This is it. My very first MR fanfic... well, technically it was WTWB tributefic, and technically it was fanfic of Invitation to the Game, but technically speaking it was fucking terrible.
Anyway.
I was very, very young when I wrote this -- and boy howdy, does it show! -- so please pardon the inaccuracies scattered throughout. I've done my best to replicate the spastic formatting displayed in the original. Where I've felt the need to comment on the text for whatever reason, I've made my comments in double parentheses.
As this was written almost four years ago...
Dear Lord, this is bad.
Wings of War
or
Tirna's Tale
((Note: apparently I couldn't decide on a title, as it seems to have been called alternately "Wings in the Night", "Wings of War", or "Wind on Wings", depending on the direction the wind was blowing at the time. I've chosen the last of those for use as the title here, because I can.))
By ((my real name))
Glossary: koka: small burrowing mammal
kari: like a tiger only larger and more vicious. and it has really sharp fangs.
kiri: a sort of bird
Tirna: night wind
Amre: lit.: the mother, once a common name for females
Kire: an animal with traits like the mythical phoenix. May be used to refer to the winged people.
Prologue
Tap, tap, tap, tap-tap, tap, tap, tap, tap-tap, tap! The women of the village danced their wild dance, chanting the song that for eons had kept Them away. A young mother pushed aside a reed covering the entrance to her hut. She must get this away, she must.
Making Connections
11 winters later
"Ah, so sad that Yarva's gone," said Pirna. "She was always the best at making baskets."
"Oh, Pirna, always living in the past," said Rake, the youngest of the three. "Yarva's been gone since you were 4 winters. How would you know?"
"Rake, she was 4 winters. Anyone can remember 4 winters," snapped Parva, Yarva's much older sister and the tribe leader.
Ekos, Parva's male second, let loose the wordless howl that signaled the men had killed something. Rake dropped her basket and headed for the fire circle. She called back, "Oh, do hurry. It's prong!"
((Page break, composed of about ninety trillion asterisks))
Many miles away, the young female hunted in the brush. She growled loudly, frightening a waiting prong. The girl dove on it and crisply broke the neck.
Having dragged it to her camp, she let out the same wordless howl Ekos had let free many miles away. Squatting by a fire, she skinned her prong, nibbling on the occasional scrap of meat. With it finally skinned, she supported it on a rough tripod of wood sitting over the fire.
The girl walked down to the stream running about 70 prong-lengths from her camp. She ruffled in the water with a hand, then looked down and saw her reflection. "Tirna.", she said to herself. That was her name, the first sound she remembered.
A playful breeze tugged at her wingtip. She hissed and folded it even tighter against her body. Winds were bad in winter, tugging at every flap of skin. Struck by a sudden need to stretch, she stood facing the wind and fully unfurled her wings. Ten feet of wingspan is quite impressive on a 11 winter child.
Looking at the horizon, she noticed a strange black smoke trail rising into the sky. Having never seen another human, she thought it might be a grass fire.
Grass fires were certainly interesting. She glanced about, looking. Tirna would take...ah, here was her knife, yes, certainly........oh!dried meat!good,good....is that a water canteen?yes!and full too.....and that's all?yes.
A strong wind came, blowing her towards the fire, towards destiny. But she wasn't ready yet.
Tirna didn't leave for a day and a night, until a kari began to stalk her through the camp. She finally took off, feeling wind buffet her. This was new. She had never flown before.
((About six carriage returns))
...Ages and ages later, about maybe a week, she landed in search of water. Having found some, she saw a gently smoking small fire, the remains of a lightning strike some days earlier. Near it lay a small koka, struck by the deadly bolt.
Tirna scooped it up and took off again.
A mighty wind began to blow, and, though she didn't know it, it would blow her towards destiny. And then away, towards her future.
The Beginning
Parva scowled into the face of the oncoming wind. "Tirna," she muttered to no one in particular. "The night wind."
Hkare tugged on her sleeve. "Mamma, big fyr tare."
Hkare was not actually Parva's daughter. Instead, Hkare was an orphan. Father dead from a kari attack, mother from child birth, Hkare had been raised by the tribe. Though already 5 winters, she still failed to pronounce some letters.
Parva turned and looked. "Yes, Hkare, big fire." The men had lit the great fire for nighttime.
"Mamma, mamma, big byrd, big!"
Parva saw the bird far away. She knew she could hit it easily. Picking up a rock casually, she threw it. Hard.
Tirna soared far behind a rather large vulture. She saw the vulture drop in the sky, a black dot falling. Paying no attention to the large meteor falling close by, she veered for a better look and started falling out of the sky.
Her wing ached badly, maybe broken. She wondered casually, "When will I hit?"
Thud.
On The Way
Tirna woke in a bush, and not a very comfortable one, at that. A boy leaned over a fire, fiddling with something. He turned around. "Oh,hullo there. I was wondering when you'd wake up. 'S been three days since I found you."
Somehow, Tirna found ancient language patterns in her brain and said, "Who are you? Why are you here? Why did you rescue me?Where am I?"
The boy laughed and said, "Calm down, miss. First off, me name's Kiri. Second, this is where I camp springs and summers. Third, it gits awful lonely being out here with no one to talk to. And fourth, you are about a moon, two moons, north of the Parvakon spring n' summer camp. Are you happy? Aw,----, I've burned the meat!"With that, he turned back to the meat and lifted it off the roasting rack onto the ribs of a large prong skeleton.
She sniffed. It sure smelled like prong, well-cooked too. She walked over and sat timidly beside him."Uh,what's a kon?"
He said, "You don't know what a kon is? You been livin' in a sinkhole? A kon is a group o' people who stick part is the name of the leader."
She noticed that he appeared to have some sort of feather stuck to his shoulder. Tirna reached over and gently pulled on it. It didn't come off. She tugged harder.
Kiri flinched and said, "Ow!Wotcher tryin' to do, pull me feathers out?Ah well,it had to happen sometime."
He turned around and shrugged off his cape of prong skin. For a moment, she didn't really see what he'd got on his back. Then her eyes focused and she saw wings like hers, soft and dove-like. He got a good look at her, too.
"Oh, you've got 'em too. So it's safe, I suppose? Ain't got no Hunters round?"
She asked, "What's a Hunter?"
With a horrified expression, he said,"You don't know what a Hunter is? They hunt down winged folk like us two and, and, they kill 'em! Horribly, too. With a spear an' all, it's gotta be a horrid painful way to die.''
He looked at the horizon. "Say, that looks like the Parvakon camp over there. Is horrid country though. Snakes an' such. Though there's supposed to be a camp of winged folk somewhere out..."He gestured around them."There. So if ya like, go an' look for the camp. Mebbe you find ' best be careful. It was nice when Ekos led, but Parva's got Hunters. Was nice knowin' ya."
Actually, Tirna stayed about a week, talking with him and enjoying human company.
Starlight and Dances
Finally, she packed and took flight, only to discover her left wing was still hurt. She glided to the ground and squinted. The winged camp was maybe a few hours away.
She walked quickly, hoping to reach it before dark.
Tirna did, and was greeted by a woman with dark skin and wings like a parrot, if Tirna had known what that was. The woman said to Tirna, ''Come,dear, we'll take care of you."
Tirna entered and was shocked. She was standing in the middle of a large circle of tents, with people of all kinds. She didn't dare look for fear of being glared at.
The woman touched her shoulder. "Honey, it's alright. Go on and look."
She looked up and saw:a man with beautiful brown wings that shone like polished wood; a girl with black, sheeny wings like a raven; a woman and a little boy with wings like granite, mottled shining gray; and so many others, she couldn't count them.
The woman touched her shoulder again. ''You look like you'll be molting soon. Go with Alika."
The girl with the raven wings looked up. "Oh, Amre, a molter?I'll show her there."
Alika came over to Tirna. "C'mon then. You 11 winters? Thought so. So this's your first molting?"
Tirna nodded.
"Alright. Go and look for Tium, he's the one with wings like yours. Yours, by the way, are a nice dovey gray. Just you wait, your plumage is so drab now, you'll get beautiful adult plumage. Tium will show you what we'll do. Or tell you."She grinned."See you."
Alika melted into the crowd.
Tirna walked over to Tium nervously. "Uh, are you Tium?", she asked.
"Yeah. You're new, ain'tcha? I'll show you to my bed, which has got an empty bed next to it. " He winked and blushed, amazingly at the same time.
They wove their way through a crowd of people to Tium's bed, which was covered with prong-skin. He sat down and nodded to a place beside him.
''So, you're new. First off, we're both at the same stage in molting, which means we'll go to the same Dance. Second, you cannot, ever, ever, reveal the location of this camp to an outsider without wings. And that should do for now."
During the next month, Tirna and Tium molted and couldn't fly. They spent the time talking about various things, none of which are important to our story.
So it was Dance time for them, and Tirna and Tium had to go to different areas of the camp. The girls were painted with blues and greens, the boys with grays and blacks. Tirna's adult plumage was a beautiful shimmering fire-color, with reds and oranges and yellows and silvers in it.
Tium had the same sort of plumage, shimmery and beautiful in a yellow-red.
They emerged into the center, where Amre danced. The girls joined her and the boys danced to a slow, stately drum rhythm. They chanted a song of release, the boys going deep and the young women going higher. Soon they all were young men and women, and the exact meaning of that is up to you.
But then Amre slowed the rhythm and couples paired off, disappearing into the molting tent and to the land around.
Tirna and Tium paired off to the place in the surrounding land where the others couldn't see them. As they watched the stars, something came that had waited for hundreds of hundreds of years to reach them.
And as the stars wheeled overhead, two became one, and the stars kept watch.
As One and the Prophecy
As night ended, they woke in grass and walked back to their beds, to sleep the day away, as winged people their age had done for hundreds and hundreds of years.
Tirna woke in her bed, and Tium lay on his bed, barely awake. They went out of the circle of tents and found a place to sit in some bushes.
Tirna was sitting on something hard and she pulled and tugged at it, finally freeing it form the earth. It was blocky and rectangular. She handed it to Tium. "What's this?", she asked.
Tium took it from her. "Well, it looks like a rock but... hey! It's wrapped in something."He peeled off a layer of rotting plant material. ''Hey!It's a book!"
Tirna felt stupid asking, "What's a book?"
"It's something people used to use to keep information."He gently opened it. "Luckily, I was taught how to read by Amre. This is hard to read, though."
He flipped through pages delicately. "Oh, I get it. It's someone's account of her life. There's something in the back though...It says 'the Prophecy' at the top. Then it says: This is what our Seer saw at the end of her years. It is very chilling to me.
(Editor's Note:Below is a reprint of what they finally figured out it said. Tirna reported that it had many letters missing in the original. It took Tium 4 months to decipher it.)
When two became one
and one became two
The Seer did see
A fate for Prize, too
A war between humans
But not like the old
One to be flightless
The other untold
As one to be warring
Inside its own self
The other to be free
But not all the way
The Hunters a-killing
The winged people hiding
The leader would come
To bring their downfall
But one would come
From the camp of one
Of the kind of another
And still they won't realize they're sister and brother
So that one will fight
And bring them together
A terrible price peace
But peace at last.
Tium sat, reading it again aloud for Tirna's benefit. At the last verse, she realized that Kiri had told her of a child disappeared from the Parvakon 11 winters ago. But the Parvakon were flightless. Weren't they?
Meanwhile...
Parva remembered suddenly that there had been feathers found in Yarva's old hut. Feathers like... Their feathers! She called Ekos. "Ekos, weren't there some of Their feathers in Yarva's hut?"
"Yes, Parva."
"Well, Yarva had just given birth, and she was still weak... Search the countryside! The last thing we need is Them theiving our stores."
A koka burrowed in the dirt miles from the Parvakon camp. Suddenly it encountered an obstruction. White and curving, it was hard as rock. The koka went on its way, unconcious that it had done something Parva would have adored doing... touching the bones of her sister!
Learning Things
Tirna sat with the other recently molted ones, in one tent devoted to female learning. The class was all girls who had attended Tirna's Dance. Tirna had become friends with someone who'd lived quite near the Parvakon for years. Her name was Kire.
Kire whispered, "I heard that one boy got tired of the camp and snuck away to Dance with the Parvakon females. And they were wingless. It was 'bout 12 winters ago, so I hear."
Tirna giggled. ''Ooh, he must have had quite a time. Amre's looking our way, shush!"
The warning came not a moment too soon, for Amre did look in their direction.
Kire had nice brown,gray, and fiery red feathers on her wings. She continued whispering, playing with one of the downy ones she'd tugged out. ''You know what, on Dance night, I paired up with Yoke. He said he'd heard there was a place where the ancient settlers still lived, a couple moons south of here. They say there's no Hunters there and everyone is peaceful. You wanna go? Classes end tomorrow."
Tirna whispered back, "Yeah, but why not sneak out tonight?"
"Ooh, even better. Let's take the males we paired up with with us."
"Yeah! It's a deal."
That night they snuck out of the camp with necessary provisions and Yoke, who said he knew the way.
They were flying as dawn broke when Kire said, "Ooh, I've found a really fast wind. Come see!"
Tirna flew over. ''Yeah, guys, it's really fastttttttttttttttttttt!"
Her last words disappeared as the wind whisked her away, luckily towards their destination.
On The Way To A Different Place Than Last Time
They cruised on the wind, easily making great speed. Their first night had been spent sleeping on the wing, a teqnique discovered by Tirna.
As Kire completed a roll in the air, Tirna saw something below them. She dropped out of the wind for a closer look. The hot winds of summer kept her aloft. She called out, "Hey guys, come see this, you won't believe it!"
"It" was a community established by some of the first settlers. People scurried about their business below. Tirna decided to do something. She folded her wings and dropped like a stone.
She was falling like the peregrine falcons of Earth had, except much faster, as she weighed much more than those ancient birds.
The settlement was quickly approaching. 5000 feet, 4000 feet, 3000 feet, 2000 feet, 1000 feet and counting. At 400 feet, she opened her wings and continued to plummet another 300 feet. At 100 feet, she was suspended in the air, going fast to the left. Very fast.
She soon slowed down and landed. The settlement people hadn't noticed her yet, which was amazing due to the amazing aerial display she'd put on.
Tirna decided to go to the settlement and started walking. She hoped her prong-skin skirt and short top would be alright here.
Another Point Of View
Lisse had been named for her famous ancestress, one of the first settlers on Prize. Her community still followed the ways of the ancients, celebrating Midsummer and not much else. There was a mesa some miles to the side of the settlement, and it was very fun to climb it on Midsummer.
She was thinking of the mesa when a strange girl walked up to her. "Excuse me,"the girl said."But do you happen to know where I could find a large amount of people?"
Lisse looked the girl up and down. Short top of quad-horn skin, skirt of the same, shoe-less. Hmmph. She waved her hand in the direction of the settlement. "Over there."
As the girl turned around, she said, "Thanks."
There appeared to be something on her back. Lisse didn't realize for a moment what they were. Then..."Oh!They're wings!", she thought.
It is rather fortunate for Tirna that this isolated community had never heard of winged people as Them.
And Now For Something Which May Not Appear To Be Relevant, But Is!
"Oh, God.", said Star. "I abhor inter-universal travel."
Star was currently on the tenth-dimensional equivalent of very slow public transit. She was squashed between a rather fat being from the fifth dimension and a very flat one from the first dimension. Star had what might possibly be the worst summer job in the Universes, except for cleaning toilets.
Star had indeed started out on a world which Man has called Earth, making him an Earthling, or, in his sci-fi stories, Terra, making him the much-less cool "Terran". For purposes of identification, we'll call it K-4. On K-4, Star had been a bored teen, only to discover, quite suddenly, "The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy". This led her to discover that Earth is a sort of inter-universal way-station between universes (yes, redundant, I know, but give an Earthling a break!) through a process which is utterly impossible to duplicate, unless...
Anyway, back on track!
So Star had acquired a job involving checking out universes where something had gone horribly wrong. To really determine whether it was wrong or simply setting the universe on its way, you needed psychics. Unfortunatly, Star was not the minumum age for that.
Star's job was to visit said universes, fortunately always ones with the problem planet identified. She was on the way to an alteration of a novel world, that is one which writers think they are making up, and do, but actually produce that planet. Anyway, on this one, there was rampant racism against a sort of people with wings. Normally, this would be fixable by a simple visit to convince the agressors this wasn't necessary,but oh no, this planet had to take it further. This planet had had a woman disappear into the wilderness some years ago with a baby, her sister found identifying marks of the ones called Them, declared essential war on them, and... well, this sister had war ready to go at the drop of a hat. And on top of that, she had homicidal tendencies towards anything and everything. If she figured out how to get into space, well, the Universe she was in would be history.
Star was on the way to a planet based off a sci-fi novel. As part of the job, Star had to read up on the planet, and this was it. There was a slight bump a few pages in, and that incessant, annoying, computerized female voice customary to most public transit said, "Arrival..at..Prize. Please..disembark..all..passengers..to..Prize. Arrival..at..Prize. Please..". And so on.
"Ah,crap,"said Star."Could you please move?", she asked the fifth-dimensional thing. Then she asked the other creature the same, minus cursing, of course.
She got up, collected her few items, and walked towards the exit. Star began to remember her past. There wasn't much except for the fact her parents had been addicted to Animal Planet. Her last words with them had been, "HiMomandDad, Ihaveajob,you'llneverseemeagain,goodbye!"
The parental response had been, "Mmph."
Arighty, no more sentimentality.
She hurried off the transit.
This "Prize" had better have one hell of a problem, she thought.
Star knelt, set up her tent, and turned on her scanner. It would tell her exactly where the thing that would solve the problem was at the moment. She flicked the "on" button and prayed.
Click! It was on. She panned the view. Yup, public transit had got her close to the thing, alright. It was heading to Star's left, towards a settlement. That wouldn't be a problem.
Star flicked another button. Da-da-da-ding! It went to a pan view of the area, located a normal female her age, and scanned the clothes and look. It reported these back to Star, and technology did the rest. Star sat beneath a bush, casually watching her shirt change to a sort of...ew!it was a deer-skin really short top. Her jeans changed to a deer-skin really short skirt. She sighed. At least they were consistent here.
She lay on her back, waiting for the physical changes to come. Luckily, this time it was just a pair of wings. You could get worse. She'd once gotten sent to a planet where everyone had three brains. Man, had that taken forever.
Star flexed the wings. They were functional. Good, good.
She flicked an icon on the screen. It transformed the screen into a mirror. Star examined her new features. Grayish hair, green eyes, not bad. Oh man, it had let her keep her glasses. The natives were gonna go into fits.
Star flicked another button that showed her choices to conceal her scanner. There was a rock, too heavy, notebook, too weird, clipboard, perfect! She tapped the icon and it was instantly disguised as a clipboard on the outside, normal on the inside. Star tapped the "sleep" icon on the screen.
At least the technology was awesome; it came from a possible future where Microsoft and Apple had peacefully merged.
In sleep mode, it became a normal clipboard.
Back To Tirna
Tirna sat in one of the family buildings, with Lisse sitting beside her, whispering in her ear. "This is where my ancestors lived. Where are yours?"
Tirna had to answer, "Uh, I dunno."
The next few days were mostly like that, with questions and stories. On the fifth day, a scout came in. "There's Parva's men on the horizon."
Which was quite amazing, as Parva hadn't been able to find any traces for what, 12 years? Anyway, Tirna had to leave.
(The Warning: Yes, physically speaking, Tirna was born 12 years ago. However, she is physiologically about 24-ish, so the next bit is understandable. She is also psychicly 24, which explains why she isn't ,like, scarred for life by the next bit. Oh, by the way, it's been some time since her Dance, so it's understandable what happens next. I mean, if this were possible. Which it probably isn't.)
Now I'm gonna leave ya in the lurch! Read my Earth's Children fic! It has dragons with weird names!
BACK!
(Tirna:What the SUCK?
Author:Like,ditto.)
Tirna left the village after several days, having found out nothing much useful. Except for the fact that, oh wow, grass is usually green. Having lived in a place with pretty much no grass for all her life, this should have been expected.
Anyway, she walked into the grasslands and found them unusually beautiful. Tirna sat in a protected spot and began gathering grasses, forming them into almost a nest.
Hours later, the pains came. (We'll spare you any gory details, but suffice to say that it took quite some time...Now she's a mom!)
Tirna arranged her eggs in the nest. She heard a thunk some feet away, covered up the eggs with grass, and went to investigate.
It was Kire, arranging her eggs in a nest. Actually, the THUNK had been the two males landing. Kire said, "Hi Tirna. I'm going to go with the guys and my eggs to the village. You gonna be okay?"
Tirna nodded nervously. "Yeah."
Kire took off, flying slowly for the eggs' sake.
Tirna just couldn't shake the feeling that something was happening. Something bad. Which wasn't far from the truth, actually.
(Star does actually have relevance, ya know. It just starts, um, later.)
Far away, Parva had gathered the kons of the region. She was shouting stuff like all politicians do, pretty much a heckuva lotta promises. Then it got nasty. She was still promising, but now it was to kill off all of Them. And take over the planet, possibly get into space, and go on a wild rampage. To make it a little bit more twisted, she was also looking for a hot guy to marry. Requirements were: aw, wadda you care, you're not in her universe. And who wants to marry someone with problems the size of the Mariana Trench? In deepness, anyway.
Seriously, though, she was making plans for a revolution. Which is not a good thing when you're gonna kill off half of the population just to get a couple more square miles of land.
Star was looking at the scanner's screen. She'd sent out a remote probe to see what was going on. "Oh, no." , she muttered.
To make this tale a little lighter, we have gone on hiatus for about five minutes.
Ok, back!
Tirna was nervously arranging grass around her eggs. Still, food is a really good thing when you've: walked/flown a couple hundred miles from where you spent most of your life, become a mom, and undergone a heckuva lotta stress over a mother who upped and walked into the wilderness 12 years ago with a newborn. Who was Tirna's mom, by the way..Anyway, so Tirna flew off and started weaving a rough basket to carry food in. Plants were abundant, so it didn't take long. She found several large pieces of wood around from a hut constructed long ago and since fallen to pieces, which doesn't matter at all to the story. Anyway, she started moving the plants to her nest, where she nestled on top of her eggs and slept peacefully.
Parva was there in the morning. She stood over Tirna with a glare on her face, knife in hand. Parva struck down with it, narrowly missing Tirna as she rolled to the side.
Tirna scrabbled beside her nest, and soon found her knife. She began to fight back, blocking and thrusting.
Close to noon, Parva struck Tirna's skin. Blood flowed from the wound on her left arm as Tirna struck Parva.
Blades flashed as the day dwindled. Finally Parva struck to Tirna's arm again, cutting deep, then the leg.
Tirna struck back one last time, barely able to see through a haze of blood.
Parva fell, ever slow. Words formed on her lips, blood bubbling out. "Die...food stealer."
Tirna watched as she hit ground, with the very slightest of bounces. Then darkness took her into its arms.
For hours they lay there, the eggs miraculously unharmed. Then a girl from the village found them. Parva was buried, and Tirna brought back to the village.
For weeks she lay in a bed, barely breathing. Slowly, her body healed.
One day, she woke.
The sun poured in, warm and good. Her eggs lay beside her, a perfect clutch of three.
Kire entered. ''She's awake!"
For days, the whole village celebrated. Parva had hurt them too, hunting on their lands, taking their food. Killing winged people, too.
Precisely four weeks from the day of the fight, her eggs began to hatch. Ekos had come and told her of her history, that she had come from what would become the Parvakon.
The firstborn was a little female, with silver down. She wailed, cold and scared. Tirna took her into her arms. "This one is Uife," she said. Uife means "the guiding light".
The next was a male. "Wera." she said. It means "knife of stars".
The last was a female, solemn and quiet. "Yarva."
Epilogue:
"...Tirna raised her chicks in the village. Uife became a hunter, along with Wera, her brother. Yarva wove cloths and made was happy." The storyteller finished her story.
Parva, named after the one who had made the village peaceful from death, came up to the storyteller. "What happened to Tirna?", she asked.
The storyteller smiled. "Oh, I dunno, young one. But listen,...Star came and found Parva dead, Tirna wounded, but could not go back. She showed the village many wonderful things, like a rock that had symbols on it. And..."
She was interrupted by Parva. "But what happened to Tirna?"
"I dunno. Now, shoo." The storyteller watched as Parva flapped off into the sunlight. Even though she was old, the storyteller's wings gleamed like fire, purple and silver, red and gold. She sighed with satisfaction. "Oh, Tium, I'll be with you soon."
The storyteller rubbed her left arm, scarred deep. "Soon, Tium, soon."
After The Epilogue
The storyteller is ancient now, with wings pure silver. She watchs the children run and play, wings glinting. The ones who have already molted and Danced, well, she can see her genes in them.
They have beautiful purple, red, gold, and silver wings, like fires leaping on high.
The storyteller is more ancient than you'd think. Winters beyond count are hers, more than 150. These are her descendents.
She is too old to tell stories right now, as she soaks up the sun.
One of the older children is telling the younger ones a story. The storyteller moves closer.
"...She stabbed with her knife one last time, like this," the child makes a stabbing motion with her hand. "And Parva fell, with the very slightest of bounces. Blood bubbled from her evil mouth as she said," the child's voice becomes a growl. "'Die...food stealer.'."
The children sit and listen to the rest.
The storyteller moves away. She reaches up to stroke the feathers of her falcon. "Oh, Tium, we are a legend. Kiri, I am a legend."
Kiri, her falcon, screeches.
"Yes, yes. One of the children will take you on when I die, you know. But you're a lazy old thing, aren't you? Aren't you?"
The falcon is silent. She knows.
The storyteller begins to journey, like a salmon. She takes no food, nothing.
Her ancient wings still function, though creaky and stiff.
The first place she goes is where she began her journey, the old camp of hers. Pilgrims come here from across the world, hoping for a moment of peace.
It is almost holy now, being the place they associate with her. Here is the ancient prong carcass, there her fire circle, and here her deerskin bed. Someday, pieces of these will be sold as sacred. They will be touted as sacred for the fact that she touched them.
They were never more than things to her.
She journeys on, to where she was born. Here she completes her circle.
Landing, she sees a hut that calls to her. She walks to it.
From the shadows, she is attacked.
It is a man with a knife and grayish wings, like steel. He stabs like a butcher, quickly.
This is Rehet, Parva's only son. His egg was left at the Parvakon camp just before the attack on Tirna. He is young-looking and strong.
Rehet stabs again before Tirna feels the pain. She drops to the dirt, searching.
Luck is with her today. Her mother's knife is here, buried beneath an old prong hide sleeping pad, still clean and dry.
Tirna tries to rise from the skin, but can't. She strikes with her knife, injuring Rehet slightly.
They fight breathlessly for some time.
At last, Tirna strikes, cutting one of his hamstrings.
Rehet stumbles slightly, then regains his balance.
They fight longer, trading slices.
Tirna watches as Rehet's blade strikes down, down, down towards her heart. She submits, finally understanding that there will be no escape now. Tirna knows that Rehet will never be found, but she will be mourned.
The blade strikes skin, and for just a moment, Yarva watches. Tirna sees her long-dead mother there.
Yarva smiles. "Daughter, it is fine."
Then the blade pierces muscle, and for one eternal moment, Tirna sees everything.
Then there is darkness.
The Day After
They had found her body, dead and cold, there on the hide. Her blood had dried to it, and it was saved, that simple hide, in a box that would last many many years.
Her feathers would be sold as sacred, her hair as well.
She is buried by her old camp, where the winds had blown one hundred seventy five years, three months, and two days back from her death, when a young mother lay down in the brush and died.
What Is To Come
They will worship her, even the young ones. She will never be forgotten, not a thousand years from now. Tirna will become a legend, larger than life.
Larger than death.
Tirna will be remembered on many days, the day she died, so many others.
Yet Kiri and Yarva will be very near forgotten, as will most of her friends and enemies.
They are all dust now, now and forever.
I am Yarva, teller of tales. My name comes from an ancestor I never knew.
Listen as I begin again my ancestress' tale: "Once, long ago...Tap, tap, tap, tap-tap,tap, tap, tap, tap-tap, tap! The women of the village danced their wild dance, chanting the song that for eons had kept Them away. A young mother pushed aside a reed covering the entrance to her hut. She must get this away,she must..."
((Eighty trillion awkward carriage returns, in an attempt to center this on the back page))
Tirna is 11 winters old, and with the prejudice prevailing against her kind, this is amazing.
Yet something was set in motion at her birth that she will never fully understand.
You see, her mother left her settlement with newborn Tirna. Her settlement was not of Tirna's kind.
War is brewing.
You will meet people with wings, a sister who is not quite what she seems, egg-layers, inter-universal travelers, and more.
Come and join Tirna on her voyage. Come and join a girl with wings.