My only original creations here are Marty and Judgement Island. I make no money from using everything else here, so please do not sue and enjoy instead. :)

After the guards and villagers realized I was willing and able to keep the fox cub quiet, they agreed to let me keep him, but one of them was almost always watching us. I was, after all, still a prisoner. Soon, I began to worry for Tails.

At the same age, Sonic had hidden under my wings during hurricanes and after eating and then vomiting up poisonous berries. Otherwise, he ran circles around me, or the island, or got down on his stomach to talk to smaller creatures while kicking his legs in the air till they were a blue blur that generated enough wind for me to glide on. Tails hid under my wings whenever someone looked our way. If my wings were bound, he'd cling to my unchained leg and try to hide behind it.

I thought the glares were only meant for me at first. Tails was just a child with two tails and bright yellow fur. Both had been caused by things less in Tails control than Sonic's incident with the Blue Emerald. The fox cub didn't have blue or even yellow lightning crackling in his fur like Sonic had.

The few times he ventured out from beneath my wings, however, I noticed while they did not glare at him, the villagers and warriors stared at Tails with unblinking eyes and stiff forms. Their only movement then would be turning their heads to follow his movement as he ran back to me upon noticing their attention. There were also no smiles on our watcher's faces as they watched him. I sighed to myself upon realizing this.

One day, when he was almost as old as Sonic had been when I'd sent him to earth, Tails and I were spared from others stares by a storm. As the wind threatened to collapse our hut on us, Tails clung around my neck till I could barely breathe. When this harsh wind gave way to rain beating down directly on our roof, he relaxed into a near slump. Later, he drew away just far enough to turn his mouth to the feathers over my ear and ask, "Why are you always chained Longclaw? I know why they hate me, but why is everyone angry at you too?"

I felt like a sliver of wood was stabbed into my heart. Putting my beak to his ear so he could hear over the torrent hitting our wooden roof I told him about Sonic. His eyes widened and he looked at me and said a little loudly. "I have a brother?"

I thought about how to answer that a long heartbeat before asking, "Tails, you know you had a fox mother before me? Do you still remember her?" It had been years after her execution and my taking him in literally under my wing sometimes.

He frowned back into my face his ears laying nearly flat against his skull. "I know everybody hated her and because she guarded the emerald while also having me, I'm different from everybody else."

I sighed. Despite the driving rain, I softened my voice while meeting the gaze of his half-shut watering eyes. "She also asked me to take care of you. She did love you."

He sighed and looked down. "Maybe, but not as much as you."

My heart was soothed a bit, but still clenched for his mother and him. Tails soon looked up at me again and asked once more. "But I do have a brother? Sonic? You raised him too? And he's different like me?"

I thought about it for another long moment before saying. "You do. But we cannot speak about him except for times like now, when we are truly alone and can't be overheard."

He nodded with a smile. "Okay."

And so it was, during days we could not go outside, and neither could our guards due to dangerous and loud weather, I would tell Tails of his brother Sonic, who was different like him also due to exposure to a chaos emerald, who I had been arrested for helping, and had sent to another world. I would also answer his questions about his older brother when he asked them after I told him stories about Sonic.

Tails was a child of questions. Whenever he dared speak when others listened in on us, he would ask me, "Why are shells hard? How do snails and clams and oysters make them? What are they for? Where does the wind come from? Why are the palm leaves moved more by it than their trunks are? How do birds fly?

Sometimes, when my ankle was chained and wings were free, he'd ask me to stretch one out to its full span. He'd then stare up at it and reach one finger out to run along each feather his eyes sometimes watering. He liked to watch birds in flight. He'd also stare at boats with their sails filled with wind. He liked to make his own out of coconut husks and leaves.

Once, when we were allowed to go to the beach, he stepped out form my wing to approach two children visiting with villager family on the island to ask them about what they were building in the sand. They stared at him and then backed away. He frowned and watched them. Their parents came and got the children. Tails then slumped just staring at what the visitors had made. Days later, he made a sand structure of his own while getting a little assistance from me.

He would always begin with picking up the various kinds of sand. He let the dry run through his hands, and stare at the wet sticking to his fingers. When he found what he considered the best types to build with, he'd begin shaping the wet in his hands. Then he'd add tiny rocks and shells as well as more layers of dry and wet sand. He made many a mountain on the beach tall as himself.

He'd continue to add to the same structure for days. A rising tide partially melted his first such structure away. I'd wrapped a wing around him as he sobbed then. In my mind, though, I'd been amazed his first creation had stood so long. After that first destruction by the tide of what he'd built, Tails built them further up the beach. He pushed coconut shells of wet sand up toward the trees and using bigger stones and sticks to reinforce his sand walls. He even dug ditches to let oncoming waves sink into them before they reached his structures. Sonic would have achieved half of what Tails did in a day within seconds but have had his attention carried away by something else before finishing. My Tails was very patient, determined, and focused. He was not my first child. Almost nothing about Sonic applied to him, but I loved them both.

One day while we were on the beach, I noticed several boats approaching the shore. I watched as this usually meant a great meeting was taking place to discuss some threat to the emeralds or our people or someone was being brought here to be judged like Tails mother or me. As the boats drew closer, however, my eyes grew wider as I spied a figure in one of them. He was not an owl, fox, echidna or chameleon. He had skin bare of fur or feathers except for a little ringing of white wispy hair like clouds encircling his mostly bare head and covering his upper lip. He wore no armor, but layers of cloth from wrist to neck on the upper part of him and from foot to waist on his legs. He was like those I'd seen on earth. Had … had they discovered where I left Sonic? Had this man information about him?

Tails also noticed the change in me when he looked up from his project building in the sand and saw my focused stare. He then also looked out at and watched the approaching boats. I saw his back straighten, head lift, and eyes widened as he noticed this same figure as I had. I had never told him though where I left Sonic or what it was like there, so it was probably how unusual this stranger looked that caught his attention.

As the boats arrived and were dragged on shore by others gathered there upon the notice of and news spreading of their coming arrival. The stranger to our people stepped off the boat, at least I assumed him a stranger since I would have heard of him sooner, I thought had he been on one of the other islands a while and stood looking around. His eyes didn't widen till he spotted Tails standing close to me, but with his view unblocked as my wings were fully folded in rather than hiding him. Tails had not yet looked away from this strange being's arrival to cling to me instead.

The earth alien's eyes were wide and brows high at the sight of Tails, but instead of shrinking back or bunching his shoulders and planting his feet, he bent over at the waist to get his face a bit closer to my little fox. The stranger then spoke in a raspy voice that still got some volume while reaching up to scratch his head. "Well, now. Who is this?"

Tails raised his head and grinned while lifting his voice and wagging his tails before pointing to himself. "I'm Tails!"

The earth alien's grin widened. "And how did you get those remarkable tails and bright yellow fur youngster?"

Tails grin fell away, his head bowed, and his tails drooped. The man frowned. One of echidna warriors often assigned to guard Judgement Island, and us, had come to greet the visiting ships and help pull them ashore. He answered in a growl form behind this stranger. "Tails mother conceived and carried him far too close to a chaos emerald. And this was the effect."

Instead of widening his eyes and jerking back, the alien from earth's brows and eyelids dropped. "Ah." Then he grinned again before saying, "Well, I suppose that makes you a remarkable creature then."

And my little Tails lifted his head, swished his tails, and grinned again at the man. He had now made his second friend.

What do you think? :)

God bless

ScribeofHeroes