She lived in spite and she died in defiance, and in between she loved a boy.
She made up her own name (just like she made up her own family and her own world and her own life) and it was her first taste of freedom.
She hardly ever forgave and she never, ever forgot.
If you hurt her she would make you suffer. If you hurt her Flock you signed your own death warrant.
She loved to fly.
She was the strongest person you could ever hope to know. The best leader, the fiercest fighter, the loving mother to the motherless.
She threw up the first time she killed somebody but she knew she could do it again (and again and again...) if it meant her family's safety.
She saved the world in ways both big and small and her brothers and sisters could tell you her own self was low on her list of priorities. She almost didn't notice when she fell in love.
Love, she found, was a weakness. She also found that she didn't much care, because it was an even better strength.
He was the ice to her fire and the silence to her rage. He complimented her and did everything in all the ways she wouldn't. He bent when she stood strong and held her up even when she didn't need it.
It took her a long time to understand that she could love him and her Flock at the same time. It took him even longer.
She knew someday she'd have to choose between them, because she made enemies like most people made meals-three times a day and sometimes a snack in the middle of the night.
She hated many things and many people but nothing quite so much as she did traitors. Her trust was hard to earn and hard to break but it could never be fixed, or regained, and time did not turn back to better days.
He left.
She never forgave him for that.
She came for him for hope's sake. The hope that she could change for him, that she could make herself trust him again. The hope that time would run backwards and maybe he wouldn't be such a fool.
Even hope dies, she found.
She had to choose.
She could do anything except break. She never broke.
In the end she chose the ones who never left her, and she would make that same choice every time because it wasn't really one at all.