Chapter 1 – Newcomer
The stars seemed to grimace over the northern sky as she moved silently through the night. She was a stranger, a newcomer, to the forests that surrounded Tree Haven, and her unusualness stood out deeply against the black of the night, an night that have long since belonged to silverwings. Instead of black fur, hers was warmer, brighter, the colour of the summer sunset, and her wings, gaunt as they where, spanded much larger than the wings of a silverwing. Her body had a scrawny, too-skinny look to it, but she looked as though, with food in her belly and some rest, she could achieve a size much greater than a northern bat's. Her face, though, bore the most difference; her ears where smaller, her nose and mouth elongated into a fox-like snout. Her grim eyes where black and gleaming dully in the moonlight as she struggled to keep her wings beating. She seemed weighed down by some invisible force that tugged her downward, ripping at her whole being as her eyes and ears swivelled desperately in an attempt to find a perch.
Marina, the newly-appointed silverwing chief elder, landed alone on a branch nearby, watching the poor bat fight her way forward. She could only imagine how long, how hard this bat had been flying.
"Over here!" she called, and with her wing indicated a nearby branch. "Come speak with me and rest."
The stranger gladly flapped over to the branch, wrapping her wings around herself tightly. "Thanks for your kindness. Other colonies have not been so friendly along our way."
"Our?" Marina asked, tilting her head as she scanned the sky for others, "You look alone to me."
The stranger smiled, and unfolded her wings enough to dig into them with her tapering snout. "I travel with my newborn son, Eclipse. He was only old enough to cling to my fur when we came here from the south. He -" She stopped as a little head poked from her folded wings, as tiny as a good-sized newborn silverwing. His eyes squinted against the moon's glow, as if he had only begun to poke out his head a few days before. He glanced at his mother, round, too-big eyes glinting with curiosity. "Are we here?" he asked in an overpoweringly small voice; he was like a twig that could snap at any moment.
Marina smiled. "You say you come from the south?"
The newcomer nodded. "Yes. I lived on an island, but I travelled south in search of better feeding grounds. Lived among the Vampyrum for awhile, what a disaster that was. But I had to get away from them, and so I flew north. My mate - " She caught Marina's glance and looked at her feet, "Yes, a Vampyrum indeed, he professed to hate the North, so I thought I would fly until I grew to tired to go on. That point, I think, has been reached."
Marina nodded, examining the boy she carried with her. "You look it. So your boy, he is-"
"Half Vampyrum, yes. Anyway, am I welcome to stay among your trees? I must find a place to raise my son soon."
Marina was sceptical of how fast she had jumped over the question, and also a bit worried to allow a stranger into the lands while their own newborns where so young – her third grandchild having just been born a week before – and so she considered for a long while.
"I suppose you could-"
"Oh, thank you! Thank you thank you, Brightwing. Sorry, I never caught your name."
"Marina."
The stranger smiled, lifting her wings to take flight, "Call me Alinla. And thank you again."
The mysterious newcomer suddenly burst into the trees, tearing off in search of a roost as the bird's first call echoed among the trees.