ORIGIN

discreet as it was, eythan's change of course beneath her did not escape the fledge's notice, and her lips quirked in chagrin. on a practical level, she recognized (if grudgingly) that he'd been charged with keeping her safe as she broke in her wings; but on another she couldn't quite name, she chafed at his concern, wanted him to have just a little more faith in her to catch her own slip-ups. mercifully, he loosened up and meandered back into place as she found her rhythm. damask relaxed in kind to call out her reply.

"hey! was that a dig at me, kiddo?" maybe. a huff of ill-hidden laughter blew free of her nose at the hitch in his wings and the strain in his voice. "it's been a hot second, a'ight?"

with satisfaction: "i see."

"anyways, going higher's simple as flapping those wings a couple extra times." without warning, he demonstrated at once, climbing up to fly beside her — and as her mentor loomed up beside her, her following gaze turned from attentive focus to a wide, flaring bout of nystagmus. thrown off track, she shied away; the reaction tilted her far to the left, and she scrambled to correct. in a few seconds' time, she fell back into soaring alignment and regained composure, jerking her head as if to shoo away a fly. maybe he hadn't noticed — ? no, that was stupid of you. tactless. keeping more than a few feet between them was a rational choice, given the chance of him veering again; but that wasn't what had unsettled her, and she knew better than to tell herself that it was.

okay. to go higher, flap your wings a few extra times. be careful in larger caves, don't fly too high, the air is too thin. right, right, that all made sense.

damask tested herself with a slight, swaying rock of her wingspan, then swam her way up, beating at the air in strong upward strokes. at the sound of eythan speaking behind her, she leveled out and glanced over her shoulder, curling her pinions to swerve around and resume her circle.

"hey, i've got an idea of where we can go — if your dad hasn't showed ya already. lots of green and lights ringing a bell?"

ah. that rang a bell indeed. she might've been wrong about what he was referencing, but she had a guess: a towering cluster of leafy vegetation tucked into the corner of the cave — not a common sight in the dusty, barren stone of canis, and unlike anything she had ever seen. when she'd first laid eyes on it, she'd jumped at the thought of exploring it; but she'd been practicing her new magic at the time, and her senses had shown a pair of distant figures that spooked her away. naturally such a site would be in high demand, maybe even somebody's home. she'd given it a wide berth ever since. here was her chance to change that.

"i am not unfamiliar," she conceded. a shade of interest winked slyly in her voice — one that wouldn't have been there had she truly seen the place up close. "by all means."

her mentor's reply came at once: "all right — i'll lead the way, then!" head craned down to follow his movements, damask copied the turn. naturally, her wings listed into slightly too sharp an angle, one that she fumbled to correct. this was becoming something of a theme. wait — remember what he said about tailfeathers, helping you turn? the fronds along the length of her tail flared out, and she stabilized, soon flying parallel to the floor beneath them. this position felt slower, but much steadier. ... hm. she glanced back at the long, flat feathers rippling in the wind behind her, a glimmer of consideration in the look. wonder what else those can do ... ?

having fallen into alignment, she maintained a distance of about five feet above and behind eythan's lead. her eyes tracked him, vigilant to every beat of his wings — and the soreness apparent in their asymmetry, hard as he tried to forge his way through it. a pang of guilty sympathy tugged at the corners of her mouth. he apologized. he didn't need to, but he did. damask had given him nothing but half a nod in exchange, but it kept nagging at her: had he seen the honest panic in the swerve, or taken it as a simple startle response? either way, he'd respected her reaction and taken blame that wasn't really his. if it weren't for that, he would've earned her trust several times over by now, but ... there was that.

eythan's voice drifted her way, rambling downstream like a lazy river. "not gonna spoil much of what's there, but just know that it's a free place to relax, sit on some grass for once. makes for some nice naps. i forget the name of who grew it, but ... hopin' you'll dig it, damask. how're you holdin' up?"

normally this was a question she hated — confounding, unnecessary, the absolute pinnacle of small talk. this time was different. she didn't have to scramble for an answer; she knew it in the absence of gravity, the riffle in her fresh-fledged plumage, the currents that cradled and carried her forth: swell. spectacular. maybe the best i've ever been. instead of telling him as much, damask countered his inquiry with another. "you tell me. how am i holding up?" her words were breathless — held back, yet still bursting at the seams with eager exhilaration, just enough to give away what he'd really been after.

she drank in a lungful of air, guiding its flow inside and out, and — did you feel that? a tightness. she struck it (and the flutter of fear that almost came with it) dead where it stood.

no. you didn't.

"let's try something," damask called, shoving her nerves aside. "i want to hunt. birds, by air. maybe we could go over some more ... advanced maneuvers?" she'd already made a jab at eythan's bad wing and she wouldn't make another, though a silent if hung over her proposal. hastily she added, "just along the way."

they were heading into trickier territory. given damask's elevated altitude, more of the stalactites reached into her path than his — she couldn't rely on him to telegraph her turns for her. the easiest solution would've been to go a little lower. too easy. instead, she tensed and tilted her wings to avoid one, then another, narrowly missing the first but achieving greater distance with each thereafter. gradually the obstacle course subsided, and she slowed her pace to match eythan's with a glimpse spared below.

"lookin' real good there, kiddo; but ... how're you feeling about it?" his approval elicited a faint glow, only for it to fall away. he'd caught her deflection and attacked it head-on, milking this for all it was worth. rather than admitting to his teasing accusations, she tweaked her head to the side in a milder echo of her earlier reproof. luckily, he didn't demand a response. "you're doing basically perfect, kiddo. a whole lot better than ..."

... basically perfect? damask softened, a faint smile touching her mouth as she gazed quietly ahead. a nettling voice told her that she could do better than basically, had to eliminate each and every flaw — but this was her first time ever on the wing, and high praise told her that she was already far ahead of the curve. she'd cut herself some slack, just this once.

it was with a wave of eager surprise that she met her mentor's immediate agreement. no fussing, no reservations? ... you've been spending too much time with your dad. (good thing he wasn't giving this lesson.) now listen up, kid. the young accipiter relaxed her wings and cut her upstroke, sacrificing a couple feet to better catch every word. he seemed to toy with an idea for a moment. "ah! all right, so y'remember the bobbing up 'n down you were just doing a moment ago?" once she'd nodded, he described the maneuver and gave a demonstration. this she followed with rapt attention, absorbing every move in mathematical detail. "got it?" another affirmative dip of the head. the instructions that followed were — sort of unorthodox, yes, but they made sense. at last he finished, and she rolled her shoulders, deep in thought. "yes," she breathed, and got going.

so: to start, some practice. very slightly — tentatively — damask pulled her wings in and curved the aerodynamic teardrop of her body into a gentle dive. at the sensation of gravity's pull, of the floor hurtling even a few feet closer, she reined herself in. a backward lean, outspread sails, and she was floating once more. all right, all right — not so bad. again.

one and two attempts followed, each feint a little deeper, more confident than the last. at length she climbed back up and circled, rapid calculations scrolling like code in the terminal of her skull. a stoop was essentially one half of a parabola, right? if she was at the vertex, and he at the focus ... plus, he was moving, she had to account for that. angle, speed, trajectory. it all clicked into place. go. and with that, she zeroed in on the very midpoint of his topline, just between his primary coverts — and dropped headlong, wings tucked, tailfeathers out, arcing into near-vertical descent.

she heard no sound but the searing hurricane in her ears: damask, her target, and almighty velocity accelerating between the two. she sliced through the atmosphere, keen as the knife lodged in her chest. a whistling plume of oxygen surged into her airways, defied evacuation, filled her lungs near to bursting, infuriated the jasper on its throne between them — but the pain didn't register, drowned out by all the overblown emotions eythan had named: exhilarated, untouchable, fantastic — until the seconds just before impact.

with a gasping yelp of urgency and agony, her sails unfurled in a deafening thwap! as she slammed the brakes and hurled her axis backward. her talons outstretched and braced for collision — and that collision hit like a ten-pound bullet, directly into eythan's backbone. the recoil forked electric up her legs. her cry bubbled into frantic chirruping ("i'm sorry, i'm sorry") as she fought to pry her claws free, digging and scratching at fur and skin and flesh. at last she pounced away with hummingbirding beating, motion all around and within her, pain lashing every which way in her ribs, wings punching sideways at the air to put as much distance as she could between him and herself — and in so doing, pitching her back into hipfirst free fall.

his voice. his voice. speaking words that could've been anything — an amorphous smudge of sound beneath pounding, roaring blood. she clawed her way loose with wet red heat clinging to her talons. her tailfeathers smacked into his hip as he passed, and (getawaygetawaygetaway) she threw herself back in a tempestuous forestroke. you hurt him, she knew in a flash of horror, and you can't do that again, and not, not he'll hurt you too.

her axis went clockwise. nine, noon, three, and then lift gave way to gravity.

her wings flurried and flailed in a desperate endeavor to right herself. maybe for a moment she could've, but — not enough control, somatic into autonomic, drowned out by —

PAIN.

her lungs pumped and pumped to power all the frenzied rest of her — but each breath was halted too soon, confined to a cage of jasper, rib, and muscle, squeezed in and out with greater and greater difficulty. she had felt this before. the stone, it acted up sometimes, when she used it too much or got too upset or ran (now flew) too hard too long or any combination of the three — but those were tantrums and this was an eruption, built and triggered into a perfect storm of an attack. not enough oxygen to go around, not enough for her head, not enough to think. wings and legs battered the air with everything they had. she jerked her head up, away from the floor waiting beneath her, and found: a face, haunting, familiar, déjà vu given shape. before she could react, grasping claws shot through the haze with startling clarity. coming at her. coming for her. snaring her by leg, tail, and neck (not there not there) and if she could've screamed she would've (— we've been here before —) but this was not then.

her thrashing weakened and receded, traded in for a twist to the wind with her jaws stretched wide and gulping for oxygen. for just a moment, the rush opened up her airways, fleetingly relieving the choking compression in her chest — only to gush out in a violent fit of hacking. wind rocketed around her, cold stone drew inexorably closer, and finally — impact, rough and heavy, crushing the breath out of her ribs in a whimper and what would soon become a swath of bruising — but not shattering her. not killing her.

a clatter sounded off somewhere, must've been miles away; she paid it no mind, even as a bone tumbled inches from her tail. she lifted the impossible weight of her head, and the movement felt strangely, alarmingly mechanical, centered on the choking pressure in her throat. panting like rapids, she struggled — fell — stood, crisscrossing dizzily from side to side as she sought out the spotted figure that had (screamed at you! lashed at you! murdered you!) saved her.

the effort brought a twist of the knife, enough to almost bowl her over — but she found him, if blearily, through a heavy film of tears that threatened to spill in streams down her face. her breath rattled and shuddered in her throat. she swallowed, swayed, tried to speak. all that came out was a bone-dry cough, another, another, each punctuated with an interrobang of pain. a frustrated slash of her claws at her chest, another bark, and she tried again. when it came, her voice was high, thin, strange, pinched and trembling almost into nothing.

i can't breathe. i need help. what did i do wrong? everything hurts. don't hurt me too.

instead: "i'm f-f-fffiii-ne," damask wheezed. she took a staggering step back and averted her eyes, fighting to cast his attention somewhere anywhere that wasn't her. "the grove — ?"

"forget the grove for just a second, kiddo."

damask reeled away from the edge in his voice, eyes on his and wide as wounds — not just in hurt, but a pang of real fear. her chin scrunched firmly over her throat; the feathers there, ruffled into disarray, puffed in and out. she braced herself for another blow, verbal or otherwise.

but he seemed to backtrack, rambling into deltas and tributaries. the fallen fledgling hesitated as he went on, struggling to process the slurring stream that ran from his beak. a ... a breather? is that supposed to be some kind of a joke? she strained to focus through grains of salt and throbbing splashes of lightheaded color. this wasn't on him, and she hadn't done great. he was trying to make her feel better — and failing. insistently she shook her head no: half at his question, half at everything else. with the motion came a small, stifled bout of coughing, and she turned away, tremors rolling over in waves. even with the distance between them, even with eythan exactly where he'd landed, she could feel his eyes crawling over her, and she wanted them off.

take a breather, he said. wait a moment, he said. fine.

damask pivoted around — losing her footing, just barely catching herself — and paced laps in a child's rough impression of an oval, weaving badly. static fizzled up and down her legs, wings, tail. she marched her way through it as best she could; to keep moving was to keep herself conscious, give the energy somewhere to go, let the flow of blood and oxygen slow by degrees. even then, her body was crashing. a few gulps of air, and she clamped her mouth shut — confining the rattle of labored breathing at the cost of greater pain. she angled her face apart from eythan as dark rivulets bled out. don't. don't. don't. gritted teeth; a deep, crumpling cringe. a wing rose up, and she pushed herself in to blot out the tears until only faint smears of moisture remained.

agonizingly slowly, her breathing subsided from heaving, rattling gasps to softer wheezing. it took a few moments and several dozen laps, and if anything, the dizziness worsened — but repetition had ironed her path to something resembling a uniform shape. her stone wasn't stabbing anymore so much as burning, low coals that brightened and dimmed in time with each respiration.

this had not blown over. far from it. but in time it would, and until then, she could at least pass as recovered — that was what mattered.

circling around to face eythan, damask summoned up a steady volume that rasped only slightly. "good to go. see?" the young bird of prey drew to a halt, spread her wings, and — with effort — gave them a few demonstrative flaps. she huffed quietly at the ensuing pulse of pressure, but tamped it down soon enough. emphatically, brows raised: "i've got this. now, the grove. we're not finished."