the peace of wild things

by fullmetalgrigori

Maka Albarn, the last remaining her of her avian people, must accept a pair bond with Soul Evans, an serpent shifter, if there is to be any hope of peace between their two warring peoples. The two begin to learn that the other is not their enemy, and that they may find friendship and even love with the other, despite the forces determined to prevent peace at any cost. Hawksong AU

1. Prologue

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

- The Peace of Wild Things, by Wendell Berry

---

Legend tells of a woman who looked to the sky and longed to dance among the clouds, who taught herself the language of the birds and for her study, was gifted with their form. I have a soft spot for the tale, but no record of this woman exists, though I've tried hard to find her. The only legacy she leaves us are the feathers braided through my hair, and the hawksong I sing as I glide through the air using the form she has bestowed my kind.

When I first found the story, tucked in the middle of a book of fables, I thought it too fanciful to belong to our people. I have been raised to know nothing save for war and bloodshed. A tale so hopeful seemed unbelievable, but I wondered - did our people dream like this once? Did we look to the skies and wonder, or is this war all we have ever fathomed?

For generations, we have been taught of the serpiente, a lying, violent race hell-bent on our destruction. We learn to hate them and to fear them, and we train to fight them. And yet, the reason behind the fighting has long been lost.

I tried, once, to uncover the origin of our war. I dug deep in the archives our people have kept ever since our inception, and yet the story is nowhere to be found in living memory or long-dead record. We fight, but we do not know why we fight.

It is all we know. All I know.

Is this to be my legacy? Yet another Tuuli Thea who leads her people into battle, and yet does not know why? Is blood and pain the only thing to be gifted from my hands?

Our lullabies sing of peace, and yet we do not know it. Am I the only one to have ever heard those words and longed for their promise? It is something that my mother has never known, and at times, I wonder if she has ever wished for it as I do.

Does she look upon our dead and rage inside? Or am I the only one to watch our ever-dwindling numbers and wonder if there is a better way? All this pain and anguish, and what have we to show for it?

Nothing.

We will fight and fight and fight; we will fight until we win a war that we've already lost.

How long until even I, who dreams of another path, am lost?

Maka Albarn

Heir to the Tuuli Thea