Author's Note: This story was written for the Sixth Day of Midwinter Challenge at the Tamora Pierce Writing Experiment Forum, which everyone should visit after reading this story.

Disclaimer: Anything that belongs to Tamora Pierce does not belong to me, obviously.

Fearful Symmetry

"When the stars threw down their spears,

And water'd heaven with their tears,

Did he smile his work to see?

Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Tyger! Tyger! Burning bright

In the forests of the night,

What immortal hand or eye

Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?"

-William Blake, "The Tyger."

Part I: Genesis

Let me tell you a story. One with the right amount of comedy and tragedy blended with the spices of romance, monsters, and the gods. After all, it's Midwinter again, which means it's the season for exchanging stories and headcolds. At least, it is among mortals.

Gods and goddesses like me don't celebrate Midwinter much, because we don't seem to need the hope the holiday embodies when we are in the Divine Realms. When seasons pass in the blink of an eye, we don't need a fire or a story to warm us. Since we can see Mithros, we don't require a holiday to remind us that he is with us even in the coldest days and darkest nights.

However, since I was once a mortal girl, I take comfort in some of the customs of mortals, even though, when I was a child, centuries ago when what is now Tortall was being conquered by the Thanic Empire, we had different names for the gods and different days devoted to worshipping them.

Now that you know I'm a goddess, you might be wondering which one I am. Perhaps you suppose that I'm one of those wise women who was made a minor deity people in a small region could appeal to for healing, or maybe that I was a flighty virgin made the goddess of the romantic divination of tea leaves upon my untimely death, in which case you'd be right about the virginity, the flightiness, and the early death, but wrong about the tea leaf divination.

I'm Jude, the patron goddess of lost causes. I'll bet you haven't heard of me before, since nobody has. Given that getting a person to admit that his or her pet cause—the one he or she is praying fervently about- is a lost one is more difficult than yanking teeth, you can imagine that I don't get much attention from mortals. Few temples are dedicated to me, incense is rarely burned in my honor, and prayers are seldom addressed to me.

Seeing as mortals barely seem to notice that a goddess of lost causes exists, I'm not certain why Mithros decided to elevate me to that lofty but highly unnecessary position after my death. Perhaps he felt sorry for the misery that pervaded my mortal life, or, more likely, he was so amused by the disasters I attracted like a gigantic catastrophe magnet that he wanted to keep such a constant source of entertainment with him in the Divine Realms. After all, I doubt that he would have wished to go to the bother of visiting me in the Realms of the Dead in order to be amused by me and my many misfortunes. The Black God is in charge of the Realms of the Dead, you see, and the Black God is about as beloved among the gods as lung rot is among mortals, which is why Mithros appointed him to govern the Realms of the Dead in the first place.

Anyway, I know that anyone familiar with my mortal life would probably say that I didn't deserve to be made a goddess, and that justice should have demanded that I spend eternity roasting in the worst portion of the afterlife. Am I not the wicked mage who created the vilest monsters of all?

Well, of course, I would argue that Stormwings only deface those slain in battle, and it is the humans who do the actual killing. In fact, humans are so bent on destroying each other, they will charge headlong into war even with the threat of Stormwings defacing their body. That's enough to make me think that humans, not Stormwings, are the most disgusting monsters of all, but I could be biased, since Stormwings are my creations, and, when it comes down to it, I never wanted to create anything I couldn't call good or beautiful.

Besides, even if the Stormwings are monsters, it's not fair for anybody to judge me based solely upon one creature that I made. Even if you believe Stormwings are monsters, you have to understand that I also made winged lambs, dancing flowers, and singing butterflies. You see, when I was a mortal, my Gift allowed me to create anything as long as I could imagine it with enough determination.

I suppose, however, that you have as little interest in the dancing flowers and singing butterflies as I did in lumpy porridge when I was a young girl raised among the tribes, which the Thanic government deemed as savage, that once roamed through the land now referred to as Tortall. You'll want to hear how I came to create the monsters, because all anybody is ever interested in is the monsters.

Part II: Exodus

The story of the birth of the Stormwings begins with me huddled in a shaman's tent with four other tribal children shivering around me and two babies crying in my arms. Even with a fire, the tent would have been cold, but when we didn't dare light a flame because our warriors—all our adult men and women—were fighting to protect our tents from the Thanic soldiers, it was so frigid that our breath hung in the air like mist.

We could hear the sound of clashing weapons, cursing, shouted orders, and the screams of dying men and women through the tanned animal hide of the shaman's tent. The chilly winter wind blew through the tent flaps, filling our nostrils with the nauseating stench of blood, spilled innards, the fat our warriors used to spike their hair in intimidating styles, and the sweat of soldiers focused on death and devastation.

We were all wondering, I think, if our parents would perish and if our tribe would finally fall to the Thanic Empire as so many other tribes had, and I wanted to distract the other children from such fears. After all, I was the oldest child—all of ten years old—and it was my duty to shield the younger ones. Some in the tribe had even suggested earlier that I should be thrusting a sword at the invading Thanic army, but I was ultimately determined to be too air-headed for the task, since I was always imagining and making beautiful creatures when I should have been learning to fight, cook, sew, or clean. All in all, I was as useless a mortal child as I am a goddess, and there is a fearful symmetry in that.

At any rate, the only way I could think to distract the younger children was to imagine and make lovely, delicate creatures for them to admire. I imagined butterflies with vivid orange and yellow spots shaped like beaks, and I pictured those bright beaks chirping.

A moment later, softly singing butterflies were flying around the tent, as the babies cooed and the older children stretched their hands in the air, intent on catching the singing butterflies without understanding that doing so would crumple the chirping wings that delighted them so.

The children were still giggling as they chased the butterflies when the sounds of the battle outside ceased. I barely had time to wonder if I would hear the wild victory howl of my people or if I would be chained and sent back to the Thanic capital to be sold as a slave, when the question was answered in the bluntest way possible by six stony-faced men marching into the shaman's tent. All of them were dressed in the skirts and sandals words by the Thanic warriors. Sharp, bloody spears rested in their right hands, while their left arms held long, shining shields aloft.

Before any of us could have processed the horror of had happened to us and what was going to happen to us enough to scream, began wrestling the children nearest to them into manacles. At the sight of children I had played with being bound at the wrists and ankles, I imagined my butterflies turning into flying scorpions that pierced through the air like arrows, stinging the Thanic soldiers stealing my playmates.

A second later, dream had become reality. It was hailing scorpions, and gasping soldiers were trying to dispatch the cloud of scorpions before any of them were stung. Amidst the chaos, the man who seemed to be in charge looked over his shoulder to snap at a guard next to him, who had the bright blue eyes and glistening blond hair of our people, rather than the olive eyes and tan coloring of the other Thanic soldiers. His face florid, the man in charge jerked his finger first at the scorpions, which had almost all been killed by the soldiers, and then at me.

The blond guard nodded, and stepped toward me. Thinking that I was about to be slain for fighting the Thanic warriors instead of submitting to slavery, I struck at him with my hands and feet. As I was blinded by rage and had never absorbed much of the fighting techniques my parents had attempted to hammer into my airy head, few of my blows hit him, and none of those that did inflicted any damage on him.

Two swift kicks to my kneecaps made my eyes swim with tears and my head with stars. Biting my lip against a pitiful whimper that would shame the tattered remnants of my people, I tried to kick at the soldier attacking me only to discover that I couldn't get past the pain in my knees enough to kick my feet.

Cursing, I swung my arms at the guard instead, but realized when they refused to move that the soldier held them in a powerful grasp.

"Stop struggling, girl," the soldier hissed in my language, rather than the one spoken by the Thanic troops.

"I'll stop fighting when you kill me," I retorted, attempting to wiggle out of his iron-grip and wondering if I was going to suffer a warrior's death as no one—least of all me—had expected me to do.

"My master—the chief mage for these troops—doesn't want you dead," explained the guard, tightening his hold upon me. "He thinks that your magic could be useful in battle, and he wants to claim you for himself, rather than selling you as a slave in the capital."

"That doesn't mean anything to me," I spat, twisting around to glare into his vivid blue eyes. That was a mistake, the instant I did I found myself falling into them, thinking wistfully of the cloudless summer skies they remembered. Suddenly, I realized that I was pressed against a muscular chest, and strong arms were wrapped around me. With just a few more cries and bruises, I thought that it would be like being married. I was curious about what marriage was like and so I stopped fighting and just gazed into his eyes. "I'm a slave whether he owns me himself or carts me off to the capital of your horrible empire."

"Master Aurelius will not sexually abuse you and his physical punishment is not as harsh as many masters," answered the soldier crisply. "I would know. He chose me to be his translator and guard when I attacked him after his men conquered my father's tribe. He could have ordered me killed or dragged back to the Thanic capital in chains, but instead he gave me a relatively comfortable post as his guard."

"Traitor," I snarled, gritting my teeth as I recognized that, while I had been admiring the soldier's eyes and melting like butter into his firm grip, the other children had been removed from the tent in manacles. "Unlike you, I don't want a comfortable position. I want to save the other children."

"You can't," replied the guard with brutal calmness. "If you behave well, you can save yourself. You can save one or you can save none. Those are your options."

That was no choice at all. Telling myself that if I survived, I might be able to find away to rescue the other children and that the blond soldier could be a powerful ally in a battle against Master Aurelius, I forced myself to smile in a way that made me feel as if I was breaking my own jaw. "I'm Jude, and I'll come with your master without a fight."

"I'm Baldur." Eyeing me warily, the soldier who had once been one of my people and who was now one of my enemies lifted me to my feet. "I'll be the one chaining you and dragging you back to camp if you don't keep your promise."

Part III: Lamentations

After that, it would have been easy to hate Baldur not only for being a traitor but also because he was resistant to my feminine wiles. Yet, in the end, I found it difficult to feel the utter loathing I should have for him, since he had the awful habit of showing me a kindness after a cruelty. He was like the mercurial master who kicked his dog, and I was the dimwitted hound who scurried back to him at the faintest sign of affection.

That night, as I stared bleakly into the gold and orange flames of one of the fires of the Thanic camp, noting that the ordered rows of tents felt more cold and formal than the hodgepodge tents of my people ever had, Baldur loped over to me.

"Salve, Jude," he said, settling himself on a stone next to me, and smiling in a disarming fashion that made me realize he must have been only a year or two older than me. Like all males, he looked younger when he wasn't trying to project a fearsome aura during a confrontation.

"I don't recognize insults in the language of the invaders." Shooting him a frigid glance, I crossed my arms across my chest. "You'll have to torment me in our native tongue."

"Salve isn't an insult." Still grinning, Baldur shook his head. "It's a perfectly respectful Thanic word for 'hello.' If you want to survive among the Thanic troops, you need to learn their language."

From the clipped words I had heard Thanic soldiers barking at one another during and after battle, the Thanic language was an ugly, abrupt one. I didn't want to learn it, but I had to live so that I could free my playmates, and, if I knew the Thanic language, that could only help liberate the other children from my tribe.

"Are you offering to teach me Thanic?" I asked, arching an eyebrow.

"Yes," answered Baldur, nodding. "You'll learn the language, anyway, as I did, just by being immersed in it and being surrounded by people who are constantly speaking it. Still, it will be easier for you to learn it if I teach it to you, and, be warned, it is a complicated language to master. There are many weird verb forms and even people's names change based on whether you are addressing them directly or using their name as a noun or a possessive."

"I'm confused already," I mumbled, wrinkling my nose and wondering how the Thanic soldiers could have found time to conquer any of my fierce people when their language was so difficult to learn. Of course, I thought, the Thanic Empire would devise a mind-boggling tongue as another agency of its tyranny.

"Eating will help." Baldur withdrew a slab of salted meat from his pocket and thrust it into my palm. "Here's some carne or meat."

"Carne," I repeated, the strange word sticking in my mouth as I struggled to chew the dry, tough meat.

"Panne," he added, dumping a slice of bread into my hand as soon as I had swallowed the salted meat. "Bread."

"Panne," I murmured, biting into the bread and discovering that it was stale. Apparently, while conquering the known world, the Thanic people had never bothered with learning how to make fresh bread. The stale bread and the strange word took all the moisture from my mouth and sapped the strength from my body. I was giving into my captors. I was eating their food and learning their language. How could I ever escape after breaking bread with them?

Part IV: Judges

"Master Aurelius wants you to practice creating monsters to deploy against our enemies in tomorrow's battle," translated Baldur, conveniently forgetting that the Thanic army's foes—my people—were not my enemies, so there was no "our" of which to speak. We were in the chief mage's tent, accompanied by four sentinels, with the chief mage speaking too rapidly for my primitive Thanic comprehension levels to understand and gesticulating frequently as if to emphasize the major points of his comments, while Baldur kept up a steady stream of translation into my native tongue. "He wants to see you create your worst monster now."

Closing my eyes, I reflected that the only time I had created anything that could be constituted as monstrous was when I had made the scorpions that assaulted the Thanic soldiers who had destroyed my tribe, but that trick wouldn't impress Master Aurelius a second time. He would expect to see something else. Desperately, I focused on making the first mildly terrifying image that popped into my mind— my butterflies with fangs in their beak spots—reality.

When I opened my eyes the next second, a cluster of fanged butterflies were flapping around the tent. As the guards killed the butterflies with a few quick sword strokes, a crimson-faced Master Aurelius slapped both my ears with enough force to make my neck twist and my head ring like a tuneless bell. Tears flooded my eyes. My parents had boxed my ears before for being scatter-brained, but they had never hit me so hard or with such cold contempt. With a pang, I understood that I had never really felt abused or humiliated in my life until that moment.

From a distance, I heard over the ringing in my ears, Master Aurelius, his veins on the verge of exploding from his neck, snap something in Thanic at Baldur.

"Master Aurelius says that you are an impudent chit to think him stupid enough to believe that fanged butterflies are the worst monsters you create," Baldur informed me flatly once Master Aurelius had stopped shouting and the echoing in my ears had finally faded. "He says that fanged butterflies will only make defeat our enemies if they roll around on the ground laughing at the ridiculous sight of the creatures, and we take advantage of their amusement to plunge spears into their chests. He says that he has no qualms about beating your secrets out of you, and that you should let that knowledge guide what you show him next."

Trying to convert my shame at having my ears brutally boxed by a savage stranger into anger and vengeance, I imagined some of the singing flowers I loved to create having snake heads, instead of petals, filled with sharp teeth that could cut Master Aurelius's red flesh.

A minute later, flowers with snake heads instead of petals blossomed in the tent floor. Hissing, the serpent heads swirled toward Master Aurelius, striking at his heels, which were so unprotected by his ludicrous sandals. Before any of the snakes could injure him, however, a series of chops from the guards had beheaded all my flowers.

Then, in less than a shake of a lamb's tail, Master Aurelius had stepped toward me again. Clenching his right hand into a fist, he slammed it into first my nose, filling the tent with the sound of smashed cartilage, and then my mouth, shattering the skin of my lip. I didn't even have the time to think to dodge either blow, although I expected that one of the sentries would have been delighted to hold me in place for my punishment. A warm liquid I knew to be blood trickled down my face, leaking through my lips into my mouth to mingle with the metallic-tasting blood that had already slipped into my mouth from my cracked lips.

Spitting out the blood that filled my mouth and hoping that some of it stained Master Aurelius's skirt, I thought that I had never enlisted for broken noses, bloody lips, or boxed ears. I had never volunteered to fight or be tortured. I was a ten-year-old girl who didn't know how to do battle with or without weapons. My only defense was my magic, and all I had ever really used my Gift for was to create beautiful, delicate flowers and butterflies. I was a flower like so many that I had created, but I did have thorns—I had to have thorns—that would pierce the hands of any who dared to pluck me.

Blinded by fury, I imagined talons cutting into Master Aurelius and scraping off every inch of his arrogant hide. I envisioned fangs devouring his organs. I pictured fire burning his hair. Then, I came up with a creature—a fire-breather shaped like a snake with gigantic claws and fangs—that would torture and kill Master Aurelius while I watched with as much satisfaction as I could feel with my parents dead and my playmates enslaved.

At my command, the creature materialized, but it was Baldur—who leaped in front of his master—whose blond hair was burned by the fire, whose pale skin was torn by the long talons, and whose organs were eaten by the sharp fangs.

Baldor shouldn't have died, I thought, as the creature began reducing Master Aurelius's furniture to cinders. I hadn't meant for him to die. I had intended to kill Master Aurelius, but Baldur, no doubt tortured into loyalty to an invader, had died in his place. Baldur was just another victim of war and of an empire that thrived by turning victims of tyranny into oppressors. As long as war continued, people like Baldor and my parents would be killed while children like my playmates and me would be enslaved. War had to end. Then every evil would die, but the only way to make people stop fighting was to make them believe that some monster even worse than war would attack them if they dared to fight one another.

I imagined that they would be part human in order to terrify people with this supposed monster's close resemblance to humans. I envisioned them coated with steel feathers to protect them from the arrows and the spells of war. I pictured them urinating on corpses and defecating on warriors slain in battle, but I also imagined them feeling compassion for children whose lives were torn apart by violence. I got to see them come into being and fly out of the tent before the tent and everyone in it was destroyed by the fire-breathing monster that I had created.

In case you haven't guessed, I called the creatures that escaped the fire-breather's wrath Stormwings, and, in answer to the eternal question, she who made the winged lamb also made the Stormwing. Moreover, she did smile at her work both times, calling her creation beautiful and good. She would understand and even smile, though, if you told her that only a mother and children ruined by warfare could possibly appreciate the beauty or the kindness of Stormwings.