Prompt: "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?"
There were things we whispered only in our hidden places, our homes, things my parents told and retold in our little nest, myself and my siblings nestled under their wings. Things like Father Christmas, or the famous spring festivals of the long-past, or summer.
Or Aslan.
My father whispered of Aslan enough times that the Lion felt real, but the other things—they were the legends of long-ago times. I didn't understand them at all, how winter could be twined with red and green and so much generosity; how the world could burst into so much colour, with things like flowers and grass and also the mud my mother didn't like; or just…summer.
I'd seen blue skies. But I didn't know what it would be like to fly in one with warm air lifting me higher and higher, to look down and see a world bursting with green, or to hear water, wind, and hundreds of other birds singing. I couldn't imagine summer.
Not as a chick, anyway. But then I met him.
I was the oldest chick in our nest, and he was the youngest in his. His siblings and mine flew together, hunting for food, pulling frozen bark off of the rotting trees, and huddling together on the same branch to eat. But he was always on the outskirts, wings cradling two others, but his head always looking out, a smile often on his face.
More and more I perched by him, giving him the covering of my wing back, and watching as the world made him smile. The formations of a cloud, the straightness of a tree's trunk, the sharp smell of a pine needle newly plucked—all of these could make him smile. He taught me to smile too.
I was warmer than I'd ever been. Soaring in the blue skies beside him made flying effortless. He was my summer, in a world where everyone lived in summer.
He was unending warmth without burning, steadiness without chaining, and a gift that reminded me Aslan made the world good. Even winter.
And then came the day Aslan's enemy found us. The Witch heard our song, his and mine, ringing from branch to branch. Our joy made us louder than the thuds of her reindeers' hooves, louder than her bells, and her fury was easily ignited. I sang far up in a pine tree, and she did not see me, but my love—my love sang with his wings outspread, head thrown back, on the branch of a frozen cherry blossom tree.
My song cut off as I saw her, wand outstretched, and my love just began to turn his head when her magic touched him.
My love's warm eyes—I saw them turn to stone. His outstretched wings could not hold him; he fell, he fell, my love fell from the branch and onto the frozen floor.
My own song had stopped and so she did not look for me; she turned and walked to her sleigh, not seeing me swoop down.
I clutched my love's legs in mine, swept my wings over his, and touched my forehead to his.
There was no more warmth from him. My love was stone.
I tried to move him, I tried to lift him, and when I could not—he was so heavy—I flew to the Owl's oak, to beg his help—but none would move the witch's victim.
That night was the coldest I had ever known. I kept watch on the branch above where he fell, huddled against the icy trunk. I was wordless. My song had broken, my words turned to pleas, and my pleas did nothing.
The hours went very, very long. I cried, and my tears fell on his stone body below. But after hours, I had no more tears, and no more pain. I had nothing.
It was dawn when I fell asleep. Dawn, and I slept through it, slept through the first few hours of something changing, something new.
But the warmth woke me. The snow still stood on the ground, on the trees, but the air felt warm. I opened my eyes, and there below, standing above my love, I saw Him.
More golden than the sun, gentler than my love's feather, stronger than the witch—Aslan. A legend and my King standing below me. I flew down to Him, landing in the snow and bowing. I was still wordless.
He bowed His great head and wept with me, the two of us, over the singer of summer turned to stone.
And then He breathed on my love. His breath melted the snow, and green sprang up beneath it, spreading slowly from the spot around my love. And my love himself—the colour fire licked on the edges of his wings, spreading inward, leaving warm brown behind.
The Lion looked at me and spoke. "Summer is coming," He promised, and then He turned and left. I hopped to my love, resting one wing on the-still stone head, waiting, and watching the Lion who brought back all of my summer.