I'll Never Forget
Song: None! Help! Leave your chapter theme or song suggestions in your review, and I'll write 'em! Howevah, if you have a chapter idea/theme thing, you gotta have a song to go with it! :) Can't wait for my 100th chapter...I'll make it a biggie. I might be a week or two, though...gotta find that perfect song. You can leave suggestions for that, too, if you'd like.
Nudge
I watched outside in early morning from the top branches of my favorite tree. The pastel, creamy pinks and purples stained the dawn sky. And between the mountains was a peep of sun, a blinding orange dot. The crisp, chilly morning air was still chasing the deep cold of the night's gusts. Dew, frozen into frost, was melting on the green blades of grass quickly fading into brown layers as fall wanes on. I ran my fingers across the tree's bumpy scars. One happy summer evening years ago, we had carved on this tree. Such happy mornings, gone like the fading of the seasons. Fang and Max had signed carefully next to each other, and Dylan had added his next to Max's, only with one heart between their names. I smiled. He was so affectionate, so unbearably good to her. She didn't deserve him, with all her complicated feelings that just broke him more. Gazzy and Angel's names were scrawled in tiny, sloppy letters. They had tried to carve them out with Fang's pocket knife. Iggy's was blindly written to the left with Fang's. Finally, my name, Nudge held all the others together. We were family, all of us. No matter how much we were separated, torn, and hateful, you can't forget the times where we were together. It wasn't just Fang and Max that split us apart. Gazzy and Angel had long co-conspired about leading their own mini-flock, and Dylan just wanted Max...alone. As weird and awkward as that sounds, the truth would always be just that, the truth. Only I, it seemed, fought for the family. And on mornings like these I would curl in these strong, steady branches and cry when they were here fighting, right before Fang left. Now that they were gone, I would do the same, still. Wrapping my wings closer, I studied the horizon more closely. The branch below me shuffled, and the head of my best guy friend, Nate, popped through. He was a mutant, a former One Light. He was mixed with a cat, so he simply bounded up, using his retractable claws to hoist himself up. He sat next to me with a sigh, flipping his brown hair to one side.
"You miss them, don't you?" he asked. I nodded, breathing out a puff of white in the icy morning. He slung his hoodie around me. It was warm, and smelled almost like my old backpack that I had when I was traveling to re-capture Angel, right before Fang and I discovered the hawk's cave. I turned to study Nate. He was such a good friend. I wondered often what would happen if I would let him be more; then I would reprimand myself for thinking about the same mistake that Max made. Never again would I split a family, even if it wasn't my fault that one fateful time. Nate's deep green eyes glinted. He turned and looked deep into my own coffee bean-colored ones. I couldn't fight a tear of regret for my Flock, for the one family I ever had. I missed them so much that it just hurt to think about it. Nate kissed me on the cheek.
"It'll be okay." he said assuringly. I smiled slightly, hopping to my feet. My wings shook, sending small droplets of dew to either side. I gripped the tree's trunk a last time before bounding into the sky, forcing myself to face another morning without them. And that one dot of orange greeted me, sending liquid hope through my veins. Something on the wind blew into my face, so I gripped it tightly. It was a feather, soft white with freckles. Shreds of memories of flying with the Flock blew in my mind. They could haunt me no longer with the past. I unfolded my fingers. The feather spun once, twice, until it was all but another memory in the sky. I felt my regrets spin with it, a spindle of hair-thin candy floss twirling on the wind, bidding me farewell forever.
I'll never forget you, my Flock, my fighting opponents, my co-micheivers, my avian mutants...and most importantly, my family.