’s face seemed to get more intense as he watched the rest of us each take our shares in turn.

It occurred to me as I licked my fingers and looked over Fallon’s bright red, downy plumage and compared it to my own sleek, mottled blue and gray feathers that he may not be used to the same sort of diet I was. The sharp spikes on his feet made me think he might be like Ba’al, but when Fallon let out an uncomfortable sounding hiccup I noticed he had an entire mouthful of molars and only four tiny cuspids.

In any case, if he was going to feel sick from half a mouthful of fresh fish I needed to find something he could eat or it would impact his recovery.

After everyone had a chance to calm down I began wondering what would make Cray come all the way to find me. It wasn’t long before an answer came to me.

“I forgot to water the garden,” I said as I directed an apologetic look at Cray. Cray looked up from the meal squished beneath his toes and let out a harsh squawk in confirmation before immediately having to stab his beak at Ba’al who took the opportunity to try and steal his fish scraps.

“Oh… my,” Fallon gurgled.

I looked down at Fallon and saw the most conflicted look on his face as he struggled between fighting back a sneeze and taming the nausea threatening to bring back what was likely his first ever taste of fish.

As I tried to think of what I could do for Fallon Cray headed for the door and glanced back at me, face full of wonder as to why I wasn’t following him.

I turned back to the still ill-looking Fallon. He was so preoccupied that he didn’t notice me bending over him to eye the wound on his back. His wings flapped reflexively against my hands when my fingers touched his bare skin between his wings. I pressed down and compared how they felt to when I first began tending to his wounds. I peeked beneath the forri leaves to see healthy pink skin reaching between both sides of the injury in his back. There were even a couple places right at the top and bottom of the cut that would have been fine to take the stitches out, even. His body was quite a bit warmer now that his skin was healing and his body restored its regular blood flow to the area.

“Good, the swelling’s gone down. Are you in any pain,” I asked him. Fallon looked to be about to speak, but instead his hand flew over his mouth as his stomach gurgled out of control. He snapped his head back and forth but soon thought better of it and stopped stock still.

“Open your wings as far as you can,” I told him. Fallon obeyed as much as his strength allowed. Fallon’s already sick-looking face contorted with effort, but it seemed more like he was just uncomfortable rather than in outright pain. At the very least the new activity seemed to put his sick stomach at the back of his mind. . I took in the sight of his wings all at once as he unfurled his downy pink and red feathers. and did his best to hold them steady as he moved his wings up and down.

Although Fallon could move through the mid-range of motion with relative ease and comfort, holding his wings back or forward to any extreme made him pale from the effort. I wasn’t surprised—his recovery had been greatly accelerated thanks to the forri plant, but that didn’t mean he’d returned to normal just yet. I stopped him before Fallon strained himself too far.

 “You’re lucky it’s nothing more than a flesh wound,” I said as I layered some additional salve onto Fallon’s back before replacing the forri leaves. Paired with the forri plant, Fallon’s youth would give him an edge accelerating his recovery along with steadfast care. The only sign of his injury would be a large scar that would stand out more than any other on his body.

Fallon’s body reminded me of Teacher’s which had also been covered in scars like these. Each mark had a story he gladly told whenever I asked about them. Teacher always said that compared with death a scar was a “badge of survival” and nothing to hide.

Even so, sometimes a strange look would come across Teacher’s face when I asked about his scars. Eventually I learned to stop asking.

I walked over to a heap of hide strips I’d started making as I weeded through the lesser-quality hides and thought of what I could do with the better-condition parts. I picked out the longest, most solid-looking pieces and pulled on them to test their strength. They made a satisfying snap. “We’ll immobilize your wings for now.”

When I turned around I saw Fallon drooped in a full-body sigh with his wings left hanging at awkward angles that couldn’t’ve been comfortable. A halfhearted smile trembled on his lips and his eyes looked glossy and close to overflowing.

“You’re sure it doesn’t hurt too much,” I asked as I trotted to his side. I lifted his wings into a more comfortable position, noting all the while how plush, lightweight, and airy they really were now that they’d had a chance to dry after being cleaned.

“No, it doesn’t hurt at all,” Fallon replied. His words were labored and quiet at first, but after a single sniffle he seemed to bolster himself again as I helped him into a sitting position. Fallon’s tail found a comfortable angle sooner this time, which ended up being right between my two feet. For a moment it even felt like I had tail feathers of my own again. Fallon held his wings in place as best he could and raised his lanky arms above his head as I wound the strips about his torso and wings. I pressed his wings closer to his sides while being careful not to muss the fluffy pinkish down dusting his back and sides at his waist-level and noticed the swelling in his chest and sides felt the same as before. His trim waist and curved hips also seemed unusual, but Fallon didn’t seem to be in any pain at all, He just looked over his shoulder at me curiously when I took a moment to inspect them, and abruptly looked away when our eyes met. Not wanting to worry Fallon, I resolved to watch him closely and keep it to myself unless it became necessary to tell him. Stress was an enemy as much as a wound itself while healing.

“Don’t get too down,” I encouraged, “Something similar happened to me when I was a juvenile too,” I said, reminiscing. “You’re still in one piece, so you shouldn’t have too much problem getting back up to speed.”

“In one piece?” Fallon parroted. “What happened,” he asked. Fallon glanced over his shoulder and looked me over as if he were trying to spot my injury.

“I got my tail ripped out after getting caught in the float stones,” I said as I turned partway around. I lifted my hair to reveal my lack of a tail. I sighed at my younger self for being so reckless, and shook my head just like Teacher did when he bandaged me up. “Learning to be wary of the float stones is a hard lesson, but I learned it. I don’t notice a difference anymore after growing out my hair, but you shouldn’t be any worse off after a little rest.” I laughed and smiled reassuringly, just as Teacher would have done.

While I was able to look back on my past and laugh, Fallon didn’t join in. I stopped when I caught sight of the wetness coming back into his eyes.

My heart raced the more I spoke with Fallon. It had been so long since my last conversation with another Avin. It was so easy using the words I so rarely had the chance to use, the words to a language completely unlike the universal one I used to communicate with Cray, Ba’al, Rüppell, and the other creatures of the grotto. But it wasn’t as though the two languages were exclusive from each other, and I soon found myself at a loss between two worlds.

With Cray, Ba’al, and Rüppell, it was always clear what they wanted, needed, or tried to communicate at any given time. Chattering in curiosity, cawing in distress, a flapped wing or talon restlessly scratching the float stones, they all meant something. Unlike with words, I didn’t need to think to understand.

Fallon said he wasn’t in any pain, yet that couldn’t’ve been the truth. His words tried to tell me one thing, but his body told me something altogether different.

Tension rippled through Fallon’s thin body as he struggled to hold himself steady. He breathed quietly, but he often caught his breath. And the wetness that welled in his eyes without ever spilling over… he must have been in pain. He had to be hurting, but then why was he telling me the opposite with his words?

I double checked the wrapping to make sure it wasn’t making Fallon uncomfortable, but I found it to be fine. Loosening it any further would defeat the point of wrapping his wings at all. With nothing else amiss my heart lurched irregularly in my chest, warning me I’d overstepped somehow. But unlike with Cray, Ba’al, and Rüppell whose temperaments, needs, and desires I knew through and through, I had no idea when it came to Fallon what I’d done wrong, much less how to fix it.

“I should have been the one to die, not Aure and Brid,” Fallon lamented. He hung his arms tiredly over his head, but they bounced up again when he accidentally grazed the top of my head with his hands. “I was exhausted—Aure and Brid could’ve kept going, but they wanted to stay together during our investigation of the grotto. They trusted me to keep watch. I didn’t know what to make of it when the wind started shifting like it did. If I’d only noticed that eagle sooner I could’ve warned Aure and Brid. They could’ve escaped.”

I felt my blood pump cold through my veins, and sweat form on my skin.

Compared to our lively talk earlier Fallon seemed like an entirely different person. The wetness in his eyes wasn’t from physical pain.

Sometimes, the same look appeared on Teacher’s face.

“It’s nothing you need to worry yourself over, So-Rin.”

He always told me not to worry, and sure enough Teacher would soon be back to his usual self. But once, when Teacher didn’t notice I was nearby, I heard him say,

“It’s just so… frustrating.”

When I asked what he was talking about, Teacher only ruffled my hair and said,

“Seeing your smile makes it all better.”

Whenever Teacher seemed upset, that was what I did. I smiled, and laughed, and asked him for help with something I’d been having trouble with. That was what I’d always done, yet doing those things didn’t seem to comfort Fallon at all. He hardly seemed to notice anything other than words.

I wanted to speak, wanted to relieve whatever feelings Fallon was experiencing, but I didn’t know the words for what I wanted to express. He had to understand that what he was saying was wrong. The harder I searched my mind the more my stomach tied itself up in knots.

“I’m sorry,” Fallon said as I tied the ends of the hide strips together in a final tight knot between his wings. He wiped the water from his eyes and lowered his arms. He meekly grasped one hand with his other in his lap. “There’s nothing more that can be done for Aure or Brid, but I’m certain the rest of my Isla can be saved. I may be a burden, but please—don’t forsake them.”

 “I don’t quite get it,” I admitted as I tried piecing what Fallon talked about together with what I knew. I tested the knot and wrapping one final time to make sure Fallon’s wings would stay secure. Satisfied, I began coiling the leftover strips of hide into a tight, neat ball. Then it occurred to me:

“Are you saying there are more Avin somewhere?”

Fallon’s head tilted slightly at my question before he nodded.

“Nuva Isla is full day’s fly from here. We were looking for a safe place, someplace the Zaigatz wouldn’t be able to find,” he said. I helped Fallon to his feet and kept a gentle hold of his thin, fragile-feeling shoulders as he tested his balance with his wings wrapped. At first I would’ve been able to set my chin on his head without having to stoop down, but then Fallon let his ankles down and brought his heels to the floor as if it were the first time in a long time he’d stood flat on the ground. With his feet flat his head was just below my shoulder in height. Fallon’s long and talon-like toenails which were used to being held up at a slightly different angle by his footwear made slight scratching noises against the floor as he shifted on his feet.

“You mentioned Zaigatz before,” I recalled. For some reason my heart felt excited again as I wondered if this was how Teacher felt while he watched over me. “What is it?”

“You don’t know?” He craned his neck to look up at me with his wide violet eyes stretched to their limit. “I’m sorry for being surprised, but it’s unheard of for an Avin not to know of the Zaigatz,” Fallon said. A genuine smile started small before spreading across Fallon’s small face and brightened his once dark features. Fallon struggled to chuckle with his chest bound. “It makes me believe this is the perfect place all the more.”

“So what are the Zaigatz?” I repeated the question. Fallon leaned on me for support as his violet eyes grew distant. In that moment, it was as if Fallon were viewing a world far away. His right hand’s fingers curled into a loose ball as if he were grasping at a memory.

“I only saw them once myself, back when I was still a fledgling. They’re monstrous beasts that devour Avin. The first one I saw was smaller than I am now, but adults are more than twice the size, swiftness, and strength of even the strongest Avin. Somehow they fly with featherless wings despite their huge bodies, and they’re encased in scales almost impossible to pierce,” Fallon said. The more he said the faster Fallon talked.

“Is that why you wear those on your feet?” I gestured toward the pick-studded footwear lying beside the bed of furs. When he saw what I was referring to, Fallon nodded. He wobbled over and picked them up. He turned the picks over in his hand as he explained.

“From the time we fledge Avin are taught to strike for their eyes and do our best to escape. Even if you do manage to injure one, their blood burns through skin, and their saliva dissolves feathers and bone.”

As Fallon told me more, the image of a Zaigatz became even more convoluted in my mind. Teacher never mentioned such a fearsome creature existed in the world. All I could do was compare Fallon’s descriptions to the snakes, lizards, and bats I sometimes saw sunning on the float stones or hanging upside down in the caves of the grotto. A creature of such magnitude and ferocity as the one Fallon described seemed as though it could never exist.

“It’s why I had to find this place,” Fallon said. “And it’s why I must regain my strength and return to Nuva Isla when the pathway through the stream clouds reopens. To those ends… for the hope of all Avin I hope you’ll allow me to rely on you a little longer, So-Rin.”

Somehow, this injured Avin with his wings bound at his sides gave me chills. He looked as if he might blow to pieces like a puff of foam in any considerable breeze, yet Fallon radiated strength that made me feel anything was possible, even those things I couldn’t imagine or could conjure up only with great effort.

Fallon exerted himself in a bow as far as his bound torso and wings would let him. It wasn’t a gesture I’d ever had extended toward me before, though I’d often bowed in thanks to Teacher for his lessons and during prayer.

Some time passed before Fallon rose his ashen face. Fallon immediately stumbled and lost his balance, but regained control without needing help.

Nearby Cray impatiently scratched the ground and swished his neck. He’d been doing this the entire time as he urged me to hurry up and follow him. My excited heart drummed in my ears and I caught myself trembling—was this how Teacher felt whenever I thanked him?

Before I could decide on an answer Cray’s impatience reached its limit. He squawked loudly and skittered up to me. He plucked at me with his sharp beak and broke my concentration. By now Ba’al had tromped back to nest in the furs and peeked at us with one eye, betraying little interest now that he’d gotten some food into his belly.

The top furs were smeared and spotted with Fallon’s blood. Most of the blood had dried into a dark red crust. Add those to the furs sunning outside and it would explain much of Fallon’s paleness, a paleness made all the more striking by the vibrant red of his feathers and hair—he’d lost a lot of blood, and blood loss was one of the few things the forri plant couldn’t help.

Fallon needed to eat, but from the queasiness that still colored his complexion, he also wouldn’t be able to stomach any of the meat in my stockpile. Unless he had some extreme diet I didn’t know about, the one remaining place to look would be the garden.

“Follow me,” I said. I gathered the bloody furs from the top of the bed and headed toward the front door. On the way out I grabbed a rabbit fur shawl to replace the scarf I’d been wearing earlier that was still dirty with blood. Cray bolted past as soon as I lifted the reed door.

I snapped the bloody furs in the midday sun and set them against the rocks. I reached into a crevice in the stone and pulled out several white rocks, some of which easily crushed to a fine powder in my hands. Mixing the powder with a handful of water collected in a small basin carved beside the entrance instantly created a frothy paste that I vigorously worked into the bloodstains. In moments a large amount of the blood was cleaned away, and I repeated the process for each of the dozen furs before shaking them out again and leaving them to dry. It wouldn’t completely rid them of the stains, but it would do.

I cracked my neck tiredly from side to side to relieve the tension in my shoulders after so much hard-muscled work. Exhaustion from going a night without sleep started bubbling up within me, but when I noticed Fallon timidly occupying the doorway, the feeling faded away. I couldn’t allow myself to feel tired just yet.

Fallon peeked past the reed door. His hands looked white as he dug his chip-edged fingernails into to the stone walls. If he were feeling unsteady with his wings tied like they were it made sense he would want to stay back. While the area right in front of the opening was more or less level, the path sloped slightly downward to help keep out the rain.

“It’s not uncommon for those who lose their wings to fall, or to even take off without remembering they can’t fly anymore.”

Fallon seemed acutely aware of the danger from the way he hovered in the doorway, which made me believe he spoke from experience. Even I once lost control not long after my tail feathers were destroyed. Luckily Teacher was there at the time and caught me before I could fall far.

I threw the shawl over my shoulder and crouched down with my back to Fallon. I parted my wings partly in preparation and partly as a protective measure to protect him from the edge in case Fallon fell.

“Come on,” I said.

Cray burst from where he’d been pacing back and forth as though he intended to carve a rut into the stone outside the door. He leapt up and used my back as a runway as he spread his dark-tipped wings and took off to begin circling the sky in wait.

Fallon neither made a move, nor did he say anything in response. I could’ve sworn I heard his fingernails crackle as they bit even harder into the rock wall.

“I carried you here once before. I won’t let you fall,” I said, anticipating Fallon’s fear. “You may not have the taste for meat, but I’m sure you can find something to eat if we go to the garden.”

“Are you certain?” Fallon nudged aside the reed curtain with his shoulder. He took a single tentative step forward. Both his hands still clung desperately to the wall.

I nodded.

Fallon glanced around one last time before he emerged from the cave. He tiptoed along the edge of the wall with his hands sliding along the rock to help him keep his balance. Once he was right behind me Fallon used his hand closest to me to reach for my shoulder. He hesitated before lowering his hand.

His tiny fingertips pressed down into my shoulders as Fallon was mindful not to dig into me with his sharp nails. Once he lowered himself onto my back Fallon wrapped his spindly arms around my neck in a secure hold that felt little different from when I wore several layers of furs around my shoulders.

“Is that alright,” Fallon asked. His soft voice rang like a bird’s crisp chirp beside my ear.

I nodded. I stood and felt Fallon trying to clench around my waist with his long legs, reminding me of how Teacher carried me when I was young.

I grabbed onto Fallon’s legs and secured them to my sides to both make him more comfortable and keep him from falling. It felt awkward at first having his long tail tickling the backs of my knees in addition to my braid. It was almost like I’d spontaneously grown back a tail even more magnificent than the one I’d lost. The added resistance supported my lower half as I tested the range of my wings with Fallon between them. Fallon shifted as he tried to take up as little space as possible, and each time he moved his soft feathers tickled my shoulders and back to the point I almost broke out laughing.

As we worked out the kinks of being two Avin in one, I wondered… was this the world Teacher knew?

Vivid memories and the feeling of safety while riding on Teacher’s back before my wings were strong enough to handle the gusts of the grotto rushed back to me. It was my oldest and fondest memory, one of curiosity, happiness, and pure joy each time I mustered the courage to test my newly fledged wings with Teacher watching over me.

It was hard to imagine there was ever a time when I hesitated to take wing, but back then I was so small and the grotto seemed so big that all I wanted was to be with Teacher.

With Fallon at my back it was as though I were feeling the weight of my body pressing against the cold stone beneath my feet for the first time. The sun never shone brighter or warmer, and the air never felt so supportive beneath my wings. Was this how it felt when someone depended on you, leaned on you, needed you –

“Wait a moment,” Fallon said.

I stumbled at the edge of the float stone and barely caught myself mid-takeoff.

Fallon poked his head out from behind me and eyed the sky. His face was closer than ever before, close enough that I could see the needle-point sized pores of his rounded cheeks. I looked in the same direction, but there was nothing to be seen except for a gliding Cray.

Fallon took both hands off my shoulders and relied on me to keep him steady as he cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled,

“Watch out!” Fallon called to Cray. It was the loudest I’d ever heard his voice aside from his painful howls, and the way he projected his words seemed somehow enchanting. Cray was still circling, wailing now and again as his impatience grew. Fallon again projected in his melodic voice, “There’s a big one coming!”

Seconds later a pulse of air burst from below. I felt the patterns of the air change, and not a moment later Cray’s feathers caught the wild gust. He shot up and to the right, breaking the smooth circle he’d been making into an awkward oval before he regained control.

Almost as dangerous as the float stones themselves were random gusts, depressions, and thermals. Even after living with them my entire life all I knew was when they were most common, right at dawn and dusk. But I’d never been able to predict them before they hit my wings.

Yet here was Fallon, here a single day and already able to stop me and warn Cray both long before the gust actually occurred. I was a good flier, but if a gust that big caught me off guard with Fallon holding on I couldn’t say for sure I would’ve been able to keep my promise not to drop him.

“How did you know a gust was coming,” I asked Fallon. There was no point hiding my eagerness to learn his secret.

At first Fallon looked surprised, then his ashen face flushed closer to a normal color.

“It’s hard to describe,” Fallon said as we watched Cray fly with his wings outspread and his legs hanging straight behind him. Strands of Fallon’s red hair swiped against the side of my face as the gust died down. “I simply ‘feel’ it in the air.”

“You must be an amazing flier then,” I said, impressed.

“Just being able to sense them doesn’t mean I have the strength to do anything,” Fallon said, his violet eyes darkening. His hair brushed alongside of my face as he retreated. He tightened his arms around my neck. “If it were a skill I could teach it would be one thing, but the most I can do is warn others.”

Sensing that was the end of the conversation, I poised myself again, ready to jump. With no warnings coming from Fallon, I took it as an okay to go ahead.

I pushed off from the rock face and caught the steady breeze left behind by the dying thermal. My spread wings caught on and lifted us higher until we were far above the float stones in the relative safety of the high open sky. Cray swooped around in my wake and stopped his squawking now that we were finally on our way to the garden.

The fly to the garden was an easy one and was over by the time the sun crested the sky. Fallon spoke up a couple of times, in both instances to help me find flowing streams of air that made the flight even easier.

“This is your garden?” Fallon commented as my feet touched down on the only loamy soil in the grotto. I knelt down and Fallon slid off my back. His long toes and talon-like nails sunk familiarly into the soil as he tested his balance on the uneven and sloping ground. Cray landed a short distance away and chattered impatiently when he realized I’d stopped.

Several nearby ferns rippled like waves in water as invisible small animals who called the garden home recognized my presence and ran off to find new hiding places. Cray aimlessly chased after the ripples in an effort to entertain himself as I remained with Fallon.

Fallon didn’t have to look around long before his eyes fixed themselves on a bush covered in tiny, dark blue berries. His footsteps made squishing noises in the damp soil as he trotted in front of me and headed straight for the bush.

“Are these…” he wondered for a moment before he plucked a berry from the heavy branches and popped it into his mouth. His face twisted and the color rushed back into his cheeks when he exclaimed, “Blueberries!”

I couldn’t hold back my smile at his appreciation of Teacher’s and my hard work. Fallon’s nimble fingers plucked the berries from the bush without so much as bruising the skin of a single berry between his fingertips before he popped them into his mouth.

The rocky crags and dry, cracked surfaces of most float stones in the grotto hardly grew more than a transient herb or tough, bristly bush fortunate enough to find a place to plant their roots. The mile wide garden was like a completely different world and had an abundance of meandering, terraced hills and valleys that prevented the loss of water, soil, and sand.

Compared to most float stones which were jagged-edged and discordantly shaped, the garden was an ovular, disc-like shape that would be noteworthy even if it hadn’t been green with overgrowth. It was only through the delicate mixing of scraps, plants, and the ground-down sand produced by the float stones hovering near the garden that Teacher and I created and managed this unique space.

It was here where Teacher taught me how to care for the plants precious to the few animals on the grotto gathered here who we, in turn, would sometimes use for food, clothing, and tools. It was at this time that Cray returned, thoroughly bored of his chase as he again urged me onward. It made my stomach clench uncomfortably to leave Fallon behind, but I didn’t want to tear him away now that he’d finally found something he could stomach.

“Will you be alright here?” I asked, fully expecting Fallon to ask me to stay behind.

We were far from the edge of the garden so there was little risk of him falling off the edge. This far in the thick moss feeding the roots of the berry bushes would cushion him if he tripped. Only small herbivores and nonpoisonous snakes occupied the place, and they always stayed away….

A slight rustle in the nearby bushes alerted me to a tiny mouse skittering toward Fallon. Instead of being surprised by the visitor, Fallon pulled one of the berries from the bush and handed it to the tiny creature without a moment’s thought.

“It’s tough being so small. The ones on the high branches are always tastier, aren’t they,” Fallon asked the mouse. The brown mouse rose onto its haunches, took the berry into its tiny fingers and started nibbling and licking at the blue skin. It seemed like it was content staying next to Fallon, but the moment I moved the mouse bit into the berry and ran into the bushes to safety.

My shoulders slumped and I let out a sigh. Fallon seemed surprised, but when he looked back at me there was a broad smile struck across his face hidden partly by his hand as he chuckled.

“If you look at it so intensely like that, of course it’s going to be frightened,” he said. Fallon bent down on all fours and started making tiny, pitching noises just like a mouse. Before long the mouse returned, but it kept one eye warily on me and its feet turned ready to flee. “To be honest, I was terrified the first time I saw you too, So-Rin; your eyes are so much like a Zaigatz’s, I thought this might’ve actually been a Zaigatz Isla,” Fallon said. He handed the mouse a berry and scratched its tiny forehead with his fingernail. Fallon coaxed the mouse into his hand and held it up toward me. “If you’re gentle, I’m sure it’ll let you touch it,” Fallon said.

I extended my hand, fully prepared for the mouse to turn and run – but it didn’t.

A moment later and my fingertip caressed its warm fur. I could feel its tiny body shudder as it gnawed at the last of its blueberry, and when it was gone it grabbed onto my finger and sniffed at it as if it expected me to give it another.

 “There So-Rin’s not so bad, right? You just needed to get to know each other.”

A sharp beak jabbed at my leg and I jumped. I glared at Cray and he threw up his beak as though I’d insulted him by giving any attention to anyone but him. By the time I looked back at Fallon the mouse had retreated up his arm and was hiding in Fallon’s feathers, the only spot of muddy brown mixed in with his vibrant red plumage.

Cray was nearly at his wits’ end as he tried to get me to do what he wanted, but the more he tried to hurry me the less I wanted to go with him.

“We’ll be fine here, you go on ahead,” Fallon said as he coaxed the mouse out of his feathers by offering it another berry.

Before I could say anything Cray again jabbed me in the leg as though to hurry me along now that there didn’t seem to be any reason for me to stay behind.

“Fine,” I yelled at Cray and swatted at him before he could get another peck in on my sore legs. “I’ll be right back,” I said to Fallon, but he’d already gone back to dining on the berries. I pointed in the direction Cray was leading me and said, “I’ll be right over there. If you need anything just call me.”

Fallon wouldn’t be alone even without me, as the number of mice and voles gathered at his feet steadily grew the further away I got from him. Each of them received a berry in turn, but before I looked away Fallon waved at me and yelled,

“Thank you So-Rin!”

At the far opposite side of the garden washed an expanse of long, grassy plants. After many years of growth this rare spread of green plant life stood atop the matted remains of their predecessors which helped retain water around the roots of their descendants. The entire garden smelled of dampness and decay, an aroma found nowhere else within the grotto which elsewhere smelled almost unanimously of stone.

I flew upward, no more than about ten feet, to a second disc-like float stone hovering close enough to the garden it had begun bending the tips of the tall reeds and grasses. A small spout and dam Teacher and I constructed long ago held back the water gathered inside.

Peering into the pool revealed numerous semitransparent fry swimming around in the collected water. Mixed in with them were a few fish already sporting their first hint of stone-gray color. The last time I’d been here was to put some eggs into the water that Cray found elsewhere in the garden so they could develop undisturbed.

A glistening trickle of water fell steadily through the overflow spout. When I unstopped the dam and pulled up the sheet of rock blocking the water a gushing stream poured out and into the lower beds right along with the small fishes, a few crabs, and some waterweed that had been swept up in the movement of the water.

I shoved my head into the frigid water, and only after holding my breath for several seconds as the water poured down over me, fry and all, did my excitement start to subside. I’d never touched something as small as a mouse before without it trying to run away in fear. And the smile on Fallon’s face, seeing him so happy like that….

I just couldn’t stop grinning!

With less weighing it down as the water poured out, the float stone gradually rose. I stopped up the dam once the rushing torrent died down to a calm trickle and the float stone was several times higher above the garden than it had initially been.

By the time I landed Cray was already knee-deep in the water chasing down the panicked crayfish, crabs, and fish as they tried to escape into the reeds or burrow into the soil.

“You’re welcome,” I said as I wrung my wet hair dry. It didn’t take much effort. My hair and wings were so oily water beaded off of me, but a couple of the furs I was wearing had soaked up some of the water and felt heavy. 

Cray’s response came in the form of the satisfied undulation of his neck as he enjoyed the first of many tiny shimmering fry. I wriggled my webbed toes in the mud and touched an unsuspecting fry before it swam away.

“There are so many plants I’ve never seen before, not even on other Islas.”

I looked up and saw Fallon.

Rather than calling to me or waiting for me to come to him, Fallon found a convenient path to me along the sandbars. His hands were stained blue and a tiny smudge of juice clung to his lips as he eyed the plants in awe. Fallon ran his hands along the tall grasses as he approached but stopped when he came to one overflowing with tiny seeds. When he brushed the seeds with his hand, several came loose in his palm. Fallon eyed the seeds for a moment before tasting one.

Not many animals enjoyed eating that particular plant, but it was a favorite of Teacher’s to grow. He said it was precious water-loving plant that always grew toward the sky.

“What is this,” Fallon asked as he knocked more seeds from the plants nearby and began eating them almost as eagerly as he had with the blueberries. “They smell similar… but they’re all different colors, and each tastes a bit different too.”

“They’re called water oats,” I informed him. I hopped over to him, half-gliding as I made my way through the now deepened field over to Fallon. Dark colored fish in varying sizes sucked at the water’s surface around Fallon for fallen grains. A couple of brightly feathered waterfowl I didn’t know swished their webbed feet in the fresh water nearby and eyed him with interest as they too plucked the surface of the water.

I untied one of my longest pelts from my belt and handed it to Fallon. I searched the area for a dry reed among the cattails and long grasses. Once I found one I waded into the water up to my knees and pulled the hollow yellow reed from the water.

I returned to Fallon with the reed and spread the pelt over a dry, black sandbar. Fallon seemed to be staring at the pair of knives lashed to my upper thigh. From the moment I took off the pelt he seemed unable to look away from the knives, most likely because he hadn’t realized I had them on me. My thick pelts made them difficult to see, and I was so used to wearing them that I sometimes forgot about them altogether. The filleting knife was thin and long, but the hunting knife was several times broader and almost twice as long, with a curved and flat side good for any number of uses, especially when preparing meat.

Rather than say anything about it, Fallon looked back at the water oats as I took several stalks in hand and bent them gently over the pelt. I pounded the grains loose, careful to do just as Teacher once showed me to in order not to break the stems and allow any unripe grains to continue growing. Fallon watched silently as I did this several more times. In minutes a pile of seeds ranging in color from light green to dark brown collected on the pelt.

“Is there anything else that interests you,” I asked. I was glad it wasn’t turning out to be a problem finding something Fallon found palatable, especially since water oats were plentiful.

The deep lines on the bridge of Fallon’s nose reappeared and he shook his head. His thin lips parted as though he were about to speak, but he seemed to be hesitating now that I’d made it clear why I brought him with me.

“Go ahead,” I told him with a smile. I gestured to the garden around us. “There’s all sorts of things, so I thought it would be good to go through and find out what you like now, you know, kill two birds with one stone.” I realized too late the inappropriateness of my expression when Fallon flinched.

Cray high-stepped through the water a fair distance away behind Fallon, ducking and bowing his head beneath the reeds and coming up each time with a mouthful of fish or some other small creature. Now that he’d gotten what he wanted he was promptly ignoring us.

The lines on Fallon’s nose disappeared as he scanned the garden. It wasn’t long before he became engrossed in browsing for food. It was clear on Fallon’s face whenever he found a plant he recognized, just as his curiosity was apparent whenever he came across something new, regardless of whether it actually seemed appetizing to him. We even came across a young forri plant, and when I explained what it was to Fallon and how I used it when treating his wounds, he became especially intrigued. He told me he’d never heard of anything like it before. I harvested some of the leaves and berries and tucked them safely away in a pocket on the inner side of one of my pelts to prepare more medicine for Fallon later.

We spent much of the afternoon pulling roots, testing plants, collecting berries, and uprooting mushrooms I knew many other animals enjoyed so Fallon could give them a try. As it turned out, his favorites were among the abundant grains, small nuts, and berries. Each time he tried something and liked it Fallon would always tell me how good it was and make me have a taste too, but everything tasted either bland, too bitter, or too sweet to be appetizing to me. I tried them anyhow, if for no other reason than that it would help me remember them later.

As the sun sank low in the sky I noticed Fallon’s movements become laborious. It occurred to me he might be tired, but when I brought it up with him…

“No, I want to look a little longer yet,” Fallon said. His face was pale and every time he rose or knelt down he seemed to take a little longer before he regained his teetering sense of balance. He uprooted a small, delicate yellow flower, sniffed it, and handed it to me to add to our growing collection of samples. “I want to bring as many plants with me as possible to show everyone back on Nuva Isla. I want to know everything there is in this garden, and if possible, add to those plants already here.”

It caught me by surprise. All day I had been thinking only of Fallon’s tastes, but he seemed to have some other motive he’d been keeping hidden from me all day during our search.

“There isn’t much time, so I want to do as much as I can,” Fallon said. He swished the muck from another unassuming root plant, temporarily blemishing the clear water around his feet. As he handed me the plant this time, he looked me straight in the eye and said, “I can’t thank you enough, So-Rin, for opening your home up to us.”

Us?

Before I could ask what was on my mind, Fallon turned back to rifling through the plants.

“When Aure, Brid, and I first arrived, we saw nothing but a vast field of broken and desolate float stones. It terrified me that all we’d worked for would come to such a dire end.” Fallon chuckled. “Who could’ve imagined someone else already found the key to the legendary Isla and made it so livable? And for you to be so welcoming, to share the food you and your teacher spent your lives cultivating, to share your skills…. Avin just don’t do that anymore, not after what happened and the dissolution of the 16 Islas Unified Front. Even if we had managed to survive here for the three days and nights’ time before the hole in the stream clouds reopened, even if we were able to return and make a successful move from Nuva Isla, without food, shelter, and knowledge of the way this Isla works I’m not certain how many would’ve preferred that sort of prolonged life over digging in their claws back home and being devoured by the Zaigatz.”

It was a lot to take in, and there was much I didn’t understand. But based on what Fallon told me before, one thing was perfectly clear.

“You really plan to fly two days from now?”

The question that mattered most to me came out all on its own. I eyed the wound hidden between Fallon’s wings from above as he scanned the muddy water. While his wound would heal quickly thanks to the forri plant, Fallon needed several more days of rest and care than he seemed to have as part of his plans before attempting to fly again. At the very least his stitches would come out, and if the worst happened… without being fully recovered his strength wouldn’t be enough to keep him airborne.

“The passage opens again in the afternoon, two days from now. I must be ready by then,” Fallon said. He stopped rooting through the mud and held one of his hands to his forehead. His expression looked frail, like his calm, calculating mask was falling under the pressure of some other expression breaking underneath. “We’re already out of time. The next time the stream clouds will open is weeks from now, and by the time they open after that, Nuva Isla will have already long since crossed over into the Zaigatz’s territory….”

Just listening to Fallon speak made me feel overwhelmed. While I knew little of what he was talking about, Fallon was incredibly concerned about these other Avin and their troubles with the Zaigatz. No matter what we did Fallon always seemed to be thinking of them, pushing himself past his limits for their sakes and putting himself at risk.

‘Don’t worry, So-Rin, not every hunt will be successful. Cressa and Nassima will always provide. They’re always with you, watching over and helping you. Let me teach you a special charm…’

That. That was what it felt like.

Eyes darting about and unable to focus. A quivering voice, a trembling body too exhausted to move. Fallon wrapped his other arm around his stomach and I knew from the sick look on his face exactly what he was feeling.

I pushed Fallon’s hand aside and flattened back his hair. Without his hair obscuring his face Fallon’s large eyes appeared even bigger. He tried to shake my hand loose, but his jittery body just shuddered without much effect.

“Let me teach you a special charm,” I said.

I dipped my hand into the clear water beside me and scooped up a handful of water. I trickled a few drops onto each of Fallon’s arms, trailing a line from each of his hands to his shoulders.

“You are strong. Nothing can stop you.”

Again I trailed a line along his legs.

“You are quick. Nothing gets past you.”

I stopped before putting water on Fallon’s wings. Normally the longest flight feathers would have water similarly dropped along its length, but with his wings covered that wouldn’t be possible, so I just put two drops each on them.

“You are supported. You do not fly alone.”

I dropped the remainder of the water and touched the finger next to my pinkie over Fallon’s heart.

“Your heart is calm. Know you are beloved.”

Finally, I smoothed Fallon’s hair to the side again and touched my thumb to the center of his forehead.

“Your mind is clear. You know all you need to know.”

A faded scar traced a thin, bald line through Fallon’s right eyebrow. And beneath that scar, Fallon’s eyes stared back at me. The drops of water that’d been hanging onto my thumb rolled down either side of his nose and down his flushed cheeks.

“How do you feel,” I asked as I pulled back my hand. Fallon surrounded my hand with his icy cold ones, and I noticed his skin had risen with soft, puffy wrinkles. We’d dug all day in the same water and muck, however while my webbed hands were warm and shed water with ease, Fallon’s skin absorbed the drops of water leaving him cold and wet. Our wings seemed to mirror our hands; although my wiry feathers were dry, several of Fallon’s, specifically the tips of his primary and tail feathers, were soaked and matted from wading around all afternoon. I’d been keeping a close eye on the wrap around Fallon’s torso to ensure it stayed dry, but I’d completely neglected the rest of him. Despite my intentions, I’d even  thoughtlessly poured more water over him.

“We should head back now. It’s warm back home, you can dry off and get some rest –”

Fallon bowed his head to me, but instead of just leaving it at that, he leaned forward and buried his face in my chest.

“That’s quite the effective charm,” Fallon said a moment later when he backed away. He wiped his eyes with his shoulder and handed me the plants he’d gathered into a neat pile on a sandbar beside him. I put them with the rest on the animal pelt, but for some reason I couldn’t seem to tie the pack together. I always had trouble with knots because of my webbed fingers, but this time I couldn’t even manage starting to tie a single knot. I was happy Fallon found the charm useful, but that didn’t explain why I just couldn’t seem to keep my hands steady.

Noticing my struggle, Fallon stepped. His long and nimble fingers tied several tight knots in no time at all. Watching his quick work reminded me of the thin strands of twisted plant-fiber rope that’d bound the stone picks to Fallon’s feet and had been so difficult for me to untie.

“That should do it. I’m ready to go whenever you are,” Fallon said as he tried to heft up the heavy pack. “I didn’t realize we’d gathered so much. This won’t be too much for you to carry, will it… So-Rin?”

“We’ll bank right at the next float stone,” I said. I let go of Fallon’s thigh for a moment and gestured to a smooth, round float stone in the distance.

The float stones shifted at random as the hot, rising thermals of day cooled and depressed. Float stones were scarce at our current elevation, but regular concussions from below sent shockwaves through the air that made my feathers shiver. The storm clouds tracing the outermost reaches of the grotto roared like some ancient beast awakening as the world basked in the last of the sun’s energizing rays.

It was around this time, one day ago, that I’d found Fallon battered but alive in the cracks gouged between two monolithic float stones.

It was due to Fallon being with me that I felt confidence enough to let my mind relax as we flew at this most tumultuous time of day, a time when float stones would sometimes be hurled by a hot gust or be pulled into a cold pocket leaving little time to react. This was because…

“Slow down, and angle up a little more,” Fallon advised from his position between my wings as he clung to my back. One of Fallon’s hands appeared in my field of vision. He demonstrated what he wanted me to do by angling his hand. Somehow Fallon had the ability to sense the air and what it would do, long before it happened.

As we came up on the float stone I slowed my approach and angled my wings just as Fallon suggested. Right as I began my turn, we were greeted by a rising pocket of hot air. The hot air lifted us just high enough to avoid another float stone hidden in the shadow of the first without having to make any last-second corrections that would’ve made for a bumpy ride.

While it wasn’t as though I couldn’t have managed on my own, with all the extra weight I was hauling between Fallon and the collection of plants we’d gathered, it would’ve definitely been difficult.

All I had to do was listen and do as Fallon said.

“So that’s what it was,” Fallon commented as we overtook the once-hidden float stone.

Just imagining flying the grotto’s low field with that kind of skill made my heart pound excitedly in my chest. Each time I pressed him about it, however, Fallon insisted it unfortunately just wasn’t something he could teach.

Cold darkness swathed the grotto as the western storm clouds devoured the last of the sun’s rays in its frothing maw. Even the wild movements of the float stones slowed before eventually coming to an all but complete halt without the sun’s light to fuel them.

While I was plenty warm with the many layers of furs and pelts wrapped around me, tiny bumps rose on Fallon’s legs and his hands started shaking on my shoulders. I’d offered a pelt to Fallon before leaving the garden, but he’d refused it even when I let him know how quickly conditions in the grotto changed after sundown. Before I could ask him if he wanted to land and reconsider, Fallon spoke.

“It gets dark so quickly here,” Fallon said. His voice was just loud enough for me to hear over the whistling wind numbing my ears.

“The dark season is coming,” I said. I pulled my white rabbit’s-fur shawl up over my mouth and nose to keep the cold out of my lungs. “Soon there’ll only be a couple hours of sunlight each day.”

The moment the sun’s colorful halo left the sky, the silvery moon showed itself in the east and took over the job of illuminating the world. Innumerable tiny stars twinkled red, gold, silver, and blue alongside it and banished the utter blackness that threatened to reach up from the world below and choke everything in its frigid grasp.

The stream of flowing air I’d been riding suddenly ended. I descended dozens of feet before I was able to regain control.

“Are you alright,” I asked Fallon. Although I hadn’t let my guard all the way down, it’d been the first time since we’d started flying that Fallon allowed me to go headlong into such marked turbulence without at least a word of warning.

“I apologize,” Fallon stuttered. His shaking seemed to be even worse than before. The fall wasn’t a particularly bad or uncommon one for a normal flight, so Fallon’s reaction was odd. “I’m just no good in the dark. I can’t see anything, and everything feels… different.”

“Really? It doesn’t seem too different to me,” I said.

Sure, once the sun went down it got a little colder and everything tended to be a bit more uniform in shade and color, but so long as it wasn’t an overcast or moonless night it wasn’t as though it was too dark to navigate the sky. A little quieter, a little calmer… the more I thought about it, the more I realized I enjoyed flying at night even more than during the day.

“It’s amazing how you can just keep flying unphased like this. It just shows how free from danger the grotto really is,” Fallon commented. He nuzzled his face next to my ear and tightened his arms around my shoulders and neck, making it easier to hear his whispering voice. “I’ve been to so many different Islas, but the single rule that’s always the same is a total prohibition of casual night flight. Only the strongest fliers are allowed to guard the nest at night. It’s harder to see at night too, so it’s easier for a Zaigatz to overtake an Avin without them realizing it. That you can just keep going without a second thought here… it would be impossible anywhere else.”

“Is that so?”

Although I again didn’t recognize every word Fallon used, I got the feeling I had the right impression that in other places it was against the rules to fly at night. It made sense if it was a rule for a fledgling—even Teacher wouldn’t let me fly at night until I was a juvenile and my flying reflexes were better—but the idea that someone had to be a particularly exceptional flyer to enjoy a night fly was bizarre. Anyone flying at night for the first time was sure to flounder at first, but a little bit of experience would have them flying as if it were broad daylight in no time.

Putting this rule into practice during the peak of the dark season was particularly unimaginable. During a short period of time right before the days would begin lengthening again, it would be impossible to fly to the outer rim and back in the short daytime. It certainly wasn’t as though I was going to coop myself up the entire time just because it was a little darker and colder, no different from how I would go to sleep before sundown during the just as extreme peak of the light season.

For some reason, an odd set of ideas began bubbling up in my mind. The more I thought those ideas over, the more I felt a nagging need to speak my thoughts aloud.

“Sure it’s a bit different when it’s late at night and you’re tired, but even if you were a horrible flier your skill helps you find easier air and prepare for tough spots….”

When I tried stringing the thoughts together in my mind, they seemed to add up to something so unthinkable that the only way I could ever hope to understand was by trying to put the thoughts into words.

“Do you… not… enjoy flying?”

I stumbled over the words as I tried to get them out in what felt like the right order. Even after speaking what I knew to be the right words aloud, the question felt so utterly foreign to me that I had to think a moment before I started to understand their combined meaning.

“Enjoy… flying?”

The return question from Fallon seemed to have a hard time forming on his lips just as much as my own question had been difficult for me.

“You know,” I said. My brow furrowed as I scoured my brain in search of words capable of explaining the unexplainable. “When you just spread your wings and fly for fun.”

Fallon didn’t respond for a while after that. Before I could think up another way to explain what I meant, he responded.

“Avin fly from place to place and we circle our Islas while watching for Zaigatz and invaders. Avin fly for survival and the better you are at flying, the more useful you are to your Isla. Weak fliers with small wings like mine have no purpose unnecessarily taking to the skies. Even coming here I…” Fallon paused before continuing. “It’s just a burden on those stronger Avin tasked to protecting us when we do, and even if we would have to take to the skies we aren’t very useful anyway. It’s better for everyone if those with no business flying just stay out of the sky where they can’t get in the way.”

I had more or less gotten used to the usual dispassionate whispers that required me to actively listen for Fallon’s voice. This time when Fallon spoke, however, his voice seemed somehow harder. The way he stressed each word eradicated the sense of melody from his voice and gave the impression he was reciting from memory rather than speaking his own mind.

A singular large float stone grew as I kept course and closed in on home. The familiar shimmering, polished contours of hand and footholds glistened familiarly in the moonlight. Reaching up towards the sky at its uppermost peak loomed the red-stained white stone which, familiar as it was by daylight, appeared now as a darkness-speckled moonlit beacon glowering at me in silent warning.

As we circled down toward the entrance Fallon loosened his grip on me in preparation for our landing.

We landed without incident.

However… there remained of our fly a nagging, annoying itch at the back of my brain. No matter how hard I tried to ignore it, it refused to go away.

I unleashed the bag of food we’d collected from the makeshift harness around my waist. I’d meant to set it in front of me, but ended up tossing it instead.

The supple hide bowled straight into the reed door. It clattered loudly as several of the reeds bent back and snapped from the sudden force.

The entire door slumped at a haphazard angle that revealed the red glow of the fire veins within. Even with inviting waves of heat emanating from the now broken door I couldn’t bring myself to take a step forward. I didn’t even feel the urge to scold myself over the senselessly cracked reeds or worry myself with thoughts of whether I had any extras or if I would need to return to the garden tomorrow to gather more.

“You don’t have to carry me anymore, So-Rin.”

At those words, at the relief in Fallon’s voice, the floodgates rushed open. The itching sensation went away with the realization that Fallon was happy to have landed. He was glad to no longer to be flying.

It was unthinkable, yet I couldn’t interpret his words as meaning anything else.

Nothing, that is, except for one other thing:

Fallon perceived himself as a burden.

All at once everything Fallon said over the last day, everything I’d thought about him in those moments, seemed completely wrong.

The very first thing he ever said to me were words begging me to leave him to die. The moment he had even the tiniest bit of strength back in him, he pleaded with me to search for some other Avin who were already long dead. His questions about Teacher, the grotto, and even the things he asked about me… all of it seemed to be a thin veil disguising something else. As I rethought his questions an ugly feeling bubbled up from deep within my gut.

Looking back at what Fallon said in the garden, it occurred to me that the reason for his excitement wasn’t his personal happiness at being able to enjoy the blueberries and rice I’d planted and raised with Teacher: he was trying to discern the things some other Avin might want, what some other Avin might like or need to know.

His smile at that time, his confidence… what did it really mean? Where had it come from, and what was it for?

 Although I’d never seen him fly before myself and didn’t know how far this “Nuva Isla” was, Fallon planned to take off alone in less than two days, just before sundown. He pushed himself in every way imaginable just to get back to some other Avin who at any other time made him think of himself as just “in the way.”

Why was Fallon trying so hard?

Until now, all of it had slipped right by me. When it was just Teacher and me it was easy; we knew everything there was to know about each other, all our likes and dislikes, all our fears and successes too. We worked together not just to survive but to have fun doing it. I’d focused exclusively on Fallon ever since I found him, experiencing joys and fears in his company I hadn’t felt in the longest time. But now I realized Fallon himself was focused somewhere else entirely, and that I’d been enjoying those moments alone while he suffered over a world and problems I didn’t know.

Could I have missed something with Teacher too?

And if I did… just what, and how much did I miss? How much of him did I know, and how much of him would I never have the chance to know?

My heart lurched in my chest as another series of thought came to me, thoughts I’d never had before in my entire life.

If Fallon knew a way out of the grotto, did Teacher know it too? Were there other Avin who could come and go as they pleased while I was stuck here all this time alone?

Did Teacher really fall, or could some other Avin have come and taken him?

What if Teacher left me alone by his own choice?

And if Fallon left too… what if he left and never came back?

What then?

A crack of thunder echoed from the outermost reaches of the grotto.

Were Teacher’s smiles meant for me, or were they meant for someone, something else? Did Teacher really mean it when he said he was fine, that he wasn’t angry at me, and that he didn’t blame me for the loss of his wings? What did he do every day when I went out hunting? Just what was he watching for when he stared out over the grotto for hours on end, day after day?

No matter how much I may have wanted to ask him, Teacher was no longer able to give me any answers. But Fallon…

He saw himself as a burden. He was trying so hard for these other Avin who didn’t even want him. But I wasn’t like them. I didn’t think of him as a burden, and I wanted him to stay.

So then how… how could I get him to want to stay?

There had to be something here, something he wanted. Something he could get nowhere else. A warm bed, food, water… these were all things I couldn’t imagine an Avin living without, all of which I had in abundance. If those weren’t enough, what else did I have that I could offer? What would make Fallon want to never leave, and if I really couldn’t keep him from leaving, what would make him certainly want to come back?

As all these thoughts barraged my mind Fallon waited to be set down without so much as a hint of impatience.

“So-Rin?” Fallon said.

The way he said my name felt distant to me, just like when he told me it had connections to some other word. What difference did it make if my name meant “soaring” anyway? My name would’ve been just the same even if no one ever said it, but then Fallon had to come along and tell me it meant something other than me. If I wasn’t “So-Rin” then who was I? Was Ba’al Ba’al, or was he a “Bald Eagle” like Fallon said he was?

“Are you alright, So-Rin?”

No, I was not alright.

My heart trembled and a fearsome adrenaline pulsed through my veins. My mouth tasted like dry sand and any words that managed to trickle down from my brain slipped through the cracks long before they could reach my voice. There were so many things I could’ve asked or said, but the one that made it to my lips was:

“Fallon… what does it mean,” I asked.

“What did you say, I couldn’t quite hear you,” Fallon said. He wriggled uncomfortably on my back like he were trying to subtly remind me that I could put him down.

He was light as a feather, a tiny presence between my wings. Didn’t he realize we were close enough to the edge of the float stone yet that he could fall?

Didn’t he realize that in less than a second I could throw him over if I wanted to?

For a moment I wondered what it would look like if he fell. Would he expect me to come after him? Would he find some way to fly? Would he disappear without so much as a word?

If I did and if Fallon were to disappear, would it be like he never existed at all? Could I go back to how it was before I found him?

Or would I forget him for a while, only to find his broken bones years from now among the float stones of the field?

“Fallon,” I repeated. I tried looking over my shoulder at him, but couldn’t quite see Fallon’s face. “If my name is ‘soaring,” then what does ‘Fallon’ mean?”

I listened for an answer.

“Fallon… you mean my name? It’s so silly,” Fallon chuckled. His voice was barely loud enough to hear. “You’ll definitely laugh—the one who named me apparently meant for my name to be Farran for ‘hopeful future,’ but my caretaker misheard and raised me calling me ‘Fallon’ for ‘final descendant’ instead.”

“Why not just call yourself ‘Farran’ if ‘Fallon’ was a mistake?” I asked.

There was something in the way Fallon talked about his name in a way that made it seem like he didn’t like it.

 “Fallon was more fitting, I thought,” he said. “Everyone had already been calling me ‘Fallon’ my entire life, so it didn’t seem worth the trouble correcting such a tiny mistake.”

It made me think:

Was So-Rin really my name? Or was I remembering it incorrectly? And for that matter… what had Teacher’s name been? I knew his name wasn’t ‘Teacher,’ yet…

Nothing came to mind.

“Was that all?”

Fallon’s voice rang light in my ear. It was like he thought nothing of our conversation or why I’d asked for the meaning behind his name.

I snatched up one of the furs that’d dried in the sun all day, snapped it with one hand, and lopped it over my shoulder to Fallon. He chirped in surprise when the thick fur came down on top of him. As Fallon struggled to find an opening, I wrapped myself in a rabbit-fur scarf. Eventually Fallon poked his head out of the fur pelt where a young buck’s neck had once been.

“Use that to keep warm,” I told Fallon. I turned my back to the warm cave.

“What’s wrong? Did something happen?” Fallon asked in a fluster. The origin of his voice alternated between my two ears as he searched our surroundings.

It wasn’t until I’d leapt with all the strength my legs could muster, wasn’t until I’d burst through several layers of air in a sharp ascent that so much as a feather’s weight of what was roiling inside of me quelled. Fallon clung to me the entire time, yelling things like “Watch out!” “Careful!” and “Not that way!” but I ignored every warning as I overcame each obstacle through sheer force alone.

“What are you doing, So-Rin?” Fallon’s voice awkwardly jarred as he struggled to keep from bouncing around on my back.

Fallon’s sharp fingernails dug into the thick fur swaddled around my shoulders. The chipped edges sliced through the fur like a series of tiny blades, yet they hesitated once they started biting into my skin.

Fallon noticed right away and shifted so that he grabbed his own forearms instead. I tightened my hold on his legs to reassure him that I wouldn’t drop him no matter how fast or hard we flew. Somehow he managed not to drop the fur. It was one of the finest I owned, and had been caught, skinned, and cleaned by Teacher.

“You’d better be paying attention! This is what it’s like to fly at night,” I whooped and threw my head back as we pressed higher. No matter how I maneuvered though, I couldn’t seem to get Fallon to look up and out of the back of my neck.

Soon the hazy mist that always collected just above the grotto after sunset was far below, and nothing but the moon and stars occupied the sky overhead. Even the unending storm marking the barrier of the grotto thinned and calmed at this height without the energy of the sun beating down on it, although the glow from the moon made the storm appear just as opaque and menacing as ever.

Only a single float stone ranged this high. I nudged Fallon with my shoulder and pointed toward it.

“There’s someone I want you to meet,” I said. I fumbled over some of the words when Fallon dug his leg—the one no longer supported by my hand—into my side. He never did look up, not even when I grabbed onto him again.

Thinking we just needed to get closer, I swooped in toward the lone float stone. It wasn’t very big; it was only about twice the size of Teacher’s white stone. I knew from the past that if you looked through the head-size opening it was completely hollow inside, like the inside of a nut-shell after ants ate out the meat.

I positioned myself in front of the opening and sucked in as much of the thin air as my lungs could hold. I pulled down my scarf and whooped as ear-splittingly as I could.

Moisture from my breath froze into a tiny cloud of icy mist. Some of the droplets melted and re-froze into gemstone-like crystals on my furs.

A tired caw confirmed the presence of the float stone’s lone resident, so I flew closer. I wasn’t sure what I would’ve done if he wasn’t home, but given his stomach was still likely stuffed from yesterday it’d seemed like a safe bet that I would find him sleeping in his nest.

I lifted my fur scarf again and used the warmth still caught in it to keep the cold air from lancing my lungs. Once my lungs had their fill, I pulled the scarf away from my mouth again and yelled into the quiet night.

“Rüppell, wake up you old turkey!” I taunted as I filled the quiet air with as much noise as it could carry.

Fallon let out a yelp in alarm and instantly contracted himself around me. I’d changed my wingbeat pattern mid-yell and unintentionally bumped his free leg and he lost his grip.

“Please take me back So-Rin, I want to go back down,” Fallon blubbered into my ear.

My heart that’d been beating louder than the wind in my ears stopped cold. I lost my concentration and my wings faltered, causing us to drop a few feet in an instant.

“So-Rin!”

This time when I looked over my shoulder at Fallon, his eyes were clouded in tears that barely had time enough to leave his eyes before they froze either onto my furs or at the ends of his long, red eyelashes. His mouth trembled partly out of cold, but mostly, clearly, out of fear. Fallon clung to me in overt desperation. He was no longer considering my comfort as his arms constricted around my neck like a pair of thick, mouse-stuffed garden snakes and his knees pressed into my diaphragm from both sides making it doubly difficult to breathe.

Rüppell poked his head out from a crag in the float stone to see what all the commotion was. He glared at me in annoyed disinterest—that is, until he noticed Fallon poking his head over my shoulder.

“I wanted you to meet Rüppell,” I said in an attempt to distract Fallon. It wasn’t completely untrue, but after I said it, it seemed like a weak excuse. But it turned out to be just enough.

“What a magnificent vulture,” Fallon observed as Rüppell emerged. “Magnificent” seemed like a bit much for Rüppell, but if Fallon really thought so highly of Rüppell maybe it would keep him distracted long enough for Fallon to relax.

“This is Fallon,” I said as I went with the flow and introduced Rüppell to Fallon.

Rüppell jostled his mottled feathers at his side, his eyes reflecting his unhidden curiosity in the white moonlight as he extended his neck toward us.

“Fallon needs to know what it’s like to fly at night,” I told Rüppell.

A mighty glint came to Rüppell’s eyes. He straightened his neck and puffed out his chest not unlike how Ba’al would.

Whereas Ba’al preferred soaring in the mid-regions of the grotto, Rüppell could fly and glide at the uppermost limits of the sky itself.

Rüppell turned up his beak proudly into the still air, lifted his wings, and with several mighty thrusts hefted himself into the sky without descending so much as an inch.

“So-Rin,” Fallon shuddered my name in a meek whimper. It reminded me a bit of when he tried to get out of eating the fish a second time. But just like then, I wasn’t going to let him get his way without at least trying.

I followed in Rüppell’s wake. He conditioned the air with his powerful wings which made it easier for me to steady myself and make Fallon’s ride just a bit smoother. Tiny droplets of sparkling moisture condensed around Rüppell’s wingtips in a tiny stream before being reabsorbed by the air.

“All the vultures I’ve ever seen have been much smaller than this one,” Fallon commented wearily. Although he sounded tired, his arms and legs were cinched around me just as tightly as ever.

“His name is Rüppell,” I reminded him. I chuckled into my scarf at the thought of a tiny Rüppell.

“Y-yes, Rüppell,” Fallon chattered coldly as he alternated between speaking and nuzzling his face into the rabbit fur. “This grotto is far higher than other Islas. I never thought there would be such a strong and unusual looking vulture here.”

“Don’t let Rüppell hear you flatter him or it’ll make him that much more cocky,” I snickered. “Most of the time he just wants to sit around doing nothing, but he seems excited having someone new he can show off to.”

Rüppell continued rising, and I followed.

“You still plan to fly higher?” Fallon croaked.

“I don’t know what you’ve been told, but night is the best time for flying,” I informed him. I wanted to take his mind off of our altitude and just focus on flying itself. “The sun is out of your eyes, the air gets thicker and calmer,” I listed off some of the perks of night flying compared to daytime flight.

“But aren’t you afraid of your wings freezing flying this high up?”

I’d never considered that before.

A crust of ice coated my scarf between each breath as the moisture froze in the wind.

I looked ahead at Rüppell and noticed similar small crystals of ice clinging to his feathers as moisture was ripped from the thin air at the tips of his wings. As the weight increased he would descend slightly, but every once in a while he would shake the crystals loose with an extra hard beat of his wings and rise up again before the crystals had a chance to reform.

I’d never bothered to notice Rüppell do that before. It wasn’t a problem I had myself at all, but I chanced a glance back at my wings anyway.

Condensation momentarily clung to my warm buckskins before warming from my body heat and being reabsorbed by the air. But not so much as a single drop or crystal hung onto my wings.

“I suppose you do have rather oily feathers… maybe that has something to do with it,” Fallon commented as he too observed my wings. “It was difficult enough ascending to the grotto’s lower reaches for Aure and Brid. I was happy just being able to guide them to where I thought the grotto might be. When the storm clouds actually parted and the stream came rushing out like it did… I never planned on actually entering the grotto myself. Without their help I’m certain I would’ve been swallowed up by the paralytic stream and fallen from the sky. If I’d known the danger I would’ve never suggested it… I only hope everyone else who didn’t make it inside are alright.”

“Even now you think of them,” I whispered, but Fallon didn’t seem to hear.

We broke through the highest layer of thin, wispy ice clouds. At this height it was abysmally cold, but my back where Fallon rested remained doubly insulated and warm.

It was at this altitude Rüppell decided he would go no higher.

“Be sure your mouth and nose are covered when you breathe,” I warned Fallon as I doubled over my scarf and reduced the plume of moisture released with my every breath down to a tiny wisp.

While my wings were no problem, I knew well the painful sting in my throat and lungs that came from dry, cold air if I exerted myself too far. I switched back and forth between active flying and gliding to conserve energy. I measured my breaths to keep my breathing regular in the thin air.

“Well, what do you think?” I ventured.

My wings beat twice before Fallon replied.

“It’s very… quiet.”

I nodded.

“The air is so thin and cold that the storm clouds calm down. There aren’t any float stones running into each other.”

It was true. No matter which way one looked up or around, the closest float stone was hundreds of feet below, and was the very one Rüppell made his home.

Distant storm clouds plumed in fluffy round balls and lit up each time lightning discharged, but the only discernible sound was of air whistling past my ears and about my wings.

The bright white moon’s light reflected opaquely off the icy clouds and colored the entire world with an eerie, milky glow that obscured the grotto far below as though the entire world were nothing but endless white cloud below and dark, star-mottled sky above.

I chanced a glance over my shoulder at Fallon.

He guarded his mouth and nose with the rabbit fur as he surveyed the sky. His hair poked out from beneath the fuzzy buckskin and was frozen and sticking out at awkward angles. Heavy ice crystals weighed down Fallon’s long red eyelashes and waxed slightly bigger each time one of us exhaled.

It occurred to me then—this was the first time I’d ever flown so high with anyone other than Rüppell.

The first time I’d done it was when Rüppell stole a venison snack Teacher had given me, and I surprised us all when I managed to chase him all the way to his home. Although in reality it was safer at higher altitudes beyond the range where float stones could rise, Teacher didn’t like it when I went anywhere he couldn’t, and he never reached Rüppell’s nest, much less ever went any higher.

 The sky I knew with Rüppell had been something shared by the two of us and was a world Teacher knew only from what I described of it to him.

But now…

“We’re so high up,” Fallon said. It wasn’t a problem understanding him, but Fallon seemed like he was having a hard time getting out what he wanted to say in a single breath. “To think the sky… reaches even high… higher than the stream… it’s awe-inspiring.”

He was right—I’d never thought about it before, but the barrier storm clouds actually thinned enough at this height that they dissipated enough to see through them, and just a bit further up they vanished altogether.

“Promise me you’ll never leave the grotto, So-Rin.”

A long forgotten memory, a snippet of a pointless promise suddenly came to mind.

Fallon’s weight shifted on my back. His grip on my sides and neck relaxed to the point I barely felt him holding on.

Why would Teacher have me make such a promise?

“It’s so cold… and light…”

My hands slipped, and in a single moment all the weight on my back slipped away.

Cold air rushed between my wings and sapped all the warmth that’d been there just a second before.

I know I said something in that moment. I must’ve said something.

But all my focus was on anything but thinking about words.

My ears listened for the slightest noise in the silence. My eyes strained to catch sight of any movement.

Every last sense ramped up to maximum as I tried to locate Fallon. Somehow, some way he’d slipped away like mist under the morning sun.

Or… was that all it ever was?

Turbulence rippled over the surface of my body as I floundered midair. Rüppell looked back at me and seemed to realize something happened when he noticed me scanning the area we’d just passed over. I flew back the way we’d come and found a pocket of disturbed clouds in the otherwise solid cover. I dove.

The soft buckskin fur I’d given Fallon flittered by.

I grabbed the fur, reassured by its presence that I wasn’t just making it up.

Fallon hadn’t just been in my imagination.

Again I scanned the darkness.

I zeroed in on what looked like a raindrop of blood falling.

Cold air cracked my braided hair like a whip against my back. The buckskin flapped loudly, holding me back before it was ripped from my fingers and I fell even faster.

Frigid wind burned my bare skin and wicked the moisture from my eyes. A stinging sensation lanced my feathers, and when I looked over my shoulder I saw ice frosting  my wings.

 Bits of ice broke away and floated in the air behind me as I tucked my wings and closed the distance to Fallon.

The first float stone streaked past like a black cloud.

I saw it the moment Fallon came to his senses. He flailed midair as he tried to straighten himself out and regain control of his fall. But it was useless—even if he’d recovered enough to be able to catch himself, I’d tied down Fallon’s wings.

Float stones buzzed past one after another as the grotto’s midsection rose up around us.

First Fallon tried to get at the knot tied behind his wings, but he would never be able to reach. Then he seemed to be about to try cutting them with his nails, but the hides took a sharp knife to cut and would be more than a match for his raggedy fingernails. All I could do was watch as Fallon struggled and failed time and again.

It wasn’t long before Fallon stopped moving completely, and allowed himself to plummet headfirst toward the grotto’s underbelly.

​

I reached him with hardly a moment to spare.

Fallon’s eyes were closed, almost as if he were sleeping. A trail of freeze-dried blood traced a dark line from his nose to his chin.

I grabbed onto Fallon. His frozen-over eyelids cracked just far enough open for me to see the violet color of his irises.

Rather than terror or fear at what would come next, Fallon’s eyes seemed like those of an animal who had been caught in a trap for days without food or water, a creature that had resigned itself to its fate.

I spread my wings to slow us down, but with all the extra weight and speed my feathers dispersed and clumped with little effect on our fall.

Fallon’s hands that once clung to me now tried to push us apart. I barely managed to steer us away from a monolithic float stone not much unlike the one where I’d found Fallon—but I couldn’t avoid clipping the tip of my wing.

​

A howl caught itself in my throat as searing pain ripped through my wing and radiated down my back. Several of my flight feathers ripped clean out of my wing, only exacerbating the problem of maintaining what little control I had. As Fallon tried even harder to wriggle away, I yelled the first thing that came into my head.

​

“Don’t let go!”

With the float stone wall just a couple feet away, my hand grabbed for the handle of my knife. I pulled it out and drove the blade into the hard stone.

The thin, black edge made a high-pitched screeching sound against the rock. Hot sparks scorched the air and floated a short distance away before being swallowed up by the darkness.

We were beginning to slow down—but it wasn’t enough.

I put all of my strength into keeping the blade connected with the uneven stone until the blade got caught on something and was ripped out of my tight fist.

Although we’d slowed down a significant amount, it still was too fast to stop as we entered the lower field of the grotto.

I ducked, wove, and tumbled through the maze of shattered rock and stones, going far faster than I ever had before through the tight, dark spaces as my eyes struggled to adjust to a world without light. Among all the smaller stones loomed a single large float stone that for some reason had fallen in with the rest. There was no room to avoid it.

I pulled my wings around Fallon, surrounding him with my body like a moth in its cocoon.

There was no escape.