To humans, the clouds above look like palaces. Giant, ever-shifting, buildings of white fluff, formed in towers, halls, and spires. Of course that could never be. Clouds are only moisture, and totally at the mercy of the weather. For them to be such huge castles, or even smaller buildings, is absolutely preposterous.
But the humans have forgotten the truth of their imaginations.
Amongst the clouds live a race known as the Cloudwalkers, having long since faded out of the minds of their earthbound relatives. Legend says that long ago that race, living amongst the clouds and manipulating the heavens, waged a war with the humans, and they lost. They were driven back to their homes, out of reach and scattered, and there they stayed. The mighty race of winged humans, with lightning and rain at their fingertips, faded out of existence.
And the Cloudwalkers are happy to let the humans believe that.
I stare over the edge, laid out on my stomach on the cloud, watching the village below and the tiny black specks of the humans wandering around it. We're high enough up - my fathers always insist on raising our home when we pass over human settlements - that I can't make out anything definite, not even with how far I can see, but I like watching anyway. I've never been allowed to go farther than a mile from my home, and only under the cover of storms, and absolutely never close to the ground. My fathers handle the gathering of food, what little of it we need, and while I may long to wander, I respect them too much to disobey their wishes. The humans, to me, are mysterious creatures, specks of black, brown, or blonde that I've only seen pictures of. They've told me of the war, the slaughter that drove our race back into the clouds, where we allowed the humans to forget us.
We might have been the stronger race, given our ability to control weather, but the humans are physically stronger than us, and there were simply more of them. We couldn't have won. These days we only exist in their old myths and legends, completely forgotten by the average person. I don't see the necessity of hiding ourselves, not anymore, but our councils have insisted we not reveal ourselves to the humans.
"Staring at the ground again, Ichigo?" comes a voice from behind me, and I spread my wings, giving one strong flap to lift myself far enough off the clouds that I can get my legs under me.
"Yeah," I admit, turning to greet one of my fathers, Shinji. He's about as tall as me, with straight blonde hair hanging around his jaw and brown eyes. His wings are nearly the complete opposite of mine, covered in large feathers the color of burnished gold. Mine are leather, and jet black. Us being unrelated couldn't be more obvious. "My work ended two hours ago, and both of you were gone. Not much else to do."
We don't have jobs, exactly, but most Cloudwalkers rotate duties. With the exception of some solid positions, like Shinji's spot as captain of our guard force. Since I'm not yet considered an adult, not for another half a year, I'm not allowed to leave for any of the off-cloud jobs. I'm confined to reinforcing walls, spinning new clouds, or various other menial tasks. Knowledge and practice that I need, but it's pretty dull. Our community, a spread out collection of cloud buildings and homes, is planning a storm, so I spent all day using my powers to darken the bottom layer of our streets and homes with rain. Kind of exhausting, but I'm one of the strongest in our entire community, despite my age. It could have been much worse if I was weaker.
"Come on inside, you'll want some rest before tonight's storm. It's a celebration," he reminds me, and I wince.
"Yeah, I know. Do I have to participate?" I hate how much my voice sounds like a whine, but I also hate flying in these celebrations. It's a courtship storm, cover for our ceremonial flights, which means I'm going to spend all night working my ass off to dodge the many people that will be chasing me. Because of my excessive power, I'm kind of sought after.
"Yes, you do," Shinji says sternly, turning to lead the way through the arch into our home. "You're a submissive over sixteen, you're required to participate in every courtship storm until you find a mate."
I glare at his back, despite it not being his fault. I'm, unfortunately, a submissive. During a courtship storm any dominant that can pin me and lay claim to me - thankfully that just means a painful bite, and not sex - can bind themselves to me if they want to. The idea is that when I hit the age of maturity, eighteen, and my body starts its first heat as a submissive, I'll already have someone to control me as a mate and work me through it. I've been lucky as far as I'm concerned, most submissives my age are long since claimed, but I've managed to escape it, so far. Shinji taught me to fight, and my other father, Kisuke, made me one of the best fliers in the entire community, so I've been able to outmaneuver or outfight every dominant to come after me so far. Since I've been through ten of these already - we do them every two months - and they last the whole night, that's pretty impressive.
The fact that I'm one of the only bat-types in our community has only made them come after me more persistently.
When a child Cloudwalker reaches the age of five, we're transferred to a different cloud community. To diversify blood, an old remnant of the days we'd been all but wiped out. I came from a bat community, this is a bird one. Both of my adopted fathers are birds, Shinji a golden and Kisuke a green, so I'm about as different as they come from the main sub-race here.
"Come on!" Shinji calls, and I grudgingly follow him inside. He is right, as much as I dislike it. If I'm going to repeat my miracle again, I need to recover from today's work, which will only come through a good deal of rest. "Go to bed, Ichigo," my father says as I come through the door, "I'll wake you before the storm."
"Alright," I grumble, heading through the arches of clouds to my room. A few flaps of my wings raises me to the level of my bed, attached higher in the tower-like structure, and I lay down on my stomach. The layer of fluff over the harder, condensed structure of the frame, is beyond comfortable. I didn't make it, I'm no good at fluff, but Kisuke is great at it. I stretch out, curling halfway and letting my right wing spread out to cover me. I don't bother undressing, my loose black clothing is comfortable, all-purpose and easy to move in, and there's no point getting out of them when I'm just going to have to put them back on for tonight.
I can only pray I get through tonight unscathed.
I spin through the air, circling and rolling over my current chaser, faster than his larger frame can easily turn, before speeding off. The rain is cold against my skin, flattening my orange hair to my skull and running off my wings in droves. I have an advantage against all my pursuers in that respect. Their feather-covered wings are heavier, and will hold a small amount of water, while mine won't. I'm faster, and I'm agile. I'll be damned if any of them are going to catch me.
The thunder over me rings in my ears, and lightning crashes down not ten feet away. Lightning will sting, but as a Cloudwalker I can just channel it through me and out somewhere else, it's no real danger. I catch a flash of movement out of the corner of my eye, and pull my wings in to drop down as another bird flashes past the space where I was. I snap my wings back open, glancing over to see which chaser this is, and my eyes narrow.
Noitora. My fucking favorite.
His wings are black as well, even if they're feathered, and he's decided that makes us the perfect fucking match. He's a sadistic, cruel piece of shit though, and I would rather be with literally anyone else. Unfortunately, he's also fast, strong, and nearly as powerful as me, him being a fully-fledged adult. He's also not above using that power in underhanded and nasty ways. He grins at me, white teeth flashing in the dark along with his one eye, and I speed up. He won't be easy to shake. Maybe I'll get lucky and someone else will take him out for a chance at me, that's happened before.
I can't hear him behind me, not past the rain and the occasional thunder, and I don't dare anything more than a brief glance to check. That gives me about half a second's warning that he's not where I expect him to be before someone crashes hard into my back. I spin, out of control from the impact, as arms wrap around my chest, holding my arms to my sides. Wings beat painfully against mine, doing something resembling steadying us, as the arms tighten around my ribs. I snarl, lost in the sound of the rain, as the world spins around the pair of us, recognizing the black flash of wings in the corner of my eyes as Noitora's wings.
Somehow, the bastard got on top of me. I kick out at him, hearing from the shout in my ear that I've probably hit something like his knee, before he bites into my shoulder. I give a shout of pain, arching and throwing my head back in an attempt to headbutt him. The fucker is just trying to hurt me, he has to bite the front of my throat, over my windpipe, for the instinctive part of me to force me into a mating bond. So the teeth in my shoulder are totally useless, and when he digs them in farther before ripping them out of me, dragging a cry of pain from me, it's not for any purpose but to hurt.
"You're mine this time!" he shouts into my ear, to be heard over the rain, and I bare my teeth. Oh I'm going to hurt him. I've only ever escaped Noitora, but this time I'm going to make sure to leave him with some aches to remember me by.
I jerk one arm loose, slamming my elbow into his ribs, and his grip loosens enough for me to pull free. I don't get more than a couple feet away, trying to steady myself, before his hand closes over the top of my right wing, pulling me back against him once more. We've stopped dropping at least, though we're still spinning, held up by the beat of his wings, since mine have no room to get any kind of proper lift.
"Get off me!" I snap, throwing another elbow backwards. It connects, and pain blacks out my world.
I come back to myself falling through the air, plummeting towards the ground, and as I blink my eyes open I realize how scarily fast the cover of treetops is approaching. My wings are already open, dragging through the air and slowing me somewhat, and I force myself to beat them, trying to stop my fall. A scream wrenches itself from my throat at the utter agony that takes over my right wing, and my vision erupts in spinning spots of white and black. I'm not going to be able to stop, I realize. I'm too close to the ground, and something is terribly, terribly wrong with my wing. I'm going to smash into the trees and that will be the end. If I survive, which is really, really unlikely, I'll still be injured and stuck on the ground. No one will look for me, at least until the storm ends.
Something grips my right arm, nearly wrenching my shoulder from its socket, and I give a shout. I twist my neck, looking up, and Noitora's black feathers and white teeth fill my vision. He has both hands closed around my upper arm, pulling, and while it hurts I don't fight him, because I have no hope of stopping my descent on my own. His wings are beating, hard, and we are slowing, but it doesn't feel fast enough to stop a collision with the approaching ground. He curls, all but bodily throwing himself backward, and a strangled cry of pain gets torn from my throat when one of his feet slams into my injured wing. I can feel something bend how it's not supposed to, and stay that way.
When we hit the trees it's not nearly as bad as it could be. My side smacks into one thick branch, spinning me through the air and pulling me out of Noitora's grip, and I feel smaller branches rake over my face, arms, and wings as I fall through them. I hit the ground on my back with an unforgiving thump, driving any pretense of air I'd recovered after the first smack out of me again. Noitora slowed us enough that I'm pretty sure nothing got broken from the impact, but my whole left side aches and there are a fair number of sections of my skin that sting, where I'm pretty sure the branches have cut or scraped me up.
I heave a breath in, coughing and praying for my lungs to accept the air, as what little rain is making it through the treetops patters down on me. I push myself up on my left arm, as I'm pretty sure Noitora fucked my right shoulder up trying to stop the fall, and grit my teeth as my right wing, outstretched on the muddy ground, violently protests the movement. Suddenly, Noitora is in my face, coming out of the darkness as though from nowhere, and slamming me down onto my back with a hand on either of my shoulders. Pain gets shoved to the background as he grins down at me, teeth coming down towards my throat.
This happens and he's still trying to claim me? Bastard!
I lash out, slamming my hands into his chest to push him away, jerking myself to the side so his teeth close a few inches away from my neck. He's raked up too, blood leaking down his cheek from a slice under his left eye, but the hard snap of his wings, buffeting me with air, proves that he's more or less uninjured. At the least, his wings still work.
He digs fingers into my right shoulder, thumb hooking up to press into the bite on my shoulder, and I give a snarled shout, fighting the urge to throw my head back in pain. I will not bare my throat to this bastard. His hand pins my left arm to the ground, by my forearm, and I drag my right hand up despite the pain, accessing my power and pulling wind to my fingertips, blasting him in the face. It whips his hair back, and he winces, but his only reaction is to drag me up a few inches by my shoulder and then slam me back down into the mud. My shoulder twinges, but it's almost completely drowned out by the impact of my weight back onto my wings, and the sharp agony of my injured right wing.
"Bastard!" I scream into his face, my left shoulder arching off the ground, and I kick my legs out. It's useless, he's straddling my hips and there's nothing for me to hit. He dives back down, coming for my throat again, and I jerk to the opposite side, his teeth sinking into the side of my neck. It's not the right angle, it's not threatening enough for a claim, and he draws back with blood staining his teeth and a savage grin on his face.
It's only a matter of time till he gets my throat, I'm too badly injured and I'm not going to be able to avoid his teeth forever.
There's a roar of sound, and I freeze in tandem with Noitora. His head whips around, and I manage to twist my head to look under his arm and past him. There's something standing there, metal glinting in its hand, and a second or so later there's the flash of lightning and the boom of thunder. The light doesn't get all the way through the trees, but it's enough to paint the thing standing there in scattered spots of light. If I wasn't panicked before, now I definitely am.
It's a human.
He's holding what looks like a blade, not a sword, but more like a knife, and he's half-crouched, threatening. He shouts something, no language that I can understand, and Noitora all but jumps off me. A moment later and he's launching into the sky, wings beating as he slips through the cover of the trees and back into the storm. I get to my feet, adrenaline muting enough of the pain to get me standing. I try and take off, spreading my wings and snapping them down, but the pain drives a scream from me that's nearly drowned out by another crack of thunder. I collapse to one knee, jerking my head to the side to look over at my wing, and horror joins the pain.
It's broken. My fucking wing is broken. My breath comes fast, black creeping in at the edges of my vision, and then it overtakes me completely.
I fucking hate the rain.
I was supposed to get back to my home before the storm started, but it looks like it started early. I've still got at least a mile to go, through the forest, to reach my cabin. The rain's just pouring down, and the lightning is at the same time as the thunder, so the storm's directly overhead. Everything looks different in the rain and darkness, and the ground is almost completely mud now that the storm's been going for a couple of hours, so it's a bitch to walk through. I'm no stranger to traveling these woods in the dark, that's just a daily thing for me, but the rain's fucked everything up. I got lost, briefly, and I only just got back on track.
I was selling off my extra furs to the closest village, still about half a day away at a slow pace, and I'm thankful that I chose to just get gold, and not trade that in for anything. It would be completely and utterly soaked through by now, even with the trees overhead absorbing some of the rainfall. I despise rain, always have. I hate the feel of being damp unless I'm actually washing off, and now I'm going to be damp for at least a day before everything somewhat dries. What a fucking pain in the ass.
I pull my cloak down further over my head, despite how fucking useless it is now that it's soaked through, and bare my teeth as I glare up at the dark sky. I get that it's Fall, and we should be expecting storms more often now, but this is going to just muck up everything. I haven't got traps set anywhere, I'd noticed the clouds moving in yesterday and made sure to take them all down, but once it's over I'll have to go out and set them all back up again. Well, at least I've got some extra meat for tonight, soon as I get back. There's some dry wood inside my house, it might be smoky, but at least I'll be able to do some cooking.
Movement catches my eye, on the ground and not like the jerk of leaves in wind, and I stop, turning to face it. There's two shapes struggling on the ground, one pinning the other to the mud, and I shrug my shoulders. Two wolves, most likely, or a wolf and its prey. Then the top one wrenches the other up, slamming it back down as if to knock the air out of it, and I still. That's not the kind of move a wolf makes. One screams something, in a very human sounding voice, and I reach for my knife. Maybe this is something I should get involved in.
That feeling is confirmed when the top one dives down, going for the pinned one's throat. It jerks aside, but the intention was clearly to rip the bottom one's throat out. That's fucking savage, and not something I'm okay with watching happen. I give a roar when the top one straightens up, pulling my knife, and both of them freeze for a moment before the top one's head whips around to look at me. Lightning flashes a moment later, a boom of sound crashing overhead, and the breath leaves my lungs at the briefly illuminated figures. The top one has wings, huge black wings, which explains why I didn't recognize the shapes as humans, but they definitely are human aside from that.
"Get off him!" I shout, and the top one leaps to his feet, backing away. A moment later I watch, stunned, as his wings spread and beat down, and he disappears into the sky.
The other one gets to its feet, a little slower, and I see wings on this one too, though they're a little smaller and look lighter. They spread, beat down, and the thing screams. Thunder crashes halfway through, drowning him out and illuminating the winged human for a brief moment, and I see it collapse to one knee, still very firmly on the ground. One wing is held up but the other is hanging, looking wrong even from my distance. The thing kneels there for a moment, before slumping to the ground.
It takes a moment for me to get past my shock far enough to do anything, but then I slowly approach the downed, winged, human-thing. It's a he, I realize as I get closer, mud-covered hair plastered to his skull from the rain, and eyes closed. Unconscious. I stow my knife away and sink to my knees next to him, looking over his frame. He's smaller, thinner, than the other winged human, and clearly pretty badly injured. He's too coated in mud to really see what's wrong with him, but I can see blood mixed up with the dirt in some places. His wings are large, feel leather to the touch, and seem to be black beneath the dirt. He's half on his left one, but his right is spread out over the ground. I can't see his other, so I can't compare, but the limb just looks wrong. It's definitely damaged somehow, and badly if it stopped him from flying at all, if it forced him to pass out.
Well... damn.
I'm not one for strays, it's a fucking brutal world and if you can't cut it you don't belong here, but this didn't look like much of a fair fight. I suppose since he's not an animal, as far as I know, and he's pretty seriously fucked up, I can make an exception this time. Just to patch him up, just until the storm ends. Now, how the hell do I carry him with those wings of his?
I end up doing the only thing I can think of, loosely binding his wings to his back with a strip of cloth from the bottom of my cloak. His wings bend to his back naturally, the injured one not doing so as easily, but he doesn't even stir when I force it a bit, which further cements my belief that he's badly injured and firmly unconscious. I brace myself, lifting him from the ground, and very nearly fling him into the air before I catch myself. He's light, absurdly light, even for his smallish size. I guess that makes sense, thinking over it. A human is heavy, nothing that wings like that could lift, he must be internally different somehow to allow for flight.
I'm used to heavier loads, so his weight won't be any kind of problem. It's probably only another half hour or so to my cabin, and then I can get a look at him out of the rain and in better light. I tighten my grip around his ribs and legs, and glance up at the sky before heading out. If that other bastard comes back, I'll just have to gut him. If you're going to kill someone, just fucking do it.
I wake slowly, light shining on my eyelids, and give a groan. Everything hurts, absolutely everything. What the hell?
I remember the storm, the courtship ceremony, getting chased by Noitora. Oh that fucking bastard, he knocked me out of the sky! And then the fight, him persisting in trying to claim me despite us being on the ground, and... I passed out. I stir, immediately regretting it, and slowly open my eyes. Am I back home? Did someone find me? Did Noitora act like a decent fucking person for once and lead them to me? Or am I going to have to murder the bastard for claiming me? That, I'll do without fucking hesitation. I'll take prison time over being chained to someone who broke my wing to make me his.
Brown meets my eyes, and after a moment of staring I recognize it as wood. What the hell? Where am I? I force myself up to sitting, breathing past the sharp ache in my left side. My eyes flick over the room, and my blood runs cold. Wood floor, wood ceiling, a square window with light pouring in and trees visible through the hole.
I'm still on the ground, I'm in one of the human dwellings. Oh god, the human from the storm, that had forced Noitora to run. My head snaps to the side as footsteps reach my ears, and someone brushes in past the flap of leather covering an archway. The human. Oh, my fathers are going to kill me, if the council doesn't get to me first, if the human doesn't kill me first.
He's tall, as tall as Noitora or Kisuke, but much thicker than either. He's shirtless, and that gives me a mildly terrifying view of thick, hard, muscles in a chest nearly twice as big as mine. His legs are covered in brown leggings, the tops tight against thighs equally as muscular, and his feet are bare. He's got light blue hair, nearly the same color as the midday sky, and darker blue eyes that immediately fix on me. They're intent, focused, and they flick over me from head to toe in a moment.
I jerk up after a moment of shock, and fear, gathering my legs under me to crouch on the bed or whatever I was lying on, and automatically spreading my wings to intimidate. My left snaps out, but my right only responds with a burst of pain, it doesn't move from my back. My breath catches, and I fight the urge to crane my head over my shoulder to see what's going on as the human straightens up. His hands rise to either side of his head, a gesture I recognize as stop, or wait, and he says something. It's no use, the humans must speak a different language than us, I can't understand him.
I bare my teeth as he steps forward, reaching for my power and dragging electricity to my fingertips. I can't summon a lightning bolt, that takes at least three Cloudwalkers working together, and I haven't been trained in anything but the basics of how to reroute, but I can do a spark or two. Not enough to hurt anyone of my own race, but maybe it'll give the human a nasty zap.
"Stay back!" I snap, brandishing my right hand as sparks jump between my fingers. My shoulder sends a sharp knife of pain into my chest and I suck in a sharp breath, my concentration snapping. The sparks vanish, and I clutch at my right shoulder with my other hand as my head dips. The flex of muscles remind me of the bites on my shoulder and the side of my throat, with a painful throb. It's a harsh reminder that Noitora fucked me up pretty badly, and if the human is any sort of a fighter - unless all humans look like that, he must be - I'm kind of screwed.
He raises his hands a little farther, and then slowly lowers his left and points over my shoulder, to my wing. I watch him for a moment, debating, and then risk a quick glance back. What little I can see of my right wing is bound tightly in white strips of cloth, bandages, which explains why it wouldn't unfurl. The human tied it to my back, and that freaks me out just a little. It was broken, I need to see a healer and have them set the bone if I'm going to have any chance of ever flying again. This human couldn't know how to set a wing correctly, could he?
The human says something and slowly steps back, pointing over to one corner of the small room I'm in. I follow his gesture to a large mirror, propped up against the log wall. He backs away, to the wall beside it, flicking his fingers in a beckoning movement.
Well, if he wanted me dead I'd probably be so already. There's not much point to helping someone you intend to kill. I slide off the bed, cautiously, and nearly collapse to the floor as my legs buckle beneath me. They don't hurt, my legs aren't injured, but I'm just feeling so weak. Pretty much everything above my waist, with the exception of my left wing and arm, hurts, and I don't know how bad it is yet. I risk a glance down and find out my shirt is gone, though thankfully my pants remain, even as covered in dirt as they are, and most of my left side is black and blue. It still doesn't feel like any of my ribs are broken, but it's hard to imagine that they're not, with bruising like that.
I pull my left wing to my back, there's no space for it in this room, and carefully approach the mirror. I only get close enough to see most of my reflection, not getting within arm's reach of the human. My jaw clenches as I study myself. I look like shit, pretty much. With the exception of where my shirt was covering me, I'm streaked in dirt and the occasional small smear of blood. My side is bruised all to hell, and my right shoulder is swollen looking and hot to the touch. They're half covered in dried mud, but the two bite marks on my shoulder and the side of my neck are equally nasty looking. Great, just fucking fantastic. My wing's broken, my dominant arm is fucked, and I'm not going to be able to even move without my side yelling at me.
Fuck all of it, I'm going to beat the hell out of Noitora on principle when I get back, before I make sure he spends some time in one of our prisons. Breaking another Cloudwalker's wing is a major offense, and I know the fucker did it on purpose. So when I get home...
Something terrible occurs to me, and I step away from the mirror, ignoring the questioning something that the human calls after me as I brush through the leather-covered archway and into a bigger room. I spare only enough of a glance around to find a propped open door that leads outside before I head for it, moving quickly as my side will permit. I crane my head back as soon as I'm outside, raising my gaze to the sky. Only blue air meets my gaze, and as I spin on the spot, I only find more of the same. The sky is clear, the community has moved on. My heart sinks into my stomach, and I take a single step forward before sinking to my knees, my gaze fixed sightlessly on the sky.
They're gone. The community has gone, and left me behind. I'm grounded, even if the human did set my wing correctly - and I can only pray that he did because I can't do it myself - it will still take months for the bone to heal, not to mention the time it will take after that to get enough strength into it to fly again. Noitora will lie to them, of course he will, so they won't know where I went missing, only that I did. My fathers are respected, but enough to turn the entire flight plan prescribed by all our councils on its head for one person? Not likely.
I lower my head, hating the feeling of the damp ground beneath my feet, eyes squeezing shut as I fight back the tears burning in my eyes. Not much point to it, is there? There's nothing I can do to change anything, so I might as well just suck it up and pray they come back. The human set my wing, so he can't be all bad, and it's not like I have much of a chance of surviving without him. This badly injured? No way. I'll just have to take my chances with him.
There's a pointed cough behind me, and I turn my head to find the human leaning in the doorway, watching me. I get to my feet, slowly, grimacing at the fresh layer of dirt over my lower legs. I turn, and watch him back for a moment, just studying. I move to cross my arms and then immediately decide otherwise as I get twin pulses of pain from my side and my shoulder, letting them hang at my sides.
"My home is gone," I inform him, getting by the slight furrow of his brow that he doesn't understand me, but it doesn't matter. "I'm stuck down here, and you're kind of the only chance I have of ever getting back one day." There's no point in asking him any questions, he won't be able to answer them, but at least I can throw out some kind of gratitude even if he won't understand it. "Thank you."
His eyes widen briefly, and then he gives a grin that nearly makes me rethink sticking around. He's got massively sharp canines, and I don't know if that's a human thing or just him but it's kind of scary. "You're welcome," he answers, and my eyes widen.
We haven't been understanding each other, so our languages must be different, but maybe we share common words between them or a root or something. His accent is weird, so mine must be equally as strange to him, but maybe communication won't be so impossible. I don't know about him, but I'm a decently quick learner, maybe I can learn his side of the language while I'm stuck here. Maybe, this won't be so awful.
He's freaked out, I get that much from his behavior. I can't understand most of what he says, only the occasional word that slips through, but he keeps looking at the sky like he's searching for something that should be there. I get it, really. I fixed his wing as best as I could, setting the bones so they matched his uninjured one, before tying it up in the best version of a splint I could manage. Who knows if he'll heal any different, but bones usually take months to heal before you can even start to rebuild the muscle. He's stuck here.
I have no idea what happened to his side, but it didn't feel like any of his ribs were broken so I left it alone. His shoulder's fucked up, somehow, but I don't have the knowledge to figure out if it'll heal on its own or not. I only really had time to fix his wing up once I'd gotten him back, before I had to deal with myself, and there was no way in hell I was going to wash him off by myself. Cleaning his wing off was enough of a pain in the ass. Now that he's awake, and a little settled, he can clean off so I can see if there's any serious cuts on him. It doesn't look like it, but better to be careful. Better he's clean, too, before I bandage up the rest of his injuries.
Currently, he's looking thoughtfully down at the bucket of water and rag I've given him. Not confused looking, but more just... thinking. It's kinda irritating.
"Hey!" I bark at him, and his head snaps up to look at me. "Are you going to fucking use that?" I point at the bucket to enforce my point, since there's no way to know how much, if any, of my words got through.
He rolls his brown eyes, and sinks down to a crouch beside the bucket. It hurts him, I can see the tremble in his hands, but he only winces. He's got a pain tolerance, I'll give him that. His hands come together in front of him, and his eyes close for a moment, before he begins spinning his hands together in small circles. I'm about to ask him what the fuck he's doing, before I see the streams of white coming from his fingertips.
Clouds. He's spinning fucking clouds.
He grins, continuing the motion in larger circles till he's got a large section of white cloud about twice as big around as he is. He grips it like it's something physical, maybe to him it is, and drags it over the bucket. He dips his free hand into the water, and I watch in stunned disbelief as the water streams up through the air and into the cloud, turning it a darker and darker grey till the bucket is empty and it's a dark black.
He shoots me a smug look, grabbing the rag before pulling the black cloud up with him as he stands, only the tiniest flicker of his eyes betraying his pain. He guides it over his head, and with a snap of the fingers on his left hand it starts to rain on him. He winces a little, maybe at the temperature or maybe at the impact of the water against the open bite marks on the right side of his neck and shoulder, but casually starts to scrub the mud off himself.
Hot damn. That looks tremendously fucking useful. It's not a downpour, more like a sprinkle, but it's more than enough to be effective.
So now I've seen him bring sparks to his hands, control water, and spin fucking clouds together out of thin air. What else can he do? I wish I knew what the hell he is, but I've never heard of winged humans with those kinds of powers. Maybe...
Him, and the other one, had showed up in the storm yesterday. Was the storm artificial? Is all weather artificial? Does whatever race he belongs to make that storm? Oh man, talk about fucking throwing my world on its head. Shame we've only got a tiny bit of understanding, or I could ask him all these things. Maybe I can at least figure out his name or what his race is called, while I bandage him up. I should probably tell him my name too, come to think of it.
I should also get him something to dry off with, and some clothes. His pants are going to be soaked through, and his shirt's laid out with my own clothes and cloak, not dry yet. I think I've probably got some old pants that might fit him if he tied them tight enough, though he might just have to deal with being shirtless for now. The shirt I pulled off him had four sets of ties to hold it together, tying around the top and bottom of his wings. So it's not just a case of cutting holes in the back of a shirt, his wings are probably too wide or big for that. As he scrubs the dirt off him, I can't help staring a little.
I knew he was pretty small, but with the mud off his torso I can see it's because he's lean and muscled. Maybe that's part of how they fly, is that they're all built thin. I'd never get off the fucking ground with my kind of musculature, not without some serious problems anyway. His abs are clenched, shuddering occasionally, and even though I know it's likely from his bruised side it's still a nice effect. He goes after his hair last, with only his left hand, and as he scrubs the mud out I get to see that his hair barely brushes his shoulders, spiky and cut in layers, and that it's bright orange. He's young, too. With his face not streaked in dirt I can see that he can't be older than twenty or so, and probably younger.
Right, stop staring and go get him some dry pants.
I head inside, and I do find some black leggings that close with ties, ones I outgrew years and years ago, down in a corner of my chest of clothing. I honestly don't know why I even still have these, I must have just forgotten about them. I grab a larger, spare piece of cloth for him to dry off, and head back outside. I stop, once again finding myself shocked by the winged human. The cloud is gone, and he seems to be quite literally air-drying himself. A wind that isn't touching anything else is moving his hair, and his eyes are closed as he stands still against the force.
His eyes flick open as the wind dies down, pinning onto me. He looks more or less dry, with the exception of his pants, and I approach, offering him the cloth and the leggings I'm holding. He takes them cautiously, and I back away to give him his space. He throws both items to rest over his left shoulder, before looking up at me pointedly.
I give him a grin, but do turn away, leaning into the doorway to give him privacy. It's a minute or so before he says something, calling my attention back, and I turn back around to face him. The pants hang low on his hips, it can only tie so tight, and he's got the wet pants bundled up inside the cloth I'd given him. Seeing him now that the mud's gone, he's worse off than he looked before. He's got a bunch of scratches on his arms, and a few on his face as well, and a number of bruises scattered all over him. They don't look like strikes, most of them aren't anywhere that someone would hit to cause damage, so I don't know where he might have gotten them. The cuts all seem scabbed, or at least none of them are outright bleeding, so they should be just fine without any kind of interference. I should probably look at his shoulder though, and put something over the two bite marks - one on his right shoulder and one on the right side of his neck - that look much nastier against his tanned skin now that they're clearly visible.
I straighten up, flicking my fingers to beckon him over as I head back into my house. "Are you coming?" I throw over my shoulder. I reemerge from the room I'd stored him in, a spare room, with the bandages I'd set aside once I was finished with his wing, at the same time as he comes through the door. He sets the bundle of clothing and the bucket he's carrying aside, near the door, and straightens up to watch me. "Sit down," I demand, snapping my fingers and pointing to my table.
He does pause for a moment, but then slowly approaches, circling around and sliding up onto the edge of the table with a momentary clench of his teeth. He's leaned forward some, and I almost push him back to straighten up before I realize that he physically can't with his wings. They're too big, they come down to the middle of the back of his thigh folded as they are, and he's leaned forward to give them space to jut out along the table. That can't be comfortable for him. Oh, fuck it, I'll suck up the bench being too short.
"Come on, kid, move over to the bench," I tell him, with a gesture of my hand towards the plank of wood as I shove it back with my foot a few feet from the table. That's really all it is, when it comes down to it. Hard to find anyone else to make things for me, this deep in the forest, so I make do with what I can make with my own two hands, or lug back from the town.
He gives me a look that I'm pretty sure is grateful, as he carefully edges off the table and sits down on the bench facing it. He can sit up straight on that, at least. I set the bandages down, gently gripping his upper right arm, and he grimaces, saying something. I don't catch any of the words, but the tone comes through just fine. Braced, and resigned, he expects pain. Well, he's definitely right.
"Yeah, this is going to suck," I answer. I fucked up my own shoulder once, when I was a kid, and I vaguely remember what the healer that my father took me to did. She called it range of motion, but it just felt like a fucking cruel test of how much pain I could take. These days, I get that she was testing the limit my arm could go without pain, to see how badly it was injured. I remember mine, and she'd put my arm in a sling for it, so if he turns out anywhere near the same I can just do that.
I slowly rotate his arm, feeling his muscles twitch beneath my hands, as I test how far up it'll go. When he sharply inhales, his other hand clenching, I let it go a different direction. Once I'm finished his head is bowed, the muscles in his neck tensed against the pain, and I'm all but certain that he'll definitely need a sling. I don't know what the hell happened to it, but I get the impression that his arm pretty much doesn't move without pain, and pulling it any more than about a foot away from its natural position invites much worse. It should at least stay immobile until the swelling's gone down. I let him go, and he looks up as I reach for the roll of bandages.
"I'm going to wrap up your neck and shoulder first," I tell him, more thinking aloud then for any kind of communication, but I do flick my hand at my own neck to try and get some of the point across. He catches on, dropping his shoulder an inch or so and tilting his head to the side to expose the injuries.
I'm not fantastic at it, but I've had to wrap up my own injuries enough times that I can do a decent enough job. It's remarkably easier to do on another person, I find out. I layer the white cloth over the bite marks, wrapping and tying them to keep them in place, before reaching for his arm again. He winces, but lets me have it. I fashion a makeshift sling, hooking the bandages over the back of his neck, and when I'm satisfied that it will at least support his arm if he doesn't move it, I tie that off too, setting the bandages aside.
He shifts, testing it, and everything holds together. Good. He bows his head a little, and I offer him my hand to stand up. He takes it, and, forgetting how much lighter he is than me, I pull hard to get him off the bench. He snaps up with a startled cry, impacting with my chest and bouncing off it, and I automatically catch him.
"Oh, fuck! Sorry."
He gives me a nasty look, brown eyes narrowed in irritation, and snaps something that I can only assume is less than complimentary, given how he says it. He shakes out of my grip, and as he steps away I try and figure out a way to explain my mistake. He stalks, clearly offended and probably pretty in pain too, over to the spare room and brushes inside, out of my view.
Oh, damn.
I sit on the edge of the bed, my left hand loosely wrapped around my ribs. I can feel myself faintly trembling, and I grit my teeth and grip a little harder. I feel so amazingly useless, and helpless. The human pulling me up had driven something home that I'd only heard of, that humans are significantly physically stronger than we are. It doesn't really scare me, he doesn't really scare me, but I've spent the last year and a half being the best and the strongest to keep my freedom. Being so badly hurt, being so helpless, just goes against what I've been taught my whole life, and what's been reinforced since I turned sixteen.
It hurts to breathe, and I'm just so tired. I probably shouldn't have used my powers to clean off, or to dry, I definitely don't have the energy to spare, but I'd just wanted to prove that I could still do something. Damn it, I'm not this weak. I should have beaten the crap out of Noitora. He's bigger than me, but I'm so much better trained than he is. I should have been able to evade him, easily. Him breaking my wing fucked all of that.
Still, I suppose it could have been worse. He could have managed to claim me before dragging me back up to our community. Well...
Would it have been better? If he'd managed it, I could have dragged him in front of our council for breaking my wing. Some minor injury is allowed during a courtship storm, but nothing like what he did to me. I honestly don't know what happens then. Most people aren't the kind of bastard that Noitora is. Would I have been stuck with him, or would they have thrown him into a prison and set me free again?
Is that a better alternative than being stuck down here? Hard to say.
The leather leading into this room brushes aside, and I get to my feet as the human comes in. My legs don't want to hold me, but I force them to. He holds up his hands in a peaceful gesture, before holding out his left hand. I stare at him for a moment, before releasing my ribs and reaching out to take it. I don't honestly think that he wants to hurt me, he patched me up after all, but the sharp explosion of pain from him pulling me up had made me snappish.
I watch in some confusion as he lays his left arm in my hand, at the elbow, before releasing his grip. My hand drops under the sudden weight before I can stabilize it, and my eyes widen.
Oh.
His arm is way heavier than I thought it would be, and it can't be just the extra muscle he has. Maybe something is integrally different between humans and Cloudwalkers, maybe they're just flat out heavier than we are. That would explain why they're stronger, too. More weight to throw behind things. So maybe he expects me to weigh what he thinks a human my size should weigh, which explains him all but wrenching me out of my seat. If I'm, inversely, that much lighter than he expects, I understand what happened.
I nod, signaling my understanding, and let my arm fall back to my torso. His blue eyes fall to where my arm is wrapped around my stomach, before rising to meet my gaze. He says something, starting with a statement and ending with something that sounds like a question, and the only word that comes through is 'will'. I shrug and shake my head, communicating my inability to understand him. That's something I should work on.
His arms cross for a moment, and then he gives a nod of his head and breaks out in a complicated series of gestures. After some staring, and two repetitions, I get the vague idea that he's leaving the house. I assume, since he's bothering to tell me, that he won't be back for a while and he'll be heading out into the forest somewhere. Well, alright. He's definitely got his own life and probably some kind of job as well, that makes sense. He can't stop everything just for me, and I wouldn't expect him to. I should really sleep, anyway.
Oh, fuck it.
"Have you got a book?" I ask, miming the act of opening one, and after a moment of staring at my hands, he nods.
He turns around, heading back out into the main room, and after a breath to steady myself I follow him. I move slower than he does, and he disappears through another leather arch and returns while I wait in the center of the room. He's got a moderately sized leather-bound book in his hands, and he passes it to me. I flip it open, and give a small grin. Most of the words don't make much sense to me, but I recognize all the letters. Looks like our languages go off the same system, and I can definitely pick out a few of the words on the first page that I recognize. I should be able to go through and make a list of all the words that cross over, and maybe even figure out the rest of it. Maybe some of them are just pronounced differently between our languages.
"What about something to write with?" I ask distractedly, before looking up and doing my best to impersonate writing something with my left hand. It's awkward, and if he does have anything my handwriting is going to be absolutely terrible, but I'll work with what I've got. He disappears back into the room, and returns a moment or two later with a couple of what look like rough pencils, and a roll of paper. Wonderful, that should do nicely. I take both items from him, and turn to the table and the accompanying bench.
I shove the bench back into place and slip onto it, laying out my supplies on the rough wood of the table. I pin the paper down with one side of the book, and take up one of the pencils in a grip that feels completely wrong. Oh, this is going to be a pain in the ass. Ah well.
I can hear him move around me, but I ignore it, devoting my attention to the book. I don't have the energy to pay attention to much more than this, not right now anyway. Finding out if we can communicate easily is important, but admittedly I'm also avoiding sleeping. The energy will be nice, but I can't imagine that lying down, regardless of how I do it, will be anything but really painful. I'll just work on this until I absolutely can't stay awake any longer, maybe then I'll be exhausted enough that the pain won't stop me falling asleep. It's a few minutes before I hear him cross the room, and hear the wooden door close.
At some point, I suppose I should really find out his name.