Storm
Violet and indigo and gray against the expanse of blue, the fliers were like a small storm cloud inexplicably lost against the vast summer sky.
"This is true freedom," the owl said. "The world spread out below you, the sun on your back, the wind in your feathers. "
Her small companion, caught tight in her claws, let out a high, childish laugh. "I don't have any feathers!"
"You should," she answered. "Are you ready?"
"Yes!"
She flung him high, outward, watched as a body meant to remain earthbound soared for a moment before he began to fall. He never screamed when they played this game, except from excitement; never flailed with hands and feet grasping for support that was not there. He simply never believed that he could not fly.
Or perhaps, he simply never believed that she would not catch him. She did so now, circling back to the ground, wrapping her wings around his giddy, purring hug, then watching him scamper off.
From the corner of her eye, Fenghuang watched Shifu deliberately quiet his breathing, relax his muscles.
"It's too dangerous," he said, yet again. "I can't allow it."
"Of course you can," she answered, an edge in her voice. "Don't be such an old fusspot, Shifu. He loves it. You can't take that from him. He's fearless."
Shifu couldn't resist the compliment to his son. "He is. One day he'll be greater than both of us, Feng."
She gave him a sardonic look. "Well… I don't know about greater than me…"
Shifu only smiled.
The first time Tai Lung brought her down in a sparring match she was so amazed she crashed to the pavement of the courtyard with the boy's weight on top of her. He scrambled back a moment later, as stunned as she, and stammering apologies. A blow of her wing sent him rolling away, to leap to his feet so angry that he didn't notice the line of red staining his fur where her talon had caught him.
"What the hell!" he sputtered, his rage and words at odds with his youthful treble. "I wanted to make sure you were okay!"
"Don't you ever do that again!" she hissed. "Don't you ever back off from a fight like that!"
"It was just practice!"
"It's never just practice! If you let that kind of behavior become a habit in practice, you'll back off in real combat as soon as your opponent goes down! And what will happen then?"
He looked down. "I'd be dead."
She picked herself up. "Do not train yourself to back off. Do not train yourself to give in! Train yourself to finish any fight you find yourself in."
His eyes darted to Shifu, standing silently to the side, watching, and he saw the red panda's slight nod. He turned back to the owl and bowed. "Yes, Master Fenghuang."
The next time he brought her down, three months later, and the first time he was sure it was his own skill and not simply luck, was with a leap timed to her descent, giving her no chance to veer away before he spun up into her, catching her beneath the wing with a kick and dragging her down to the ground in a snarling heap. He didn't let up until Shifu called an end to the match, and left her with a scratch to match the one she'd given him.
"Don't worry about what he wants."
"But I want it, too," he protested.
She fixed him with her intense stare. "Do you?"
"Yes," he insisted. And at her continued, demanding gaze, "He's my father. I love him! I want him to be proud of me!"
She nodded, unblinking. "Of course. But that's no reason to pursue his goals instead of your own. Don't let anyone hold you back."
He looked at her quizzically. "Not even the people you love?"
"Especially not the people you love. They're the ones who will keep you chained down the most, out of love, out of the desire to protect you, to keep you to themselves, to never let you change from what they think you should be."
"But… if they love you… And you love Master Oogway! And Master Shifu and the others, they're your friends…"
"It's not wrong to love. But don't ever let that get in your way, keep you from your dreams. Do whatever is needed to gain your desires." She held his eyes, seeing his troubled look become understanding, and part of his childhood fall away.
She wondered if he would fly with her after that, but he did. If he was no longer as fearless, or as trusting, he would never show it; and perhaps the uncertainty added a thrill of danger that was more intoxicating. She soared high above the earth until the Valley of Peace was an indistinct haze of green and blue below them, and when she let him go she watched him spread his arms out like wings.
He didn't see the confrontation between her and Oogway, but afterwards he found the cage that had been built to hold her. He looked it over carefully, and finally stepped inside. He was nearly as tall as she by now, and there was little room above his head. He reached out; his arms found the sides before he had raised them halfway. She could never spread her wings in this, he thought, his breath a hard painful lump in his chest. He understood, spontaneously and imperfectly, what this would have meant to her. Suddenly the confines of the cage were too much; he leapt out and gave the door a kick, slamming it with a crash, and watched the cage teeter before righting itself.
"I must admit," said Oogway from behind him, where no one had been a moment before, "I am glad I did not have to use it."
"Would you have?" he asked, his voice shaky, blinking rapidly.
"Oh, yes," said the tortoise, with a sigh.
"But she's your student! Your friend!" he insisted.
Oogway smiled sadly, and laid a hand on the young snow leopard's shoulder. "She is. But that does not mean I would not have done what was necessary. What is our purpose here, in the Jade Palace?"
He knew this answer by heart, had known it since he'd been able to understand the words. "We protect those who can't defend themselves, and keep the peace, and help those who need it…"
Oogway nodded. "And when the peace and safety of those under our protection are threatened –"
"We have to defend them… But even from our friends?"
Oogway sighed again. "Even from our friends," he answered wearily. "Perhaps, especially from our friends."
Shifu would say nothing about Fenghuang except that she had disgraced Master Oogway's teachings and the Jade Palace, and would say no more. He would not hear her spoken of. Tai Lung saw his stiff posture and closed expression, and wondered if it were really so easy to turn away from a friend.
"But why did she do it?" he insisted.
"Because she wanted power," Shifu said shortly. "She thought she should be master of the Jade Palace."
"But why?"
"She thought she knew better than Master Oogway." And he would say no more, not then, and not ever.
He wouldn't give up his desire for flight, or for danger – all the greater now, with no one to catch him. He leaped between the roofs of buildings, swung out on ropes over deep chasms, scrambled up cliffs like a lizard with only his claws between himself and the drop beneath. The first time he leapt from the roof of the Hall of Heroes all the way to the village below, he misjudged his landing and trudged back up the hill, bruised and scraped and with a broken arm. Soon after that healed, it became his favored way to descend the mountain, scorning the long stairway used by everyone else. At last the pig whose roof he always landed on, courteously desperate, asked Oogway and Shifu to put an end to his antics and pay for his broken tiles.
Fenghuang had said he was fearless, that he should pursue his dreams without letting anyone hold him back. Shifu had said he would be the best warrior the Jade Palace had ever produced. It never occurred to him to disbelieve them. If he would someday be the perfect warrior, now he would be the perfect student, learning everything there was know.
He sat by the moon pool, a scroll spread out across his lap, reading intently by the light of the many candles. A sudden gust of air set the flames flickering, rustled the paper in his hands. He looked up. The surface of the pool was a rippling mosaic of candlelight and shadow. Through the door, he saw the sky beginning to lighten, the first hints of dawn changing the color of the clouds from below the horizon. Had he been here all night?
He set the scroll aside, rose, stretched. The pool was almost still now. He could see the reflection of the dragon frieze beginning to form on its surface. He looked up. The red and jade cylinder hung in the dragon's jaws, where it always had.
She had told him to pursue what he wanted, not what his father wanted for him, but there was only one thing here worth having. Shifu had wanted it, but had accepted Oogway's decision and put it aside – for himself at least. Had Fenghuang wanted it? What else? To be Master of the Palace was to be master of the Scroll. They had tried for it, and failed. He would not.
He stretched again, and walked to the door of the hall. No time to sleep; he'd need to head to the training hall for the day's practice. He looked out at the morning sky again, and longed to feel the wind in his face, the rush of air through his fur, to feel like he could fly.
He woke from a nightmare, of flight and falling. Gasping, he untangled the blanket that had somehow wrapped around him, and looked around the darkened room, trying to get his bearings. It was still, not a breath of air coming through the open window. He rose and went to look outside, wondering what had brought him out of his dream. In the sky, clouds massed dark against the stars.
He had dreamed of Fenghuang, flying in a storm through the northern mountains where they heard she had taken refuge. The lightning struck and she fell, into the cage that now gathered dust in a Palace storeroom. He could feel the metal closing in around her, pinioning her wings, blocking the wind, reducing the wide world beneath her to a mere slit through which to see only what was no longer hers.
He clenched his teeth so tightly it hurt, and swallowed hard, to keep back the tears pricking his eyes. Then the storm broke with a rush of wind in his face, driving icy rain against his cheeks. Lightning flashed, so bright that his night-accustomed eyes were overwhelmed, leaving him for a moment in the cold and the dark; and then the thunder, crashing like a door slamming irrevocably shut.
He turned away from the window, and left the room, padding on silent feet to Shifu's bed, curling up against his father's back, seeking shelter from the storm.