ORIGIN

today, she took flight.

damask roosted at the peak of an overlook, high above the floor. the young bird of prey held her head to the roof and her wings at half-mast; a draft breathed gently through her primaries, and with a sparking stir of her stone, she willed it stronger. a trickster through and through, the wind instead swelled to a blast, buffeting her hard in the face — and yet, for once, she barely took offense. it was a feeling she savored, and only a taste of things to come. she had waited like the good, golden child she was, but she could scarcely breathe for want of flying: yearning, dreaming, knowing she was born for it.

a lofty staircase of stepping stones wrapped around the thirty-foot height of her perch. climbing it had taken a series of bursting, fluttering jumps, aided with magic to preserve her strength. a gentle aching hummed in her chest, and damask embraced it. her blood was flowing, her muscles warm — her heart, ready.

her father had appointed the date, the time, the place: an anniversary gift for the first day of her second cycle, here at this rendezvous with the lights at their brightest. however, it wasn't him she was waiting for. he had alluded (in his teasing, eluding, patently paternal way) to an unmet mentor, a bonebound companion who had trained auré himself. she didn't have a name or even a description, and if anything, the uncertainty of it inflamed her anxiety; but damask compelled herself to trust, trust her father, trust this stranger, trust herself.

her eyes slid shut, and in that moment, the airy sound of rustling feathers resounded at the farthest fringe of her hearing. only a flicker of ears and a slight skyward incline of her chin told of her notice; otherwise, she stood motionless, as if poised in prayer.

see me.

anonymous wings rose in approach, angling around, then behind her in a backhanded arc. shortly thereafter, solid weight landed on the stone at her back. four feet by the rhythm. only two with audible claws. here an ear stood truly erect to catch those first two words:

"damask, right?"

... she knew that voice.

damask lifted the shutters, folded her wings, spun to meet him — and found herself staring into the eyes of a ghost.

oh

oh

OH
the stranger before her was not a stranger at all. she recognized every color and contour: the beak, the beard, a set of horns not unlike her father's. his features had aged, now, dulled and lined with the cycles upon cycles he had seen. common sense told her that all things differed in the eyes of a king, but somehow his size still daunted her. she could have fled between his forelegs, and a part of her wanted to. a shiver lanced its way down damask's spine. her eyes rounded, jittered once — but she was older, too. in the space of split seconds, she pinned down her face and held it still as a bird in her talons; beaten into composure, it revealed nothing save for what had already escaped. she yielded a singular nod of assent, but her gaze did not waver, searing hard into his.

"uh, i'm your uncle eythan — here for giving a flight lesson, right, kiddo?"

she saw it in his scuffling feet, heard it in the softly faltering tone of his voice. he knows. auré told him. he knows and doesn't like it. her brow relaxed with a subtle tilt of her head. "that's right," damask said. her words resonated clearly and evenly in her ears, if not exactly easily. she was still refining herself, building her confidence — but today, today she would be fearless. "a pleasure to make your acquaintance, eythan. shall we begin?"

eythan betrayed his own agitation once more, this time with a switch of weight from side to side. "no need to be so formal, dam — we'll, um, work on breaking the ice. uncle to niece."

dam? breaking the ice? uncle to niece? what? it was almost impressive: every piecemeal part of that had succeeded in rankling at her. was this some facetious attempt to lighten the mood, or was he actually serious? all evidence pointed to the latter. damask flattened her ears and jerked her head an inch to the left, eyes narrowed in reproach. don't do that.

covering ground in a few long paces, he halved the distance and seated himself. automatically she picked up a foot, prepared to step back — then caught herself and pressed it forcefully to the floor.

"well, what can y'show me already? i don't wanna start teachin' you sum'n you already know ... wastin' time and all that."

"sure," she said carefully, somehow stripping all the casual informality from the word. his request was sensible, but discomfort began to prickle at her skin; she had expected him to demonstrate first, giving her time to steel herself. all eyes on you, kid. with a brisk nod, damask turned to the side of the precipice and focused on the nearest stepping stone, some three feet below.

after a brief delay spent glancing back and forth, she dropped from the ledge, wings outspread to slow her fall. she landed unevenly, but the maneuver was otherwise fine. that wasn't flying. that was the easy part.

she hopped in a semicircle to face the perch, then hesitated in palpably apparent uncertainty, mental math plucking at her features. damask had practiced, but she'd never taken a shot at this height without help. habit brought the temptation of magic to mind, and she thought she felt a residual breeze swish at her trousers — but she dismissed it, if painfully. mere minutes ago, the wind itself had all but scolded her. no spells. not today. feathered legs tensed into springs as black-and-white sails trembled tall overhead. at length she leapt from the rock and burst into heartbeat flight, if only for a second. her wings pumped hard to power the jump, and she cleared the ledge by an overshot foot, scrabbling at the rock before letting herself down with a gasp. all the while, her tail dragged at takeoff, hung limp in midair, and brushed awkwardly at the floor on touchdown, serving as little more than dead weight.

a nervous flare of nausea struck. her pulse raced, as much from exhilaration — and an overwhelming crush of self-consciousness — as the exertion itself.

the fledgling gathered herself in a deep, mustering breath, staring down the stone beneath her. "as you can see," she began quietly, "my wings are weak; my landing needs work; and this tail" — (here, she craned her neck and swept the offending appendage around to affix it with a glare) — "is too long and not very efficient."

at last she lifted her eyes to eythan's, and standing anew at his side as she was, damask realized with a recalibrating blink that their tails were almost precisely alike.

"your advice?"

"that's all good! that's a good start, kiddo ... your wings'll get stronger as you practice and grow, damask."

the fledgling licked her lips in embarrassment, but privately she glowed at his praise, and her features softened when he used her full name. i'm not the only one who's learning. eythan was rough around the edges, yes, and — there was also ... that, pressing and needling at the back of her mind; she was wrestling to keep it where it was. as he went on, her focus drifted back down to his tail, then shifted to her own. she emulated his movements, snapping her frond-feathers open and shut like a paper fan before (oh!) finding control. wide eyes and contracted pupils followed in rapt fascination as her tail slipped from one position to another. she took a fumbling stab at asymmetry, folding one side and spreading another — but that would take practice.

very curious how her tail and her mentor's were so similar, though. auré's and aza'zel's were a far cry from hers, and she'd seen from her father's illusory illustration of giggle that hers was nowhere near it. if it had skipped a generation, it'd been more than one.

but eythan was standing now, looking over the edge, and damask's attention snapped back in his direction. "here, let's try something out, i'll show you." nodding, she picked her way carefully to his side (though the proximity did bring an uneasy shuffle to her wings). as he began to speak, her eyes trained on his, ears trembling to catch and catalogue every precious word, but especially these: "you don't gotta flap a lot or even that hard." now that was a novel idea — and a wise one. her eyes clouded, then clarified. she had been flapping and fluttering in some farcical imitation of the lessers she hunted, but their wings were short and round as a fish's fins; hers were the broad, fingered sails of an accipiter, and she was meant to soar like the bird of prey she was.

damask observed his demonstration with all the absorption of a straight-A student, memorizing every tilt, curl, and beat of his wings. he's unsteady, she noted in the way that they quavered; but then, maybe age was taking its toll. "see? try that out. i'll catch ya if i gotta." her brows lowered over eyes flinty with resolve. you won't need to. she would make sure of it.

once he had settled down to earth, the fledge stepped to the very edge of the precipice and peered over, feathers ruffling at what she told herself was a sudden breeze. softly: "all right." her wings unfurled slowly, hesitantly into the wind; she gave them a shake, and the last remaining wisps of down fell away, swirling past what felt like miles to rest on the floor.

finally she exhaled, crouched down, and sprang into flight.

all of eternity opened below. against her instruction, her wings flurried into frantic strikes at the air underneath, beating too hard, too long — her legs dangled, one much lower than the other — her tail bobbed up and down in a failing effort to snatch at the wind — and her breath came in desperate, panting gasps. panicky chirrups of distress burst rapid-fire from her lips. i'm dying i'm dying i'm dying, oh NO — !! she felt her chest tiring; any moment she'd begin to fall, she was holding her breath now, waiting for stone and broken ribs and oblivion —

don't be afraid. let go now. trust.

her sails and tailfeathers spread strong and still at her sides, and she was floating, and her heart all but caught fire.

the atmosphere cradled her, held her level, guided her feet to tuck into place. you got it! you got it! she twisted her wingtips, angled the right just below the left, and just like that, she tilted and turned in a smooth, swooping arc. the floor had come a few feet closer, but all it took was two easy flaps to reclaim them. damask wanted nothing more than to fly higher, surmount every last inch of altitude, see all the caves' rooms and tunnels in three-dimensional space. and soon, you will.

she glanced at eythan, grounded far beneath her, and adjusted her course to a wide halo overhead. her call came down the leading edge of a wing, sliding his way: "how do i look?"

and for the first time in her life, a joyous hint of laughter colored her words.

never had damask imagined she could feel so powerful, so alive, as if she could eat up the cave from wall to wall and back with a single swipe of her wings. there was a giddy, nervous excitement in it that held her heartbeat high in her chest. quit feeling, start thinking, growled a voice in her head — and for once, the others were louder. the wind is singing, can't you hear it? you know what to do; listen, and follow. she found flight not in her body, but in the whirl of ether around it, bending and bowing at her command. with that kind of loyalty, her success was all but guaranteed.

far below, eythan exulted with a laughing dance from foot to foot. he doesn't do that very often, does he? an irresistible tug of pride played at her mouth. but then, neither do you.

"just like that, kiddo! you look like a professional!"

the fledgling's smile widened into a crooked grin, even went so far as to show a sliver of teeth. "thank you," she said, and was that a hint of something smug in your voice just now? given the distance, she'd likely spoken too softly for hearing, more to herself than her mentor; but her gratitude was plain and true, a rarity coming from her. another crowing call came up, loaded with intention. "lemme —" he got ready to join her, and damask's attention dropped entirely to study his takeoff: clever how he took that running start, built up momentum ... focus! in her distraction, she'd dipped somewhat in the air, and her smile fell away as she corrected the loss with a swift downstroke. pressure bubbled up in a buoy beneath her. oh. that was — sort of cool. another lapse; another rise. she porpoised through a circuit, experimenting with the strength in her breast and the skill in her sails.

"do you wanna stay up here for a bit or are you ready to figure out a landing?"

"soon!" she threw back. "but i'd like to go higher, first — farther, if i may." here, a knowing twinkle of mischief crept in as she eyed his wobbling wings. "i hope you're prepared to show me how."