Blinking warily, a young woman, no more than twenty, stepped out into harsh sunlight. Her long brown matted hair drifted in the soft breeze. Her face was twisted into a grimace, it had been had been days since she had last eaten. Then from her back burst glorious eagle wings, gold, black and brown. She took off into the cold morning air.
Most would say it impossible for her to fly, she weighed too much, but for her that was not the case. Her bones were light as the feathers that adorned her wings. Sometimes she thought she was about to be blown away with the wind. But she would never allow it. She was too proud and refused to be beaten, not without a fight.
Swooping low, the cold wind biting at her tanned skin, the woman's gold eyes scanned the tree filled landscape for food, berries, mice, fruit, anything her body could digest, anything to quell her hunger.
Spotting her next feed, she swooped in for the kill.
She could be seen sitting in the twisted and gnarled branches of an old Sakura tree, eating some kind of rat. She ripped at its seared flesh. It was the first meal she had received in days, not that she counted them anymore. A cruel iron collar was strapped around her neck, a small but strong chain was attached to it. As the sun rose above the mountains said chain was yanked. Hard. Toppling out of her tree, Ari began to walk back to her captors, her prison, and her home.
Within a dark cell, in a cold building. A young woman named Ari dwells here, her body chained, but her mind free.