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mechawaka · 7 months ago

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To Reach for the Sun, Part 4

A commission for @golden-feline. This is an original series set in their world and depicting their characters, and all names have been changed per request for public posting.

Genre: High Fantasy / Romance

Rating: T

Words: 15.3k

Summary: A deadly illness spreads across the lands; a pragmatic huntress shelters an eccentric doctor who seeks its cure. Can they overcome the anchors of tradition, the flames of conflict, and the whims of the heart in order to find it?

[ Part 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 ]

Part 1: Galaran

Though its total population fluctuated with the seasons, the Ran clan maintained a core of around two hundred strong; and its meeting house, as the center of the community, had been designed to accommodate that number. On the rare occasion that everyone must gather, its spacious floor would see none excluded.

Its original builders probably hadn’t foreseen this occasion, however.

Galaran sat cross-legged in her customary place - facing the clan leader’s platform, closest to its base - but behind her, rather than even rows of her kin, sprawled a mixed congregation of Ran, Av, and Featherling. She hadn’t counted them exactly, but bumping shoulders and bobbing heads spanned wall to wall, door to dais, easily twice as dense as any other assembly she could remember.

The concentration of breath and bodies made for a sweltering interior, even with every window thrown open, but this did nothing to dampen the excitement of those in attendance; a consequence, Galaran supposed, of mutual gratitude and prosperity.

She could hardly believe that only one moon had passed since the humans’ invasion. Between navigating the clan’s new relationship with Haven and repairing the physical damage dealt to both communities - not to mention hers and Zakiriel’s work with ‘Liquid Gold’ - each day could have been its own moon, each week its own season.

Now that she thought about it, this was the first time she’d sat still, waiting for something instead of impatiently serving a necessity like eating or sleeping, since it all happened. Most of the people here could say the same; perhaps Varran had scheduled this event with compassionate intent, then, and not just to pacify Avderren.

The two clan leaders shared her father’s dais, twin monuments to stoic authority. They, like everyone present, wore their most formal clothing; for the Ran, this meant ceremonial battle attire of inscribed leather and dyed reedcloth; for the Av, softened hide and their customary beaded trophy pelts; the Featherlings, in contrast, wore layered robes of light, varied cloth threaded with swirling patterns, and had adorned their wings with delicate silver chains.

Varran lifted one hand, each of his claws tipped with red paint, and beckoned forth the first group he’d wished to honor here: the clan’s elite warriors, those who had joined him in combating the humans directly.

Amid wild cheering, they rose from their places in the second row and lined up, as planned, before the dais. They each lifted a carved wooden fang from their leader’s palm and added it to a belt full of nearly identical others; every fang, whittled from heartwood and etched with symbolic depictions of victory, represented a battle well fought. The most seasoned fighters, therefore, walked the loudest.

When all had passed, Varran still held three fangs in his red-clawed hand. The audience quieted - not from command, but out of respect for the dead - as he affixed these to his own belt and cast a solemn eye over the collection. Every warrior who’d fallen during his reign hung there, immortalized in their final deeds, forever joined with their brethren.

“My fearless kin,” Varran projected, waving his arm over the second row. “Those who live on and those returned to the Mother - let them be remembered!”

At this another cheer went up, more restrained than the first. Galaran added a proud shout to the chorus and felt the reverberations deep in her chest.

When the noise died down again, Varran raised his chin and beckoned to the third row, the one made up of Av warriors. Their clan didn’t wear honors the same way, but they still received their wooden fangs with appropriate reverence, even going so far as to display them in the Ran style.

Avderren nodded approvingly to the gesture - though Galaran would wager anything he’d only done it for the appearance of goodwill. Now that the Ran were all but allied with the Featherlings, their upcoming alliance with the Av clan had lost a measure of significance; Avderren’s recent grandstanding, this ceremony included, spoke to her of his desperation to regain it.

Not that Galaran, or any of the Ran, didn’t appreciate what the Av had done to help them rebuild - the fact that they’d remained for a whole moon of their own volition was certainly praiseworthy - but no clan of Gaia could compare to the novelty of the Floating Isle; in fact, the second half of this very gathering was meant to celebrate that newfound relationship.

Her father next called up Jaerran and Sairan, who’d taken on the burdens of cross-cultural diplomacy in two very different ways; Jae, after seeing the destruction of Haven firsthand, had spearheaded an initiative to lend labor and resources to the city’s recovery. This had made him somewhat of a local hero to the Featherlings, especially those reluctant to visit the forest.

Sai, surprising everyone and possibly even herself, had volunteered to act as a negotiator and mediator for the clan - a role that the Featherlings called an ambassador. She was now responsible for shepherding ideas and concerns from Varran to Haven’s council and back again, smoothing out any wrinkles along the way.

Some might have said that Sai’s natural curiosity and silver tongue had led her to the position; some might have also speculated, given the state of the portal - the rope bridge they’d built on Gaia’s side would be useless on the other - that she simply enjoyed the trip, which still required a long fall into the lake, a brisk run, and then a winged escort in order to return.

The two also received wooden fangs for their parts in the battle, but on top of that Varran awarded them each a polished quartz bracelet, into which he’d engraved new symbols representing their chosen roles.

Jae accepted his dutifully; Sai, as she always did in emotional moments, seemed to struggle for composure.

In the original plan her father had laid out, Galaran and Zakiriel were supposed to be called next, then honored dually for their success in eradicating the Withering disease. But when Varran lifted his hand once again, he indicated only Zakiriel - and when Galaran made to stand, he shook his head.

She frowned up at him but, not wanting to disturb the ceremony, relaxed back into her sitting position. Zakiriel shot her a confused look in passing, which she returned with a shrug.

Rationally, her father probably had a good reason for changing the order - maybe he wanted to commend her for something completely separate from ‘Liquid Gold’ - but irrationally, Galaran didn’t much like the smug, secretive glances that Avderren kept sending her way.

“Zakiriel of Haven! The savior of our people, the healer who captured Liquid Gold!” Varran announced, and the entire room burst into an instant, whooping clamor.

Despite her apprehension, Galaran joined in enthusiastically; he’d always been reluctant to accept praise or recognition, so this could very well be her only chance.

As expected, Zakiriel hovered there awkwardly as the uproar continued, wavering between acceptance and sheer horror, his wings twitching like he’d love nothing more than to fly out of the nearest window.

She knew the expression well; in the sea of elated cheering, when no other eyes but his were upon her, she smiled softly. He should be recognized, praised, celebrated for his accomplishment - in under a moon, he’d managed to create and deliver a blood-based tincture to everyone, Ran and Featherling, afflicted with the Withering.

“No words or gifts could honor him enough,” he said, presenting a bracelet similar to the ones he’d bestowed earlier. “And yet we will try.”

Zakiriel accepted the thick ring of quartz with both hands, shocked like he wasn’t expecting to receive anything, and brought it close for inspection. Its engravings were more detailed than the others, packed with blue clay to emphasize the deeds depicted there - that, Galaran was proud to say, had been her own idea, and she’d gone to great lengths to ensure the final shade matched his eyes sufficiently.

“Thank you,” Zakiriel murmured, barely audible past the dais, and slipped the bracelet onto his left wrist.

One was not supposed to speak during a ceremony like this; Zakiriel definitely knew that, and he loved upholding decorum, so the misstep had probably come from disbelief, not disrespect.

Varran agreed, it seemed; he ventured his own small departure from tradition and clapped Zakiriel warmly on the shoulder.

“It is us who thank you,” he said. “We Ran will be thanking you for years; your story will carry on the breath of those who owe their lives to your labors - them, and their innumerable progeny. Your hands have created generations.”

Zakiriel, not quite able to handle the wave of sincerity, accepted it with a nod. His gait wobbled somewhat as he returned to his seat.

Varran peered out over the crowd for a long moment, creating a dramatic lapse between proclamations. This time, the audience hung with him in suspense; since he’d broken the order, none knew precisely what he meant to do next.

But when his eyes fell to Galaran, her suspense hardened to dread. With one hand he beckoned her up, and with the other bade Avderren rise beside him.

She wanted to refuse, to escape, but her racing mind could conjure no compelling reason to disobey. Begrudgingly, stone feet bore her one heavy step at a time to the dais, then - unsurprisingly, given her fearful intuitions - up onto it when prompted.

Avderren, while shorter than her father, felt significantly more imposing; perhaps it was his cold, haughty attitude, or simply the implications of her future he carried with him, but he always seemed so far above her, looming over her like a tree branch weighed by ice. His wild brown hair and piercing silver eyes did nothing to dispel that particular illusion.

Galaran, as usual, stood as far away as she could without risking reprimand.

“Finally, I wish to speak of Galaran, my daughter, my heir; she who carries Liquid Gold in her veins, who brought us friendship with Haven -” Varran entrusted her with a customized war-gift: two wooden fangs bound together, mirrored in position and design.

Galaran tied it on dutifully, fighting to keep her hands steady - a task which only grew more difficult as her father continued:

“- and who will soon bring us friendship with the mighty Av clan.”

Avderren stood straighter, oozing pride; Galaran winced.

“The Av not only came to our aid against the humans, but remained here, far from their homes, to help us rebuild. It is a rare loyalty they show, held in the unfailing spirit of their Elder.”

Varran circled around them as he spoke, first highlighting Galaran with a sweeping, appreciative gesture, then Avderren with the same. He finally stopped next to his fellow clan leader, dwarfing him in stature.

“What better way to reward that loyalty than with a formal union?”

The audience’s collective gasp of delight drowned out Galaran’s horrified one. She leaned on years of practice to maintain a neutral expression; it wouldn’t be proper to show displeasure, but she wouldn’t pretend joy. Not for this.

“Would it not be better,” she said, carefully modulating her speech so as not to offend him, “to celebrate when the village is repaired, its people recovered?”

It would take at least another season to repair every building, buying her enough time to think up another excuse to delay. She’d thought it a sound proposal, but Varran had other ideas.

“Celebration will lift the people’s spirits!” he insisted. “The Av are here and the moon is nearly whole, my daughter - we cannot waste such an auspicious time!”

Galaran hesitated, her feet aligned at the very edge of acceptable pushback. Her father had been uncommonly cooperative this past moon, even granting her request to distribute Zakiriel’s ‘Liquid Gold’ tincture to the rest of the clans with minimal argument.

At first she’d thought that, after getting to know the Featherlings, he’d actually changed his stance on inter-clan relations; but now she suspected that Varran had just been gathering leverage.

It soured her view and her tongue. From this angle, he had gifted her an act of compromise - one she was expected to reciprocate. If she didn’t, he likely wouldn’t follow through on his earlier promise, either.

Not for the first time, nor even the hundredth, Galaran realized that he’d outmaneuvered her. Swallowing a familiar burn in the back of her throat, she conceded with a nod.

Varran grinned - not unkindly, but knowingly, as he always did when his convolutions came to fruition - and stood behind Galaran and Avderren, wrapping one arm around each of their shoulders.

“Then let these two be bonded under the moon’s open eye!”

One week until the next full moon. One week of freedom.

The room shook with congratulatory shouting, clapping, stomping; even Varran and Avderren joined in, subdued as befitting their dignities. Only two remained still, as stiff as the stilt pillars that held up the meeting house - and when their eyes met, gold to blue, they shared a sorrowful pall.

Part 2: Zakiriel

Storms heralded the changing seasons, covering blue summer skies in dour gray with increasing frequency. They lacked the violence of spring gales, merely showering the land in a drizzle that filtered sluggishly through the great forest’s canopy, treating its inhabitants to days at a time of unbroken, omnipresent dripping.

Nevertheless, the Ran prepared their village for celebration, fighting the monochrome weather with brightly-colored cloth banners, flowers, and songs, all meant to inspire a cheerful atmosphere. And it worked, for the most part; everyone he met wore a smile, had a festive bounce in their step or some eager comment about the clan’s prosperity.

But Zakiriel couldn’t share in their joy. His mood better aligned with the rains - intermittently dark, leaking ever downward.

That foggy morning in the training ring, he and Galaran had cemented an unspoken agreement: if neither of them acknowledged their feelings, then their friendship could go on unhindered by duty. It had seemed equitable to Zakiriel at the time, since he very much wished to stay in her life - that, and the date of her marriage had been remote, nearly a year away, eclipsed first by the hunt for ‘Liquid Gold’ and then by the humans’ two-pronged attack.

Now, though, the cards had settled; Haven was rebuilding, its people slowly recovering, and no new cases of the Withering had arisen for weeks. Without such urgent problems keeping him occupied, Zakiriel had been forced to contend with the future he’d chosen - a lifetime of stasis beside his unattainable beloved.

Varran’s spontaneous announcement in the meeting house had then brought that future much, much closer to hand.

For his own sake and Galaran’s, he’d struggled to remain optimistic about their arrangement. She may have been a master at masking her emotions, at fitting expectations, but she couldn’t hide her pain from him anymore - and since then, pain was all she radiated.

Luckily Zakiriel could boast decades of lifting others’ spirits, so at first he’d succeeded in making her laugh whenever they met. But he’d quickly learned that bonding, especially as part of an inter-clan alliance, was a very serious tradition steeped in complicated rituals; each day layered more responsibilities onto her, more decisions, more preparations, and soon she could only spare him a few minutes at a time, if that.

And then there was Avderren.

In hindsight, it had been the height of naivete not to consider him as part of the final equation. Of course he would be; he’d soon dominate half of Galaran’s life, physically and mentally, as she split her time between the Ran and Av lands.

Zakiriel had assumed the man would be as detached from the union as Galaran was - her description of his disinterest in anything but personal glory had certainly suggested as much; unfortunately, the head of the Av clan seemed to consider Galaran an integral part of his personal glory. Members of his clan were constantly bringing her gifts and inundating her with Av customs - notably, though, the man himself never deigned to perform such tasks.

As such, Zakiriel’s capacity for optimism had waned to a mere sliver - and this very morning, as he stood on the lakeshore and peered up at the portal’s wispy oval in the sky, it dissipated entirely. Fatigue descended in its place, hanging like weights from his shoulders.

Was this really how he wanted to live - restless, hopeless, wearing a fake smile? Perhaps time would make it all easier, but how much time? How long would he need to endure?

And even after his own wound scabbed over, would he really be able to stomach the sight of Galaran’s unhappiness day after day after day?

Zakiriel’s feet sank gradually into the soft sand, timing his deliberation with a creeping line of moisture. He ran his thumb again over the pin he held - one of his shorter feathers, smoothed and lacquered, meant to be worn as a hair ornament.

He’d intended to give it to Galaran on the day of the honors ceremony, a mirror to the clan’s awards for bravery, as recognition for her pivotal role in liberating his people from the humans. But that was all pretext; in reality, he’d just wanted to see her wearing a token of his affection.

At the time it had seemed so simple a desire, now grown insurmountable by circumstance. The only tokens she’d be wearing were presently stacked in the village storehouse, neatly packaged and bearing the colors of the Av clan.

When the wet sand threatened to spill over the tops of his boots, he pulled them laboriously free - and for the first time, his tracks ended not at the waterline but the treeline, having abruptly doubled back on themselves.

---

Since distributing the last batch of tinctures, he’d seen much diminished traffic at his clinic near the center of Haven. The unfinished building - little more than scaffolding with tarps thrown over the top - had therefore become an ideal camp; if anyone saw him, he had a plethora of legitimate reasons to be there.

No, no, he wasn’t hiding, he was simply working - he was a doctor, after all!

Zakiriel nodded to himself in the quiet, empty space, confident that such an excuse would convince most who might happen upon him; and all the better, he thought, if someone arrived who actually required his aid, for it would alleviate some of the guilt.

And so, true to form, fate delivered him the one exception, who casually flipped up the tarp flap and strode in.

In the few beats that remained of his privacy, he braced for impact.

“Zaki!” enthused the Ran clan’s freshly minted ambassador, utilizing one of many nicknames he’d repeatedly asked her to stop calling him.

Sairan bounced across the temporary straw flooring to his desk. “What are you doing here? I thought you and Addy were going to help with the cloth thing?”

“I live here,” Zakiriel responded flatly, to which his uninvited guest merely rolled her eyes. “And the ambassador was…detained by other matters.”

She’d spoken true; he was supposed to have met Anahel, Sairan’s volunteer counterpart from Haven, in the village so they could assist the clan’s healers in weaving new linens. Alas, a certain clan leader felt entitled to call diplomatic meetings at his leisure, regardless of anyone else’s plans.

Sairan chirped a laugh. “You mean Avderren trapped her and Father in the meeting house again so they can tell him how pretty and important he is.”

Zakiriel leaned back in his chair with a low hum. “He is quite determined to throw his weight around, lest anyone forget who saved the clan.”

He hadn’t intended to spit his words with such vitriol, but disparaging the man - the twisted root of his woes - did bring a certain level of satisfaction.

With a thin smirk, Sairan hopped up onto the edge of the desk, her rosy tail swishing animatedly. “Careful, Zak, your jealousy is showing. Wouldn’t want your rival seeing that, eh?”

“Elder Avderren is not my rival.”

Such a status would require Zakiriel to be an actual threat.

“Hah!” Sairan laughed so loudly that it echoed into the tent-house next door.

“You and Gala are so bent on being miserable forever. Yes, this alliance is important to the clan; and yes, our people are excited for it; and yes, Av land and resources would be great to have -”

She held up a finger for each point while Zakiriel sank into his chair at equal intervals.

“- but you two could always run away together.”

Her spontaneous change in tone and message unbalanced him, and thus unbalanced the legs of his chair - he slapped his hands onto the desktop to avoid falling, wings beating erratically to reverse his momentum.

All of this Sairan took in with narrow, amused eyes.

“You’ll never tire of doing that, will you?” Zakiriel groused, straightening the collar of his robe. A few errant feathers, shed in panic, drifted to the ground. “Please be serious about this.”

Usually, Sairan met his requests for any sort of professionalism with flippant disregard at best, barbed retorts at worst - but this time she only smiled.

“I am being serious.”

She slid off the desk and proceeded to pace in front of it.

“You only get one life, remember? Gala knows that, too. I really don’t understand why both of you are treating this alliance like some unbreakable wall - it isn’t.”

Zakiriel leaned forward to protest, but she halted him with a raised hand.

“Yes, I’m aware how seriously you guys take your responsibilities. But, listen; I chose to walk away from my duty to the Ran, fated by blood and birth -” Sai adopted her derogatory, if spiritually accurate, impression of Varran for emphasis, “- and the clan didn’t fall apart or struggle or anything.”

“The old clans pretend like there’s something special about staying the same for so long, like it proves their authority, like it makes their leaders more worthy.”

She shrugged. “I think it just makes them lucky. Adaptation is the key to survival in Mother Gaia; I mean, just look at the Av. They’re the biggest clan in the eastern forest after, what, five years? Avderren didn’t get there by following some tired old list of rules.”

Zakiriel folded his hands in his lap and begrudgingly acknowledged the feat.

“All I’m saying is: change is just change. It isn’t good or bad; it’s what you make of it afterward. When I left my position, it passed to Gala. If she leaves her position, it’ll just pass to Jae - which would be a good thing, honestly.”

His chair creaked as he leaned it back again, risking another near-tumble in order to really convey his incredulity. “Sairan, first of all, I just want to say that was wildly irresponsible advice for a diplomatic emissary to give.”

As expected, she snickered at the accusation.

“Second, I don’t think that’s the issue here.”

“No?”

“No. She and I, we - hm -” Zakiriel, realizing the circumstances he referenced weren’t exactly proper, amended his course, “- we’ve discussed this before. I don’t think she fears repercussions for leaving her position. I don’t think it’s about fear at all.”

Fog filled his memory once more, obscuring all the world but two aching hearts, muting Galaran’s agonized declarations.

“She just wants to serve your people well,” he murmured. “I can’t ask her to forsake that.”

“Yes, you can.”

When his gaze snapped upward, Sairan was smirking in eminent self-satisfaction, echoing Kazach to a frankly disturbing degree.

“You can,” she repeated. “You’re trapped in a place that doesn’t exist. Gala is so obsessed with being selfless that she’s barely got a self anymore. If she’s had to twist and bend so much for the role, then maybe - just maybe - she’s not actually that suited to lead the clan!”

“And you -” she jabbed a judgmental finger his way, “- are so wrapped up in pointless guilt that you can’t see it. Wishing for your own happiness, or Gala’s, isn’t a crime, Zakiriel.”

His hands, still clasped tightly over his stomach, trembled.

“I know you’ve seen how unhappy she is,” Sairan continued softly. “And I’ve seen how unhappy you are. It’s unbearable, right? The village.”

As she’d caught him in the act of avoiding it, Zakiriel could only nod. “It is - it’s difficult to watch them celebrating something that hurts her.”

“Then don’t let it hurt her,” Sairan said. “Life isn’t supposed to hurt.”

The simplicity shocked his lungs like a breath of chilled air.

From the start, his and Galaran’s relationship had been complicated, interwoven with pursuit and responsibility, culminating in a snarled tangle. But if he held it gently, if he pulled at the thread of hurt, could he unwind it?

When, exactly, had he convinced himself their futures were immutable?

Part 3: Galaran

Everyone knew the rituals of bonding; they were instilled early and often, becoming muscle memory by late childhood, because every member of the clan played a role in them.

Cubs foraged for iridescent beetles in the forest, which the potters then blended into a shimmering paint; warriors hunted foxes and deer for the leatherworkers, who tooled the pelts into vibrant red-orange mantles. Weavers and carvers crafted twin headpieces from antler and reedcloth - one draped with Ran yellow-gold, the other Av russet brown.

Those who plied no trade instead manned the cooking pots, spending the entire week preparing the edible parts of what creatures had lent their bodies to the ritual; healers took the leftover fat for candles and grease.

By the time of the bonding itself, the entire village would be filled with the scents of savory venison, chalky paint, and musty hide, and raucous with celebrants’ laughter.

Galaran had once caught greenish beetles for the paint, chased stags for their branching antlers, lain in wait for bright-coated foxes, all for the bondings of her kin; and now, the clan performed such tasks for her.

A younger version of herself had fantasized about the day she’d don her own soft red furs and striking crown. Like many of her peers, she’d sometimes swiped a bit of the near-invisible paint, then hid away somewhere to marvel at its slow transformation - the way it seemed to, over several hours, trace itself onto her skin in glowing whitish patterns.

All those times, though, she’d imagined someone of her own choosing would be standing beside her in matching regalia. Placing Avderren into the mantle and crown - and the paint, with all its dreaded implications - rather soured the picture.

“Do you think it’ll be enough?”

Galaran blinked, peeling herself away from the horrid visions and refocusing on the Av potter who’d questioned her. It seemed she’d taken a very Zakiriel-like flight of fancy, and now shared a strained, slightly overlong silence with this artisan, with her index finger still dipped into his pot of translucent paint.

She promptly retracted it.

“The paint,” the man clarified slowly, his brow furrowed. “Do you think this will be enough paint for the moon-feast?”

“Ah - yes, this should be plenty,” Galaran said, putting a swift arm’s length between herself and the pot. “Thank you.”

He hovered there awkwardly, as if wavering between two replies.

“Then I’ll go put it in the storehouse,” he finally said, but his gaze lingered on her for several more steps than necessary after he turned to leave.

Galaran waved him off with a stiff, agreeable smile. People had been looking at her like that a lot lately - worried, unsure if they should speak up - especially after distracted episodes like the one she’d just experienced. They’d been happening more and more as the days wore on, these lapses in mental presence that left her disoriented afterward, worsening with each successive night of fitful, disjointed sleep.

As the artisan passed out of sight, Galaran’s smile reversed into a deep scowl.

She’d like to see him organize an entire bonding ceremony with little rest and absolutely no help from his intended partner; but the thought of him trying to stuff that clay pot into the storehouse, which was already packed to bursting with Avderren’s ‘gifts,’ did improve her mood somewhat.

In the shadow of a stilt house, in a rare moment of solitude, she rolled her shoulders and let out a long, heavy sigh. One more day of freedom, running like water through her fingers; one day, but nothing about this week had felt free.

As it turned out, the single duties she’d performed in others’ bondings hadn’t provided her a full understanding of the work that went into the ritual; she’d understood it as a leisurely time of cooperation and glee, where the two future mates mainly just accepted finished things from artisans and ate a lot of food.

In reality, as she’d painstakingly learned, the promised pair were tugged in every imaginable direction for the entire ceremonial week. They had to try on those red mantles for fitting, test the bond-paint for efficacy, pick each antler for their crowns - and that didn’t even account for the social traditions of dining and visiting with people from both clans, every day, for every meal.

The list went on forever, as far as she could tell. It would be burdensome for two people to complete it on time; for one, it felt downright impossible - and Avderren, in his unending campaign to hoard Varran’s time and attention, had signaled zero intent to participate.

One partner shouldering the burden of ritual preparation wasn’t uncommon, but it usually happened in cases of pregnancy or other mobility-limiting conditions, not blatant disregard. He’d left her to perform everything alone, humiliated and exhausted; as a result, her fellow Ran guided her gently through the process, the Av with apologetic camaraderie, but both clans shot her glances full of pity when they thought she couldn’t see them.

Galaran, keen-eyed huntress, saw them all. Each one fueled the manic scream ever threatening to squeeze through her teeth.

It wasn’t like she had ever expected Avderren to care for her, or her for him - they both understood this to be a purely diplomatic bonding - but somehow, incredibly, he hadn’t managed to clear even the lowest standard she could set: respect.

When the pressure built too high, when her head pounded and her nerves sparked lightning, it was difficult not to look at the empty space beside her and think of Zakiriel. In those moments, that small, fervent, rebellious inner voice she had so much trouble keeping down broke briefly from its restraints.

He would be here, it then whispered. He would care.

But Zakiriel, for the past two days, was nowhere to be seen in the village. No matter how fervently she sought his company or counsel, none of the snow-white wingtips she chased led to him.

She’d tried to tell herself that he was just busy, but her heart knew the truth of it, and she couldn’t blame him for turning away.

The barest brush of skin on grass pricked at her ears, the only sign of Jaerran’s approach - and even this he had done purposefully, to put her at ease, as was customary among their people.

“Gala,” he said softly, joining her in the stilt house’s shadow.

She hoped he’d just arrived, that he hadn’t witnessed her clenched fists and hunched shoulders, how she’d crumbled and reassembled in the artisan’s wake.

“Brother,” she replied in greeting, and even managed a stable smile. “What brings you to the clay ovens?”

Jaerran methodically took in her appearance - her pallid skin, the dull fur of her ears and tail, the smudges beneath her eyes - and clasped his hands behind his back.

“You didn’t attend our meeting,” he said.

Galaran looked up; the tiny shafts of sunlight that pierced the canopy were indeed angled sharply over the village, enabling shadows like the one she now occupied, indicating a time long past when she was to meet her brother at home.

“Sorry, Jae,” she exhaled alongside her breath. “I was testing bond-paints and there was…more than I expected.”

He glanced around the artisans’ road, its occupants quickly draining as meal time neared, and hummed in humor neither good nor ill. “I see. We can hold it now, then.”

Galaran laughed weakly. “I wish I could, but I have to pick a clan family to visit for the evening. Maybe tomorrow? I have a small break after midday.”

“I am part of a clan family,” Jae offered, his mouth twitching with what could’ve been called a smile. “Come. I’ll even feed you.”

A surprised laugh, genuine this time, rumbled out of her chest, and she followed him gladly back to their stilt house.

When they pushed open the front door, no light or sound greeted them from within. A few drops of tension drained from Galaran’s shoulders; Sai wouldn’t have cared that they were bending the rules, but their father definitely would.

Luckily, Varran spent most of his nights at the meeting house with Avderren, filling it up with smoke and vanity. He wouldn’t stumble back here until the night birds had all spent their lungs.

Jae sparked the cookfire in the house’s central chamber, hung two pots of water above it, and set about gathering stew ingredients from the storeroom; though she itched to help, Galaran remained beside the fire, obediently watching her brother do all the work for the sake of tradition.

Why the bonding ritual worked like this, she’d never know. The elders spoke of gratitude, hospitality, and community support - but Galaran had always found it more fulfilling to work beside others and share the results of their labor together.

Nevertheless she sat quietly until Jae had settled in his usual place: on her left, at the cookfire’s western face.

“Can I at least make us some fruit tea?” she asked, eyeing the basket of spikefruit - one of her more exciting gifts - on the preparation table.

Jae followed her gaze and nodded, and Galaran was across the room before he could finish it, tearing into the first fruit’s fibrous skin.

In her periphery, though, she could see him watching her intently, and only then did she realize that he’d possessed ulterior motives this whole time.

“You haven’t been sleeping,” he observed.

Her claw punctured too deep, spraying sticky juice all over her forearm.

“Don’t want to discuss the clan today?” she deflected nervously, wiping herself down with a reedcloth.

Jaerran wasn’t usually one to get personal; actually, in the sea of sentimentality this week had been thus far, she’d appreciated his doses of pragmatism whenever they met to discuss future splitting of duties.

“We’ve settled matters acceptably for the coming season,” Jae said. He arched his neck to smell the stew, then stirred in a handful of herbs. “All else can wait until we know how long you’ll stay in Av territory.”

Until we know if you’re with child, he meant. If so, she’d likely remain with the Av for another season.

Her hands were steady this time, calmly dropping fruit chunks into two clay cups, since she’d anticipated comments of its like. She and Avderren were quite young, after all, and both clans would naturally expect offspring in their first bonded year.

Galaran replied with a noncommittal hum, glad he couldn’t see her face.

“Why haven’t you been sleeping?” Jae pressed.

And people called her overbearing.

She knew, from a lifetime bearing witness to it, that her brother’s blunt logic and oblivious manner combined into a particular sort of drive, one that couldn’t be sated by vagueness. He was like Sai that way; his bite, once secured, would only release upon receiving a satisfactory answer.

Even so, she hesitated. Wouldn’t it be rather pathetic to complain about an obligation that she, until recently, had never protested? Wouldn’t it seem like she’d lost her spine at the very last moment?

Did she even care about any of that anymore?

She returned with their tea cups, filled them from the hot water pot, and resumed her seat all without saying a word; and neither did Jae, whose placid eyes never left her, even while accepting his cup.

The fire crackled beneath their twin pots, radiating warmth and the pleasant aromas of rabbit and woodsmoke. Galaran took a fortifying breath of it, then murmured, barely audible over the boiling stew, “I don’t wish to join with the Av.”

The admission left her like bad blood from an infected wound, dribbling noxiously to the floor between them; there was so much more trapped inside, but even this small relief of pressure was enough to moisten the corners of her eyes.

Jaerran slowly inclined his head in acknowledgement, unaffected, as though he’d already known; if he could tell, though, how many others could?

“Are you dissatisfied with Elder Avderren?” he asked.

Dissatisfied. Galaran stared back at him, bereft of tongue.

Sudden rains dissatisfied her. Faulty traps. Cracked leather. Overripe bananas.

Were she merely dissatisfied, every preparation on the list would already be completed, her steps light as air, her nights blissfully undisturbed.

“Yes,” she said instead. It wasn’t Jae’s fault; if her dammed resentment must be unleashed, she’d save the deluge for a worthier target.

Jae’s face, as usual, revealed none of his thoughts. “I see.”

He took a long sip of his tea, then set it onto the cookfire’s stone partition.

Galaran could usually match her brother’s patience, but this week had already whittled hers down to splinters; her claws dug into her knees as she awaited his judgment, cold sweat beading at the nape of her neck.

Finally, when she thought she might soon draw blood, Jae braced an elbow on his thigh and brought a pensive hand to his chin.

“The elder is an unexpectedly difficult man,” he concluded, again stunning his sister with the mildest possible language. “I don’t believe he’d be an effective partner.”

The anxious lump in her throat made her laughter shaky and thick; one could always count on Jae for the simplest, most astute assessment.

“So, what will you do?”

She abruptly quieted, wide eyes fixed on the fire. All intent - to reassure him that she’d still go through with it, that she wouldn’t let the clan suffer, that everyone was right to put their faith in her - hit the solid cage of her teeth, mixing with the scream, melting into it, able neither to escape nor dissolve.

“It would be costly for Father to exit the alliance at this stage,” Jae mused, “but trade with Haven could compensate in time for lean season. Or I could go to the Vel -”

“Wait,” Galaran cut in, nearly wheezing in her haste, “you don’t want me to complete the bonding?”

He lifted his cheek from his hand. “Why would I want you to be unhappy, Gala?”

The bewilderment in his voice was enough to make her question the basis of all her assumptions; indeed, they were close siblings who cared for one another, so why would he want her to be unhappy? Why would anyone in her family want that?

She took a mental step back from the present, looking at it top-down like a Featherling’s view of Gaia. She saw the strenuous lengths to which her father had gone to ensure his daughter would enter into an equal partnership; she saw the quiet worry and observation which had led her brother to this conversation; she saw the years-long trail of desperate, unheeded wisdom flowing from her sister like tears.

But -

“I’d be failing the clan,” she said, tracing the weblike threads of support - material, practical, social - they’d already received from the Av to the Ran individuals whom they’d benefited. All of that would likely need to be returned, one way or another; and everyone would know it was because of her.

Jae granted her point with a gesture. “Perhaps. How many times did I fall while you taught me to hunt?”

“Many,” she replied, cracking a tiny smile at the memories; he’d been a mere dandelion’s puff of soft green fur back then, tripping down hillsides ear over tail.

“When I fell, was I failing you?”

Galaran balked. “Of course not! You were just a cub; you were learning. This is different, Jae. I have been learning this role for years.”

“And yet you remain a student under our father,” he commented plainly. “He puts much on your shoulders, but you pile more on yourself. As did I; thus I often fell.”

“Are you saying that you expect me to fall here? That the clan expects me to fall?” she demanded, but there was little heat to it; if they did, it was only because they’d seen her obviously faltering.

“No.” Jae pursed his lips, the only ripple upon his tranquil surface. “But we are always ready to catch you, Sister. No river runs unchecked by land’s design.”

The River and the Mountain - Jae’s favorite story growing up; he’d requested it so often that Sairan still cringed whenever she heard its opening words.

By reciting one line of this particular couplet, though, he implied its partner as well: yet steady currents shape the path anew.

Even if one is met with immovable stone, the story was meant to teach, there exists a way forward.

On some day in some year, beneath some yoke - of her father’s making or her own - Galaran had forgotten that lesson, to her great disservice.

His advice resembled Sairan’s, so many moons ago before the meeting house: when the wind meets a sturdy tree, does it stop or go around?

The methods matched their speakers well, she thought; Sai’s wind blew anywhere at her whim, while Jae’s water carved an intentional course. Galaran had to choose her own tools - she could not merely stand and wait for the mountain to move.

“Thank you,” she whispered, wrapping both hands around her cooling teacup.

Whatever Jae saw in her reaction apparently satisfied him; a rare, pleased smile spread across his face as he lifted the stew pot from its hook.

Part 4: Zakiriel

One cloak of spun white wool, lined with rabbit fur. Not the darker rabbits they bred for meat, Zakiriel had specified to a Haven seamstress, but the wild populations that ranged freely across the meadows. Those rabbits bore coats of rich, glossy flax - perfectly complementary in hue to a head of pale golden hair, and perfectly insulating for a body unaccustomed to the Floating Isle’s dry, cool winds.

One matching set of oiled sheepskin pouches. They must range in shape and capacity, he’d told the tanner, and be absolutely waterproof. Soft tooling would make them more durable than the ones Galaran had lost in the battle.

One white feather, gilded and lacquered. A missed opportunity revisited.

Zakiriel, cross-legged on the floor of his village chamber, set the feather pin carefully atop the pouches, which rested in the center of the spread cloak.

He leaned back to assess the presentation, conceding with a clipped sigh that it fell quite short of Avderren’s lavish trove. These were all the gifts he could assemble on such short notice, however, and even then he’d barely made it on time for the ritual.

Distant celebration - cheers, drum beats, voices raised in song and chant - drifted faintly through his window; it had been coming in waves for hours, ever since the sun’s departure.

Damn his bottomless curiosity. During his initial stay, Zakiriel had gleefully, attentively absorbed any and all stories the villagers recited for him, including - unfortunately - the Ran clan’s particular bonding practices.

That Zakiriel, immersed in academic euphoria, had absolutely no idea he’d be condemning his future self to an evening of terrible knowing.

He knew the significance of every new song, every strike of a hide drum, every rhythmic, synchronized chant - in his mind’s eye, he could see Galaran performing the steps like a dance; first the ritual painting of both promised mates, in which they were covered in swirling, yet-invisible patterns; then the bestowal, where they were presented with gifts and foods meant to bring prosperity; and finally the feasting, where the pair were free to mingle among their kin.

Those were the sounds he heard now - the revelry of two clans deep in their indulgences. That meant there was only one step left: the bonding itself. After the feast, when the full moon was highest beyond the canopy, the couple would meet at a specially furnished stilt house to consummate their union.

Zakiriel generally avoided thinking about that part.

His plan, as it stood, hinged on the chaotic feast itself; if he didn’t draw too much attention, he could weave through the crowd, find Galaran, and sneak off to speak privately somewhere. There, he’d - well, considering the spontaneity of the venture, he hadn’t really thought past that point.

He’d present her his gifts with dramatic flair and beg her to reconsider her bond?

He’d…extoll the benefits of life in exile?

Zakiriel’s wings drooped. It could hardly be considered a plan, and she would almost certainly rebuke such a shoddy offer. She may not even speak to him again, given all he’d be asking of her.

But inaction - a lifetime spent wondering - seemed a far worse fate.

He folded everything up inside the cloak with gusto and tucked it inside his robes, resolved to give this ‘plan’ its best possible chance to succeed.

No hesitating! he instructed himself. No doubts! It’s time to act!

And act he did, as he turned to stride confidently out of his room in Varran’s household and was met not with a darkened doorway, but with a decorated bride-to-be.

He jerked backward like a startled cat, but the accompanying shriek died in his throat. All day, he’d actively tried not to imagine what Galaran would look like in her bonding regalia; a few images had forced themselves through regardless, but reality outstripped anything his mind could create.

Bloody red on brilliant gold - a red that set her flaxen fields aflame, topped by sharp, twisting branches burned to bare ash; if the primal force, the fundamental essence called Gaia could incarnate in flesh, she would be this, he thought; she would be her.

But Galaran’s eyes, when he reached them, held only motes of their usual sunlight. Her pale cheeks were flushed ruddy, framing a downturned mouth and a clenched jaw.

“Why didn’t you come?” The words barely clung together inside her turbulent voice. “I looked for you.”

Though he’d certainly intended to speak, Zakiriel’s breath hissed out unused. Nothing in his plans had accounted for her being so distraught when they met, but he was a fool in hindsight for not anticipating it.

“I…couldn’t,” he eventually said, putting his half-baked proposal on a high shelf. In the face of such distress, it could wait.

“But,” he went on, tentatively lighter, “it seems you’ve found me?”

Galaran covered her mouth with her hands and laughed once into them, half-mirth and half-misery. Instead of replying, she rushed forward in a streak of red and wrapped her arms around his back, burying her face in his chest.

After a floored beat, Zakiriel returned the embrace, at once glad to be near her and overjoyed that she’d still seek him out for comfort despite their week of estrangement.

“I don’t want it,” she mumbled into his layered lapels.

He smoothed down what little of her hair he could reach beneath its crown of antlers and softly replied, “I know.”

“No,” she clarified, fisting a hand into the front of his robe. “I don’t want any of it. The bonding, the alliance, the clan -”

Galaran cut herself off, breathing deeply. Likewise, Zakiriel held her as gingerly as possible - it couldn’t have been easy for her to verbalize that, and he feared she’d flee in overwhelmed terror if he moved the wrong way.

She tilted her head up to look at him and, this close, he realized she hadn’t actually been crying. Her voice trembled with emotion, yes, and color stained her skin, but only guilt and relief shimmered in her eyes, mixed like oil and water at uneasy equilibrium.

“I just want to be free,” she whispered.

The admission dropped a boulder on Zakiriel’s sternum. He struggled to draw enough air to process it; not because her words were unwelcome - far from it! - but because he hadn’t expected to hear them so easily. His beloved, for all her virtues, did not offer up vulnerability without a fight.

It seemed he wasn’t the only one who had done some reflecting.

“Then,” he offered, “shall I whisk you away?”

Soft delight slowly replaced melancholy as she processed his meaning, and she assented not with words, but by turning her body so he could lift her into his arms.

---

He didn’t need to tell her where they were going, nor did she need to ask.

Zakiriel had relived that day at the waterfall so many times that night’s darkness did nothing to hinder the flight. He glided over the canopy, Galaran clutched snugly in his grasp, all the world as silent as they.

He alighted on the path that ran behind the waterfall; it deepened there into an obscured, half-enclosed alcove. Moonlight filtered in, blue-white through the falls, projected in dancing, distorted ribbons onto every surface.

Galaran went to it as soon as he put her down, staring up through the babbling curtain of water. Though they’d just shared moments of closeness in the village and in their flight, Zakiriel hesitated in approaching; something about the set of her shoulders told him she needed the space.

Instead he folded up his wings and simply watched. Her bond-paint had begun to fluoresce, manifesting a faint tapestry of glimmering, swirling patterns up her arms and legs - though the patterns spanned her entire body, if memory served.

From its fractured image through the falls - atop the canopy but still visible from here - he estimated that the moon would reach its zenith in just under an hour. Everyone attending the feast would be expecting the guests of honor to disappear soon, if they hadn’t already.

Would she reaffirm her duty and willpower, like last time, and ask to return before the moon was highest?

Or - Zakiriel dared to practice selfishness and entertain the alternative - might she, in this atmosphere of change, choose him over the clan?

“Zakiriel, do you -”

Galaran paused almost as soon as she’d begun; he saw her shoulders heave, like she’d taken a deep breath.

He chanced a step forward; she didn’t stop him.

“Do you remember your first day in the village?” she asked, half-turning toward him - not enough to meet his eyes, but nearer.

Zakiriel exhaled a laugh. “Of course. Four different cubs stole one of my feathers.”

The memory also extracted a chuckle from Galaran, who’d been the one to finally chase the rowdy young ones off.

“I thought you were so odd,” she said, still smiling at the tail end of nostalgia. “You were so oblivious and single-minded. And talkative.”

He snorted, recalling her initial allergy to casual conversation.

“But you were also determined and curious, dedicated to your cause, respectful to my people. I started to see you differently.” She crossed her arms and gripped her elbows; perhaps subconsciously, her stance slightly widened as though she were preparing for combat.

Zakiriel didn’t think he would ever stop finding that endearing - that she physically braced herself for sentimentality. It made him feel chosen, trusted, and he treasured each instance like precious gold.

“I saw how - how truly brilliant you are, how kind, how clever and -” she angled her head away again, cheeks darker than before, “- how beautiful.”

His mouth twisted up in an unbecoming manner - some abomination of embarrassment and pleasure - that he was relieved she couldn’t see.

“And then we grew…closer.”

She shifted anxiously from one foot to the other. “You must understand; before I met you, I lived my life in certainty. I knew my duties and my future, I saw what the clan needed from me, and I had accepted it.”

More quietly, she amended, “I thought I had accepted it.”

Strains of memory from the river flashed unbidden through Zakiriel’s thoughts; it was the first time he’d desired her, and the first time he’d sensed her inner well of doubt.

“I thought everything would be fine if I could just play my role. Embody the perfect clan leader. I thought I could tolerate having Avderren as a mate.” She spit the name like poison, and rightly so.

“But you -” for reasons he couldn’t fathom, she sounded angry now, “- showed me another way to live. With you I felt happy. Hopeful.”

“I couldn’t feel those things, Zakiriel. It - it ruined everything! When I thought about killing that happiness, putting it aside forever, I just couldn’t -”

Her eyes fell closed; after a few moments, she opened them in a calmer state.

“You showed me true, joyful, equal companionship.” Galaran met his gaze for the first time since the village, radiating Gaia’s regal incarnation.

“And now I cannot go back.”

Zakiriel, were it not for his strength of composure, thought his jaw might have hit the ground. Taking into account all of his previous experience with her, that was - that was about as close to a confession as she was likely to give, wasn’t it?

He laughed once - all too giddy for the moment’s tone; more of a giggle, really - and then abruptly cleared it from his throat.

“I feel the same way,” he said, adding with a dry smirk, “but you knew that.”

She smiled and glanced away, ears twitching.

“But, I am worried about something.” Zakiriel knew he’d have to disclose this particular hangup eventually; based on Sairan’s advice, though, he thought it might actually work to their advantage.

“Early on, I told you about my brother - his circumstances. And mine.”

Galaran, with an air of trepidation, nodded.

“Well, we exist as we do because of our mother, Selhene. She became infatuated with one of the dark ones - don’t ask me how, or why; I never asked and I don’t ever want to know the details of their…courtship.”

Zakiriel grimaced. “Regardless, it happened. She was married to another Featherling at the time, but chose her feelings over the consequences. That is the source of my worry, Galaran; no matter how strong her love truly was, my brother and I were conceived in betrayal. With her choices, she doomed her family to fracture.”

He looked down at his layered garb, symbolic of Haven’s culture, so pristinely snow-white it seemed to shun Kazach with its mere existence.

“I haven’t seen my father - Selhene’s husband, the only father I remember - in decades, and my brother only rarely. I don’t even know where he lives. I never have.”

Bitter regret rose in his throat; he swallowed it down. “Secrecy, indecision - they become burdens, especially where duty and the heart intersect.”

Zakiriel refocused on Galaran to gauge her reaction to his tale; alarmingly, he found her crestfallen and demure, a wilted lily staring mournfully back at him.

With a jolt, he realized that she must have thought he was rejecting her.

“No, Galaran, no -” he hurriedly grabbed both of her hands and held them close to his chest, “- all I meant was that the road would be difficult! If we ever, ah, if we were ever to - ah -”

Illustrious heavens. He dearly hoped his hands weren’t sweating.

“I don’t want any of my children to feel the way I did,” he explained in a rush.

“And so, if we are to walk together - and I very much, very much want to, don’t mistake me - we must travel honestly. We must be ready to accept the repercussions. We cannot disappear, or lie, or hide.”

While he talked, Galaran’s expression had again reversed its dejection to something like disbelief, but gentle. Her hands tensed in his grip, bringing both pairs, conjoined, to her own chest instead.

“You are really, really too pure for Mother Gaia,” she groused without bite; in fact, her voice overflowed with so much adoration that it made his heart ache. “We will be punished, you know.” Zakiriel beamed. “I know. I can take it.”

“I know,” she replied softly. “But - we may not be able to live in the village -”

“Galaran,” he interjected sternly. “Do you know what I was doing when you found me in my chamber?”

She shook her head; he smiled, disentangled their fingers, and retrieved the folded cloak from within his robes.

Presenting it to her two-handed, he stated proudly, “I was preparing to find you - in order to make a quite similar confession, in fact. Believe me when I say I’m ready for whatever punishment your father has in store.”

Galaran lifted the bundle, giving him one more uncertain look - to which he nodded reassuringly - before opening it.

The gilded feather glittered with refracted moonlight, instantly striking as soon as it was revealed. She recognized the assemblage in little more than a heartbeat, gasped, and raised her head again for confirmation.

Zakiriel plucked the pin from its nest and grinned at her. Slowly, carefully, he brushed back a lock of her hair unimpeded by the crown and affixed the feather to it, immensely satisfied that it matched her coloration exactly as he’d hoped.

He cupped her cheek with the same hand.

“And so I am with you, and you are with me,” he said, repeating what she’d told him at the river.

She reached to mimic his gesture, cupping his opposite cheek with her smaller hand. “For as long as we both remain,” she breathed, tears shining in her eyes.

Zakiriel bent at his waist, Galaran stretched upward on her toes, and then they met, at last, in the middle.

Part 5: Galaran

That special color-changing paint served dual purposes in the bonding ritual. It marked the two promised mates, yes, signifying their partnership; but its more important function revealed itself only after the night of the feast.

The paint was initially invisible, revealing itself over the course of the evening, and would only darken to its final appearance after mid-night - this meant that the next morning, when the pair emerged from their stilt house, both would be covered in a mess of smudged, glittering paint, thereby confirming the consummation of their bond.

Archaic, in Galaran’s opinion, but undoubtedly amusing in practice.

Zakiriel currently resembled one of the paintings that hung in his house; pastel purples, greens, and reds criss-crossed his skin in blurry streaks and made a canvas of his white wings. Not even his hair had been spared - it bunched around his shoulders in shiny, lopsided globs that he’d been trying in vain to separate all morning.

“It will wash off in warm water, be patient,” Galaran chided for what must have been the tenth time; she hadn’t made it out any better, herself, but being dirty bothered her far less than it bothered him.

“Oh, you say that, but has it ever been tested on feathers?” he complained, wincing as his fingers caught, again, on one of countless knots. “What if I am dyed forever, hm? What will you do then?”

She hummed in mock consideration, tilting her head to look over at him. “I suppose I’ll just have to accept a walking rainbow for a mate.”

Zakiriel scoffed at her jest, met her eyes - and then they both burst out laughing at the other’s appearance, an event that had recurred at least once an hour since they’d awoken behind the waterfall.

It still didn’t feel real to her, what they’d done. Euphoria, betrayal, passion, transgression; they swirled in her gut like the paint on her skin, muddled, impossible to separate anymore. She didn’t regret it, no - but she hadn’t fully digested it, either.

They had elected to return to the village on foot, since his wings were in doubtful shape to fly. The second reason she felt was more obvious; not for a single moment had they parted their entwined hands, which swung cheerfully between them as they walked.

When they arrived, whatever awaited them there, they wouldn’t be able to show open affection like this; maybe he’d realized that, too, and resented the loss of their newfound privilege just as much.

But the path couldn’t go on forever, no matter how slow their steps or how lively their conversation. Eventually the slope evened out, the trees thinned, and the village’s outermost stilt houses rose beyond the next hill.

The dream for which they’d fought and bled, for the moment, must itself sleep.

Leftover signs of celebration littered the open spaces, from empty bowls and dislodged reedcloth banners to participants themselves, slumbering away their inebriation in the soft grass or sprawled out on landings.

It was strange that they counted so few people, though, and stranger still that no one had come to clean away the debris, at least from the earthen roads.

Or perhaps that wasn’t so strange, after all; one of the promised mates had suddenly vanished from her own bonding ceremony the night before.

They hadn’t seen anyone else in the forest, though, so the clan probably wasn’t out searching for her yet. That meant they were still deciding what to do next - and, surely enough, Galaran spotted a far-off swarm of activity around the meeting house.

She and Zakiriel shared an encouraging, faintly apprehensive look, separated their hands, and dove in.

The chattering crowd of Ran and Av went silent at their approach, parting before them like vermin before floodwaters - as if their illicit deeds might spread through touch alone. At the very least, she thought, none of them looked angry; only shocked, borderline dread plastered what faces she spied in passing.

Considering the clan’s history with disobedience, their response could have been much worse, and that bolstered her hopes by the smallest amount.

In the absence of other sound, hers and Zakiriel’s every step creaked jarringly on the plank staircase; and as they ascended, the heated argument coming from inside the meeting house grew clearer.

Galaran could discern five discrete voices; her father’s confident boom and Avderren’s harsh indignance dominated the group, predictably, but she also heard contributions from Sai and Jae, incensed and serene respectively. She even detected Anahel’s silvery cadence once or twice in the fray, but Avderren’s bark invariably quashed it.

“- cannot tell me it means nothing that they are both gone,” her former intended was insisting; oh, if only he’d unearthed such basic reasoning skills just a bit sooner.

It was as good a cue as any, though, Galaran thought with a vengeful smirk, and it seemed Zakiriel had the same idea. They placed one hand each on the entry doors and pushed their way in.

An oppressing aura traveled with them; as its trailing edge released the gathering outside, gasps and exclamations issued from the bottom of the stairs in a mounting tide of scandal.

At the same time, its leading edge enshrouded those within the meeting house, smothering the debate and freezing its participants in place.

Varran and Avderren, of course, occupied the clan leader’s dais. Her father had a wooden pipe hanging from his mouth and an appeasing arm extended toward his fellow elder; meanwhile, Avderren’s haughty posture suggested he’d been having none of it.

Jae sat in his usual spot, his head turned just enough to see who’d entered, one eyebrow arched out of place in an otherwise composed mask. Sai and Anahel sat a little farther back, side-by-side in the space newly reserved for them; the former looked oddly proud, like she’d won some sort of contest, while the latter had gone whiter than her wings.

Galaran and Zakiriel strode across the chamber and stopped, as they’d planned, at the exact halfway point between the dais and the entrance - the spot where Varran judged those who trespassed against the clan. Here they calmly knelt, folding their hands on their knees, to await questioning.

For a few breaths more, seven clay sculptures occupied the meeting house; then Varran’s pipe fell from his mouth, clattering obnoxiously to the wooden dais.

“You - you -”

He couldn’t progress past the one word; even after falling silent once more, his lips continued to move, forming the same syllables over and over.

Slowly, as if body and mind had finally come to agreement, his expression crumbled from confusion to deepest dismay. In a small, faint voice, so low as to be undetectable under any other circumstance, he murmured, “What have you done?”

His coherence seemed to break everyone else’s stupor, as well.

Sairan sucked in an excited breath, Anahel looked like she had some very motherly admonishments for her countryman, and Jae barely shifted at all - but Avderren was swiftest to act.

He stood from his cross-legged position - already an aggressive move - and stomped up to the very edge of the dais to glare Galaran down. There was nothing of the abandoned lover in his contorted features; she saw only the rage of a springtime bear denied its first meal.

“You mock my loyalty,” he snarled, jabbing a finger at her. “You soil my clan’s honor. How will you return it?”

Galaran met his eyes, returning a steady anger that had long hardened to stone, untouchable by spitting flames. If he felt slighted - if he felt humiliated - then she’d only repaid his outrages in kind.

“I do not answer to you,” she said evenly. “We pledged no vow beneath the moon, you and I; Elder Varran alone has the right to question me.”

She cocked her head and flexed the claws of one hand, an unspoken addendum:

If you wish for justice, it shall be measured in blood.

Avderren narrowed his eyes; he hadn’t risen to his position by being completely foolhardy, she was well aware, and her skill in combat was clearly enough to give him pause. But she’d also flaunted her provocation, and if he shrank from it, all present would know him for a coward.

“I will have it back from you,” he all but growled.

Galaran bared her fangs to grin at him.

Entranced in the killing thrill as they were, neither party initially noticed when Zakiriel pushed himself up from his knees; she only realized it when she went to stand herself, finding a view of his robe’s skirts instead of his torso.

She tugged on the paint-smattered white fabric, shaking her head frantically, but her lover would not be dissuaded; he smiled down at her, blue eyes creasing as he covered her hand reassuringly with his own.

It was all she could do. By facing the challenger, he had already accepted the duel in her stead; only Avderren could reverse that decision now - and so, with cold, shaking hands, she let go.

Avderren, from his elevated perch, laughed derisively at the scene.

“It would please me to shatter you, songbird, but there is no honor in it,” he sneered. “Get back on your knees.”

Zakiriel folded his arms inside his sleeves and remained exactly where he was. In a voice as clear and strident as a bell, he addressed his opponent for the first time:

“I elect to fight on behalf of my mate.”

The meeting house chamber erupted in pandemonium.

Galaran tracked the miniscule changes in Avderren’s demeanor because she’d been looking for them, for any sign that his violent inclinations were surfacing; and so she caught it in slow motion when the slant to his eyes turned dangerous - when his musculature tensed to strike.

Avderren lunged for Zakiriel’s neck, provoked to savagery, operating only on a rival’s territorial instinct. In the same moment, two others raced to intercept him: Galaran, who launched herself sideways; and Varran, who’d regained composure just in time to thrust a thick arm in his path.

Arrested mid-pounce by a more experienced fighter, faced with a hunter’s sharp teeth rather than the easy prey he’d expected, Avderren relented - perhaps to defer to his elder, or perhaps because he’d noticed that Jae and Sai had quietly moved several paces closer; he might have also realized, correctly, that Galaran wouldn’t hesitate to flay his rotten hide if he persisted.

She hoped it was that one, anyway.

One of Zakiriel’s hands slid into hers from behind and gave it a comforting squeeze, enabling her to relax somewhat.

“No blood spills in my meeting house,” Varran sternly intoned, keeping a firm hold on his quarry. “Your challenge has been accepted. Will you recant?”

Quivering with confined wrath, bloodshot eyes never leaving Zakiriel, Avderren rumbled, “No.”

“Then choose your battleground, Elder.”

---

Sometimes, if she really, really tried to follow his logic, Galaran could understand the motivations behind Zakiriel’s actions. She enjoyed those moments; even if he’d done something irritating or confusing, it helped to know why.

This was not one of those times.

“He favors his right arm for sustained hand-to-hand,” she said, holding up a sixth finger, “so stay on his opposite side if he gets close to you. Zaki. Are you listening?”

Galaran leaned into his personal space, forcing him to set down a glass vial he’d been scrutinizing. “You must remember these things.”

“I’m listening,” Zakiriel affirmed, lightly pushing her back into the chair next to his. “But I promise you, I have a plan.”

She stared at him dubiously. He kept saying that, but she’d been following him around for two days; all he’d done in that time was organize his reagents in the storehouse and test some new ideas for pain-killing solutions - no training, no martial study, nothing whatsoever to prepare for his duel.

It was like he wanted Avderren to smear him all over the practice ring.

“A plan you can’t tell me,” she said flatly, flicking her tail.

Zakiriel sighed and pushed his testing rack away, turning in his seat to face her fully. “Gala.”

“Hm?”

“My dearly beloved, my delightful, charming, endlessly patient -”

She covered his mouth with her hand. “Flattery won’t distract me, you know.”

When he managed to free himself, they were both grinning. Zakiriel kept hold of her hand as he continued, “I know it’s difficult to be in the dark. I’m sorry I can’t tell you my strategy, but it will only work if he’s surprised by it.”

“Do you think I would reveal it?” she wondered, rather miffed by the accusation.

“Not with your words, no.”

Zakiriel glanced around his makeshift clinic, then grabbed a few vials from his testing rack. They were filled with a greenish herbal liquid, waiting for whatever he planned to combine with them next.

He placed one on the desk in front of her. “Let’s say this vial was full of poison, and I asked you to drink it. Would you?”

Galaran squinted at the vial. “This is one of your thought experiments, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” he chuckled. “Would you drink it?”

“Obviously I would not drink the poison.”

She rarely saw the point of these, but since they brought Zakiriel such great enjoyment, she tolerated them.

“Right. Because you know it will harm you, even though it was I who asked.”

“Hm,” she vaguely concurred.

He took the vial back and replaced it with another, almost identical one.

“Now, say I asked you to drink this vial, but I didn’t tell you what it was.”

Galaran tilted her head. “If it looks the same, it is likely also poison.”

“Consider this scenario on its own, disconnected from the first,” Zakiriel urged, pushing the rest of the vials out of sight. “This was the only request I made of you.”

Tiny particles of ground up leaves swirled idly within the fluid. She considered them carefully for a few moments, then replied, “Then, I would drink it. I know what your reagents are and where they came from, and I trust you.”

“Yes, exactly,” Zakiriel said, nodding along with her conclusion. “You trust your perceptions of me - that I wouldn’t do anything to harm you.”

Galaran hummed and braced her elbows on the desk, rolling the vial between them to watch the particles dance. “So your plan, it involves…Avderren’s perceptions of you?”

“It involves his perceptions staying the same,” Zakiriel hedged. “If you know the vial is poison, he may not drink it.”

She frowned at him, lips parted, but he had already turned his attention back to his testing rack. Frustrated, she slumped in her chair and spun her remaining vial in little circles; that was the best explanation he’d given her so far, and it was still infuriating.

What in Gaia’s earthly realm did any of that have to do with dueling?

---

In any sort of challenge within the clan, it was the initiator’s right to choose its location. Thus most of the Ran - and all of the Av - were packed around the village’s training ring like wild hens around a circle of seed, milling about to achieve the best view of its interior.

Some of her kin even sat upon the roofs of nearby stilt houses, having climbed themselves or been flown up by one of the Featherlings that accompanied them. Few from Haven were here overall, though; if she had to guess, Galaran would say that not many were excited to watch their primary doctor injured in one-sided battle.

And it would only be an injury, she thought, cutting her eyes to the two participants. Duels officially ended with surrender, but bloodlust - or as she suspected today, cruelty - sometimes drove the winner to maim or even kill their opponent regardless.

She’d seen it happen before, when feuds ran to deep or tempers too hot to be satiated by a trickle of blood. It was the rest of the clan’s responsibility to intervene in such cases, but not everyone was fast enough to catch a determined murderer.

Galaran would be fast enough. If Avderren aimed a lethal blow, she’d slit him open like a hog for roasting - and she’d worn her battle attire, tipped each claw in red paint, and planted herself directly outside the ring to make sure he knew that.

By the dark, resentful glances he’d been throwing her across the arena, she was satisfied he’d received the message.

Zakiriel and Avderren stood facing one another on opposite sides of the ring, separated by a central line scored into the earth. Though they, and their audience, had assembled much earlier, all waited for midday; like many Gaian traditions, duels occurred beneath the heavens’ auspicious eyes.

Her father’s heavy footsteps approached from behind, joining her at the ring’s dividing line. Galaran didn’t turn to greet him, nor did he stand directly beside her - the two had entered into a stiff sort of peace, each aware that they had wounded the other, neither willing to admit the greater portion of fault.

Galaran could have disgraced the clan by disappearing, but she’d instead chosen to submit to her elder’s judgment; Varran could have banished her, or Zakiriel, from the territory for their insubordination, but he’d stayed his hand.

“He is brave,” Varran spoke in a gruff near-whisper, intending the acknowledgement for his daughter alone. “You chose well.”

She kept one eye on the duelists, but turned her head enough to reciprocate his sincerity with a nod. Zakiriel was brave, and resilient, and worthier than Avderren by any measurement; she didn’t need her father to tell her that, but it was nice that he saw it.

Jae, who mirrored her position on the other side of the ring, wordlessly supporting her intent, watched the interaction with a subtle smile. Beside him, Sai shook her head in a fondly put-upon way that said, it’s about time.

Inside his half of the ring, Avderren twitched restlessly. He was known for his brutality in battle, for charging his enemies with overwhelming, unstoppable force; he must feel constrained within the practice ring, she thought, as it cut off his ability to build the momentum he so preferred.

Well; he should have chosen a wider field, then, and not one that would merely heighten the spectacle for his captive audience.

In the ring’s other half, Zakiriel stood tranquil as still water, the antithesis to Avderren’s impatience.

Most would think her beloved at ease, merely waiting, but Galaran knew he was collecting information - about the strength of the local air currents, their directions and volatilities - in order to better bend the winds to his will.

The long shafts of golden sunlight that striped the training ring gradually shortened, tracked by hundreds of eyes in quiet anticipation; finally, when only dots of light speckled the ring’s packed earth, Varran stepped up to the central line.

All present attended him, unblinking.

Solemnly, her father extended one arm beyond the boundary and clenched his fist, thereby popping the spitseed pod inside; the resulting, resonant snap echoed out over those assembled, signaling that the duel had begun.

Avderren charged before the reverberations had ceased, streaking across the arena in a blur of brown and white. His movements were uncontrolled, unrestrained - such was his confidence, Galaran thought; he wanted to end the duel in one swift blow to prove his might, his superiority, and win what little acclaim he thought a Featherling could provide.

She could only imagine his shock, then, when Zakiriel propelled himself backward with a single beat of his wings, maintaining the same distance between them as before.

His motion seemed effortless, as light as the air itself; in contrast, Avderren’s raised arm impacted the ground heavily, claws gouging the dirt where his opponent once stood.

Visibly frustrated, he adapted his momentum by skidding into a tight turn, then rushed forward once more.

Again Zakiriel retreated, manipulating the breeze to hasten his pace. He attempted no offensive action, nor had he even assumed a fighting stance - he simply observed his foe with a calculating, almost impassive eye.

Avderren paused this time, growling through clenched teeth. His pristine leather plating had accumulated a thin layer of dirt; his shoulders heaved with effort - only slight effort, but energy nonetheless expended on this creature whose status he considered so far beneath his own.

“Will you fight?” he demanded, exuding annoyance from every word.

Zakiriel, poised like a dancer in his arcane winds, replied calmly, “I am fighting.”

“You are running!” Avderren bellowed, digging his feet into the ground and launching himself across the ring.

They repeated their exchange for several breathless minutes - one pursuing, one dodging - before a rapt gathering of onlookers, Galaran foremost among them.

With each loop, her worry intensified. Zakiriel moved nimbly, but his endurance wasn’t endless - and Avderren’s maneuvers were only growing more precise.

His silver hunter’s eyes gleaned something of Zakiriel with every exchange; soon, she knew, his mind would amass those insights into a pattern, and then the chase would be over.

Use your poison, she mentally urged him, inhaling sharply when a wicked swipe slashed up his arm.

A panel of white fabric fluttered to the earth, dyed red at one end; whatever mysterious advantage he’d prepared, if he didn’t reveal it soon, he wouldn’t get the chance.

Already Avderren had begun to predict where his opponent would next land, forcing midair course corrections that were slowly eating into Zakiriel’s lead.

As it went toward the end of a chase, events accelerated; the hunter, armed with his prey’s tendencies, spent his reserved energy in a burst of speed.

Avderren caught Zakiriel by the ankle and yanked him from the skies - and then they slammed together into the ground, obscured by a thick cloud of dust.

Galaran, along with half of the audience, shouted first in alarm, then in fear.

When the air cleared, she saw that Avderren had pinned Zakiriel down with his knees; to her horror he’d also grasped one delicate white wing, bending it forward at an angle that made his opponent grunt in discomfort.

“Surrender and I’ll leave you with one,” Avderren promised.

Galaran shifted to a sprinter’s stance, ready to stop the duel, but her father caught her by the shoulder. When she turned to rebuke him, he pointed wordlessly back into the ring - and, following his eyes, she then understood.

Streaked with dirt and riddled with scrapes, apprehended, compromised as he was, Zakiriel laughed.

“Surrender and I’ll leave you breathing,” he countered.

In a maneuver similar to the one Galaran had suffered in the thorny grove, and using the very same implement, Zakiriel pressed the steel barrel of a black-powder handgun more firmly into Avderren’s ribcage.

The audience gasped as a single entity, and Galaran’s breath remained caught there. When had he…?

The storehouse, she realized with a jolt. That crafty little sneak - he’d smuggled it out right under her nose!

Avderren’s mouth split into a scowl. He loomed over Zakiriel, keeping one eye on him and one eye on the gun, and tugged on the wing in his hold.

“I could tear this off faster than you could fire your human toy,” he warned.

Zakiriel flinched, and Galaran worried he might drop his weapon, but he kept it tight to his enemy’s flesh.

“Maybe,” he said, voice strained but still positive. “But I could practice medicine with one wing. You couldn’t fight with one lung.”

Doubt pierced Avderren’s spiteful visage. His eyes flicked again to the gun, then down to his own chest, like he was trying to confirm the exact placements of his organs.

After a moment of this he blinked, shook his head, and refocused on his opponent. “A lie. Your people do not kill.” Zakiriel, despite the circumstances, smiled pleasantly. “I’m not aiming to kill you. The lungs have a redundancy that the heart lacks, you see, so you’ll only die if you move around too much and the bullet strays off-course.” Perhaps it was subconscious, but Galaran noted an immediate change in Avderren’s manner - he held himself more rigidly in his pose, took shallower breaths that didn’t expand his chest as widely.

He bored fire into Zakiriel’s face, likely searching for any sign of falsehood, but his foe’s self-assurance seemed to be getting under his skin.

Galaran could practically see the scales tipping in his head. Everyone, by now, knew of Zakiriel’s preeminent skill as a healer - he could cure with a touch; he had bottled the miracle! - so it stood to reason that he’d be familiar enough with internal anatomy to weaponize it.

Avderren growled in defiance of the claim, but his eyes were unsure.

“The heart is a complex organ,” Zakiriel offered unprompted. “Its structure is finely tuned; at some points, its walls are only the width of a fingernail. Easier to pierce than skin.”

Silver eyes glanced again to the hand holding the gun, to its delicate fingertips, and tightened. Even from this distance, Galaran saw when the fight left them; when he knew the chase had ended.

The ring thrummed in suspense as everyone waited for one of the two duelists’ concessions - and then, in a restrained, unwilling voice, Avderren finally gave it.

Varran instantly shouted confirmation; a breath later, the audience echoed it a thousandfold, rumbling the earth with their stomps and cheers.

Amid the swelling cacophony, Galaran pieced together Zakiriel’s plan in hindsight; he’d needed Avderren to believe that his victory was secured beyond any doubt - only then did he let down his guard enough to permit such an unsubtle feint. To that end, Zakiriel had led Avderren in circles, igniting his hunter’s spirit and enraging him past the point of careful thought.

Convincing him to yield afterward, though - that had been a gamble, no matter how she looked at it. Avderren could be reasoned with, but he was also oppositional. Impulsive when threatened. Zakiriel’s ultimatum could have cut either way.

A potent poison, indeed.

She welcomed her mate’s return with open arms and a fiercely proud grin, smoothing back his hair and showering his face in ecstatic kisses while he laughed uproariously around them.

Arms and faces emerged from the crowd to pat his shoulders, to hail his triumph, to vow stories and songs in his name. Questions flew in all directions about his magic, his weapon, his strategy. Where had he found a human’s firearm? Could he teach them how to control the wind?

The atmosphere had enlivened so abruptly, so completely, that Galaran winced when Avderren’s ragged, belligerent voice shattered it.

“Wait.”

The throng parted to reveal the man himself, still standing alone in the center of the ring. His imperious bearing was much diminished in the wake of his loss, but he still managed to hold himself like a clan leader.

“I will not accept this,” he said, lurching forward and pointing a finger at his former opponent. “This - this - you!”

With a start, Galaran realized he was pointing at her, not Zakiriel.

“When you retire, Elder, and your flame passes on,” Avderren continued, full of dark determination, “do you expect me to negotiate with a traitor?”

She scoffed across the gap between them; even after all this, he still wanted to see her punished so badly? He’d run out of traditions to exploit, so now he would resort to raw influence as a bludgeon?

Varran had gone quiet, and she could guess why; an unstable clan leader now inhabited his village, neither allied nor hostile, with a sizable group of warriors at his heel. The smart move would be to appease him in the short term.

Galaran, though, had long grown tired of appeasing this man’s arrogance.

She stomped one foot inside the ring, snapping back, “Are you eager to taste defeat again so soon?”

Her ferocity paused his advance, but didn’t stop it; after an initial shock he hunched his shoulders, bared his teeth, and opened his mouth to retort.

“What about me?” asked Jaerran, forestalling the attempt. He stepped into the ring from the opposite side, hands clasped behind his back.

When he received no reply from the question’s confused recipient, he clarified, “Would you negotiate with me? Have I done anything to earn your ire?”

Avderren gaped at him for several heartbeats, venting anger from his stance, then answered warily, “...No, I suppose you haven’t.”

Jae walked closer to him, flashing his sisters the briefest of glances - back me up, it would convey in a battle context, and they both caught on to his idea at once.

“Then I will ascend as clan leader instead,” he stated, to a smattering of baffled looks and whispers from the crowd.

With a convincingly distraught fervor, Sai pleaded from the sidelines, “No, brother! You can’t deprive our sister of her lifelong dream!” Zakiriel had to bury his head in his mate’s shoulder to hide a mad cackle; Galaran patted him on the back to make it look like he’d simply been overcome by emotion.

“It’s all I deserve,” she called out forlornly, hoping the uncontrollable shaking in his shoulders and wings looked like grief from far away. She fought to maintain a saddened expression, herself, when all her mouth wanted to do was smile.

Varran, after squinting at each of his children in turn, finally seemed to grasp their intent. He coughed into a fist and stepped into the ring, which had at some point become an unspoken stand-in for the meeting house.

“You are right! That is acceptable!” he projected, overly exaggerating both voice and gesture, and Galaran couldn’t believe her father’s only weakness was acting.

Its overt fraudulence even broke through Sai’s legendary exterior, tugging her mouth into an affronted grimace for a fraction of a second.

The three siblings shot subtle glares at Varran, who withered rather helplessly beneath them.

Avderren had also picked up on the farce, it seemed - not that it was difficult; Galaran couldn’t imagine that performance fooling anyone - and was now regarding her father suspiciously.

“Why are you -”

“It will be good for our two clans to forget these troubles,” Jaerran interrupted, commanding Avderren’s attention. “We can all begin again. Don’t you agree, Elder?”

The casual way her brother spoke - like everyone could just move past the broken alliance, and no one would have to think about who among them may have won or lost a duel over it - seemed to strike a bell within Avderren, overwriting his previous doubts.

He clapped Jae hard on the back and grinned over at Varran. “Your son is a wise one! I accept these terms as well.”

Her father confusedly returned the expression, still largely lost within the scene.

Though no one expressed it outwardly, Galaran could feel her family’s collective sigh of relief when it happened; they had done it. It was over.

She pressed in closer to Zakiriel, and he snaked his arms around her midsection in reply.

Epilogue: Zakiriel

The sun poured its light relentlessly onto his back, searing the nape of his neck where his skin lay uncovered by cloth or hair. It was surely burnt - he’d have a thick collar of red by moonrise - but he couldn’t stop now.

Just one brick remained of the stacked pile he’d started with that morning; the last brick of the last section of this new wall that he’d, for some reason, decided to build himself rather than call on a mason in town.

But it was almost over. Zakiriel bent to retrieve the brick, enjoyed a moment’s respite from the sun in the shadow of his workbench, then plunged back into the blazing gauntlet for just one more trial.

Scrape - mortar - set - mortar - scrape; the anthem of his past month. He repeated it for the last time, scraping off the last of the mortar with a vengeance.

Zakiriel stepped back from the wall to check his work, pleased to find it uniform and well-matched within the whole, and wiped the sweat from his forehead.

Now Galaran would have a space within his house - their house; the thought still brought a smile to his lips - that she could truly make her own. They already had a home in the Ran village, and it was high time she had one here on the Isle.

He pushed his hands into his lower back, working out some of the soreness in his spine - if only a team of stout clansmen could have helped build this one, too.

“Zaki!” came Galaran’s distant voice; he looked up to see her jogging toward the cottage, baskets hanging from both arms. She paid no mind to them, nor to his profusely sweating body, as she caught him up in a tight embrace.

“Welcome home - ah, dear, I’m soaked,” he wheezed, trying not to leak onto her ivory robes. She’d taken up dressing in Haven’s style sometimes, but she still hadn’t quite internalized the difference in care required between leather and cloth.

Galaran laughed brightly. “It is a mark of good labor! I don’t mind. Look.”

She opened the baskets, revealing bushels of apples, tied bunches of carrots, and all manner of other fruits and vegetables stuffed to their brims.

“Again,” Zakiriel said. Every so often she returned with things like these - gifts from various families for the famous doctor and his wife with the miraculous blood. No matter how many times he tried to kindly put them off the habit, they persisted.

Not that he didn’t appreciate his neighbors’ well-wishes - but it was getting harder each week to fit jars of preserves into his root cellar, and there were only so many times he could ‘accidentally’ leave them in his patients’ homes before they caught on.

“They’re thanking you,” Galaran laughed, as she always did when he acted put-upon by things like this. “Someday you will learn how to accept thanks.”

Zakiriel hummed, and peered into one of the baskets. “I’ll have to pick up more jars.”

At this, his wife cut her golden eyes to his and smiled coyly.

“What?” he asked, knocking their shoulders together, eager to share in whatever had brought her such joy.

Her mouth split in to an irrepressible grin; she took one of his hands and pressed it flat to her stomach, then nodded to his workbench.

“You’ll need more bricks, as well.”

#here it is! the last part!#i can't describe how great it felt to do this project #from start to finish - collaborating - helping bring someone's OCs to life #jeez man i'd do this all the time if i could #THANK YOU AGAIN GOOFY <3 #mega writes #image free to use from pexels

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mechawaka · 9 months ago

Text

To Reach for the Sun, Part 3

A commission for @golden-feline. This is an original series set in their world and depicting their characters, and all names have been changed per request for public posting.

Genre: High Fantasy / Romance

Rating: T

Words: 13.8k

[ Part 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 ]

Part 1: Galaran

She watched Zakiriel and Kazach fly into the pale blue morning until they were gray specks against the fading mosaic of stars. The rising sun, warm at her back, stretched her shadow over Grandfather’s swaying canopy; that elongated silhouette of her body - breaking, reforming, and distorting with the wind - reflected well her inner landscape as she struggled for composure.

Galaran had little experience with helplessness. Mother Gaia had graced her with the skills of a hunter, the ability to protect those she loved, yet no gift of the forest could lift her from its bounds; no amount of physical prowess could, alone, traverse the open sky.

Zakiriel went now to a battlefield, possessing none but the most basic techniques to defend himself, and she, for all her strength - for all the promises she’d made to keep him safe - could only watch. There existed no word for the mix of rage, impotence, and anxiety that roiled beneath her skin, prickling like thorny vines.

It was a while before she moved from that spot; but when the sun had fully emerged, banishing the fog and stars both, she was forced to admit that the Featherlings had passed beyond perception - and thus definitively beyond her reach.

Grandfather’s trunk yielded to the tiger’s claws, bearing a new line of gouges to mark her long and laborious descent. At its end, when she’d sweated out the raw sting of separation, she took her two-legged form and placed a hand over one of the splintered notches she’d created.

Her people didn’t pray like the humans did - but in that quiet moment, Galaran hoped fervently that when she visited these markings in the future, it would be out of fond, and not sorrowful, remembrance.

She chose to walk home in this body, the one that matched Zakiriel’s, even though it would lengthen the journey. The village had undoubtedly marked her absence by now; what was another hour’s delay? Varran would give her the same scolding, regardless. At least, this way, she could be alone with her precious memories that much longer, set to the pleasant medley of Gaia’s early-day activity.

But the forest did not sing this morning.

Galaran noticed almost as soon as she’d set out; no leaves rustled save for those taken by the wind, no small things chirped in the brush, no hidden bodies slunk between the trees. Prey often quieted at her passing, but this was different - she would have at least heard them calling danger to one another in retreat.

Only one thing, in her experience, could halt the forest in its complex entirety: an unfamiliar, sudden, overwhelming threat.

They’ve been crawling all over your precious forest, too, Kazach had said.

Four paws hit the ground before she’d even finished the thought, propelling her toward Ran heartland, all exhaustion forgotten in a burst of urgency.

---

She smelled them before she saw them. The charred musk of black powder; the acrid bite of that material they called rubber, so potent that it burned in her nose.

Humans. Many of them. Close.

As she neared home, sound-signals from her kin cut through the silence. Guttural calls from four-legged outrunners told her that the humans had massed to the north and west - their only possible angles of approach, thanks to the river - and had arranged themselves into the half-moon formation.

Imitation birdsong from hidden two-legged scouts counted a force of around five hundred, split into at least six groups. Their curved line advanced slowly, burdened by dense undergrowth, but its every gain brought it closer to the village.

That was…odd. All of it went against the humans’ normal behavior; usually, they raided the forest in single groups of five to ten, aiming more to map the forest or steal resources than to fight. She’d only ever heard of a human army entering Gaia’s outermost reaches - never this deep.

But there was no time to dwell on it. A mighty roar thundered above all else - the clan leader’s command, rallying warriors to his side. Galaran promptly veered toward its origin.

Varran stood at the village’s northern entrance, tall and proud in his boiled leather armor, ringed by his Ran fighters; beside him, Jaerran directed any passing non-combatants toward the meeting house with a calmness that seemed to soothe the more anxious among them.

All stood upright in order to effectively strategize, so Galaran approached her father on two legs, inclining her head in greeting so as not to interrupt him.

“- must keep them from backing us against the river. They cannot get this far,” Varran was saying; he acknowledged her with a nod. “We elders will break their line in half. Bloodless warriors will guard the meeting house. All others will defend the village border.”

Jaerran, without pausing in his task, dutifully stepped to the side, allowing her to fill her rightful place next to their father. She clapped him on the shoulder in silent camaraderie.

“Yours is a vital role,” Varran asserted, speaking over the disappointed murmurings of the more inexperienced fighters - the bloodless, those who had not yet slain another in combat.

“Should we fall, you will be the clan’s only chance to survive.”

This quieted them, turning frustrated faces to stone and dissatisfaction to solemn acceptance. For all of Galaran’s complaints regarding her father’s conduct as clan leader, his uncanny ability to inspire confidence was not among them.

At the end of their family’s assembled line - for she could always, and only, be counted on in a fight - Sai leaned around their brother to tactlessly inquire, “Where is your little bird, Sister?”

Varran’s demeanor soured; he drew a deep breath, probably to rebuke the interruption, but then seemed to register what she’d asked and let it out again. After scanning the area and finding no Featherlings, he also looked to Galaran in mild confusion.

Rightly so; were Zakiriel still present, she would be duty-bound to protect him personally in conflict. Little did they know she’d already failed in that duty.

“The humans launched an attack on the Floating Isle as well,” she replied, masking sorrow with gravity. “They have created their own wings - a ship that sails the sky.”

This understandably sparked disbelief and outrage from the gathered warriors, but Galaran wasn’t done. She silenced them with an authoritative gesture and addressed her father directly, “The Withering has spread to the human lands; they seek its cure here.”

Another wave of shock passed over the group, though none dared anything louder than a whisper.

“Liquid Gold,” Varran murmured, tapping his chin with a thoughtful claw. “So that is why they have grown so aggressive…”

His eyes suddenly snapped to his daughter’s. “Did they learn of Zakiriel’s efforts here?”

“No,” Galaran asserted too quickly, and only afterward realized she had little evidence to back it; listing all the time they’d spent together as proof of non-interference would only draw attention to her bias. Even now, some regarded her with the barest shade of doubt, as if reevaluating all of the uncommon freedoms she had allowed to her charge during his stay.

Luckily, Sai’s quick wit outpaced the group’s suspicion.

“How could a stone-footed human have outsmarted our watchful scouts?” she inquired, appealing to the warriors with a wave of her arm, then passing it over her sister. “How could one untrained Featherling escape the reach of his esteemed speaker?”

Though she’d spoken boldly, unassailable in her praise, the implications were clear: if one believed a human stole knowledge from the village, one admitted the weakness of the Ran clan’s scouts; if one accused Zakiriel of handing over the knowledge willingly, one accused Galaran - their future clan head - of incompetence.

None ventured such claims.

“Well said!” Varran boomed, his favorable reactions being so rare as to elicit vague concern from his eldest daughter. “The humans took nothing from the Ran.”

He stomped on the ground - on the main path of the village, which tapered quickly to untamed growth past their gathering - to emphasize his next resounding cry:

“And they’ll take nothing from us today!”

The fighters shouted their support, unified in pride and purpose, so spirited that none caught the secret, grateful look shared between sisters.

From deep in the forest, shrill enough to cut through the din, came a strident whistle. It sustained a single note for four breaths and held the thin, hollow quality of a bone pipe; it was, without question, the call of the Av clan.

Varran sharpened at once.

“We will not fight alone for long,” he declared with a grin. “Go, now, and be brave!”

He clasped each warrior briefly by the forearm as they departed for their posts, addressing them by name, proclaiming their unending valor whether or not they survived the battle.

When only his children remained, he brought them in for one-armed embraces instead - even Sairan, who haltingly accepted hers.

“Watch for weaknesses in our defense and go where you are needed,” he told them. “If we are overrun, retreat to the meeting house and lead the clan to safety.”

To halt their burgeoning objections, he sternly clarified, “The humans are making prisoners of every clan they defeat. If they take the village, you must flee, or the Ran blood ends here.”

All three siblings had visibly balked at the idea; though his reasoning was sound, Galaran couldn’t imagine abandoning her kin in their most dire hour.

But abandoning a lost fight in order to preserve what life she could…

From that perspective she could stomach it, if only by a thin margin.

“Understood,” she said, echoed shortly after by Jaerran.

Their father gave a firm, curt nod, full of a bravado he may or may not have actually felt, and followed the path that the other elders had taken - the path that led directly to the bulk of the humans’ forces.

In his wake, the siblings looked to each other somewhat uncertainly. It was customary for the eldest child in a family to adorn the younger ones for battle; Galaran was preparing to take up that mantle herself when, surprisingly, Sai pulled several strips of white-dyed leather from her hip satchel.

“I, well - I wanted us to wear the same color,” she said, approaching the others and offering the adornments almost shyly. “Mother’s color.”

She held herself with uncharacteristic insecurity, like she didn’t think herself worthy of the role - and so Galaran was quick to lean in.

“We’ll carry her into battle,” she agreed, unwrapping her tightly bound queues and turning to allow her sister easier access.

Sai inhaled shakily, smiled, and braided some of the strips into Galaran’s hair. It hung heavy at her back, its weight an intentional reminder of familial bonds; Sai made sure to secure it tightly enough to survive the tumult of combat.

Jaerran offered his head as well, shaggy light green hair falling to obscure half of his face. “Thank you,” he said solemnly, touching the braid when it was done. “You honor her memory.”

This seemed to be her emotional breaking point; Sai quickly shook her head - not to refute his words, both her siblings knew, but to banish sentimentality.

“I will watch the western flank,” she said, solemnity belied by her reddened cheeks. Avoiding all eye contact, she grasped them both by the forearms as quickly as possible.

Jae covered for her discomfort with a simple, “Then I will take the eastern.”

“And I, the center. Make the carrier hawk’s call for aid,” Galaran instructed them.

Thus in agreement, the three shifted to their hunting bodies and scattered in their chosen directions, merging like shadows with the thick underbrush.

The mixed scents of black powder and blood saturated the air long before she came across any signs of struggle, growing stronger with every careful stride. Human soldiers’ corpses - and a few of her own clan’s - littered along her path recounted the tale, in their frequency and state of dismemberment, of Varran’s successful first push.

She stopped short of the fighting itself, climbing to an elevated vantage point in the snarled divergence of an old tree’s trunk. It disquieted her to merely observe the area beyond the battlefield, but she respected the role her father had assigned to his children; it was vital, when protecting territory, to catch those who made it past the front lines.

The second sieve, her elders would say. Warriors in this role must be swift and lethal ambushers, able to conceal themselves from even the most cunning enemies; in truth, Varran honored her with his trust.

So, even though inaction didn’t feel honorable just then - not with the cries of her kinsmen ringing, both in triumph and despair, just outside her sight - years of combat experience kept her still, hidden, and watchful.

It didn’t take long for the first handful of soldiers to arrive. She had to admit that the humans were getting better at this - at evading scent and sound-based detection - but their eyes remained woefully inadequate; the small group of three passed almost directly underneath her post.

One forceful, well-timed drop was all it took to silence them. Galaran dragged the bodies by their necks into the underbrush so as not to alert the next ones, kicking leaves and dirt onto the leftover blood trails.

So it went for three more groups of would-be infiltrators - yet, despite the efficiency of her ambushes, she had to fall back all three times. What the humans’ army lacked in quality, they made up for in quantity; and though her father and the other elders were deadly combatants, their small number was in constant danger of being surrounded. Whatever ground they were forced to concede, so too must she.

The enemy also had another, more dire advantage: stamina. Sheer numbers could be overcome, and often were, through the clan’s terrain mastery - but humans as a species were persistent. They hadn’t the specialized talents of those they sought to conquer, but they possessed an almost supernatural endurance. While Gaian hunters could fight fiercely in bursts and ambushes, they were much less effective in open, sustained battles.

As the sun climbed to its zenith, almost invisible behind the thickest part of the canopy, the human army gradually pushed the Ran ever and inexorably closer to the village; when Galaran’s paws landed again on earthen path instead of spongy forest floor, she knew they were in trouble.

The army’s style of engagement would only benefit from the village’s comparative openness, their movements less hindered by undergrowth. The clan’s tactics would need to change.

Galaran hastened to a nearby stilt house, took her two-legged body, and shaped her hands to make the carrier hawk’s call - but before she could, its shrill tone sounded from Jae’s position to her right, followed shortly by another from her left. She added her own call, just so that all three siblings would possess the same knowledge: there could be no mutual aid. They would each need to fight more aggressively on their own, and hope that the Av arrived before any soldiers reached the meeting house.

It was a precarious situation, yes, and dangerous for them individually - but a well-matched fight was a thrilling one, and Galaran had always excelled in direct combat, where her keen instincts could dictate reactions unachievable through careful planning.

She folded back into her sharper form and leapt nimbly to the roof, coiling to pounce upon the line of soldiers advancing up the main path.

Human after uniformed human fell before her, some well-trained and some unprepared, some calm in the shadow of death, some wailing. There was a sort of rhythm in culling a herd of prey; the hunter learned to recognize patterns in group movement and reasoning, in the limited decision making of a mind reduced to self-preservation.

In the midst of her rampage, she wondered how these humans - who held themselves so high above the baser beasts of the forest - would react if they knew that their present behavior was little different than an elk’s.

Galaran heard it when the elders’ line reached the village outskirts; unmuted by trees, the sounds of combat - cracking gunshots, tearing cloth, rending flesh - echoed between stilt houses, made all the more eerie by the intermittent whistle of a bone-pipe.

The humans, as the whistles drew nearer, came to realize that the call signaled reinforcement; she noticed the moment it dawned on their faces - that there was an imminent threat to their flank. Curtly barked orders issued from various points in their main host, after which the soldiers she encountered fought more desperately.

As her father’s elders, the other warriors, and the human army converged on the village, Galaran changed up her strategy again. The soldiers were increasingly choosing to hole up inside stilt houses, perhaps hoping to entrench themselves for an even longer battle; it seemed only natural to follow and deny it to them.

Engaging multiple enemies in a tight space was admittedly reckless, but she judged the risks worth the effort. Anything, she thought, to keep their attention off of the meeting house - even if her body paid the toll.

She managed to clear three houses before it came due. In the fourth, she observed the unit inside before dropping in through the roof’s cookfire vent; as with the others, she identified the most threatening target - in this case, the unit’s leader - and took him down first.

The searing pain in her side revealed her error.

One member of this unit was a mage; her uniform bore only a small patch to distinguish it from its fellows, but such details did not usually escape Galaran. A single lapse in judgment, borne of grueling repetition, had doomed her right side to vulnerability for the rest of the battle.

After eliminating the rest of the soldiers, she ducked into a side room to evaluate the damage - a task made universally easier with the use of dexterous fingers rather than clumsy paws.

The burned patch of skin definitely stood out, angry and red, but wasn’t as big as she’d feared; even more fortunately, a careful touch confirmed that the area hadn’t lost sensation, which meant that the wound wasn’t severe enough to impact her fighting.

In the dim interior light, though, the blood that ringed her singed flesh didn’t look quite right to her; wary of novel human magicks, she swiped some and brought it to her nose.

Iron, salt, and a vague sweetness; blood, indeed. But its appearance was too strange to be unmodified - it was lighter than it should be, and glittered like cliff granite, almost like…

Galaran recoiled from the thought, flinging the liquid away. A breathless moment later, she twisted to inspect the injury site again - but only normal red blood oozed now from the burn site.

Perhaps she’d erred again? Perhaps, in haste, she’d mistaken sweat or gunpowder residue for blood; perhaps her nose, overstimulated as it was, could no longer distinguish finer scents from the pervasive musk of death in the air.

Yes, Galaran mentally asserted. Yes, that must have been it.

A bone-pipe trilled at the treeline, clear and close; like the clash before, it traveled unimpeded to the stilt houses and reverberated in weakening waves throughout the village, seeming to immobilize all who heard it.

The humans, in trepidation - and the hunters, in glee - turned to witness the outcome of the frontline battle. Galaran only caught glimpses of combat between the buildings, and much of it was still obscured by foliage, but the Av clan’s reddish coats now streaked alongside her own clan’s lighter ones - and fewer and fewer brown-and-green military uniforms mixed among them.

It didn’t take long for the army’s formation to fall apart. Sharp orders turned to shouts of retreat, then to distant screams, and then to silence; the soldiers inside the village fled by any means they could, but most only met with either Galaran’s or her siblings’ claws.

No other humans emerged from the forest - only Varran and the other elders in two-legged form, battered, weary, but shining with the elation of victory.

Beside her father strode the man whose - regrettably necessary and, for once, helpful - presence she’d been dreading: Avderren, head of the Av clan, her promised mate.

In contrast with the Ran warriors, Avderren looked barely winded; since he’d fought for only a fraction of the time, the leather plates that covered his broad torso still shone with polish, and the beaded pelt on his back bore not a scuff. She’d always found that particular tradition tasteless; the Av carried trophies of past victories, rather than tokens of remembrance or affection, into their battles.

Galaran’s initial estimation of him, many seasons past, was that he possessed a brash might on par with her father, but lacked even a shadow of his cunning. That assessment, after absorbing Avderren’s clumsy attempt at a greeting, did not change.

“Your clan fought well,” he told her, scraping his dark eyes over her body and clicking his tongue at every wound.

To an observer - and certainly to her father, who smiled broadly - the action might have seemed born of concern, even care; Galaran saw only a trader inspecting his merchandise for flaws.

Varran had called together all Ran warriors who could still fight, along with the Av reinforcements, at the mouth of the village. Galaran answered with a diplomatic hum and took the opportunity to stand at her father’s other side, two grateful paces away from Avderren, where the hierarchy would shield her from any further fumblings.

Sai and Jae joined her, the former flashing her an incredulous grimace; at least she understood.

“They gather to retreat,” Varran projected, every inch the dignified leader even though he must have been close to exhaustion. “Who will end the hunt?”

This part she knew well; this was how most human raids ended - with warrior volunteers, herself among them, corralling packs of survivors to a swift end. None who forged a path to their territory, especially the ones who had laid eyes on the village, could be permitted to leave the forest.

These soldiers would rot like fallen trees and nourish Gaia, as had all the ones who’d come to conquer before.

“I will go,” Galaran offered. She could see the disapproval fomenting on Avderren’s brow already, so she took a cue from Sai and quickly added, “I followed your order to defend, Elder, and now I desire the thrill of the chase.”

Varran practically glowed at his daughter’s obedience and initiative - perhaps bending words had a little merit, after all - and granted her request with an indulgent sweep of his arm.

She shifted her form immediately and dove into the underbrush, unwilling to entertain any further comment or objection.

When the winds had turned against the humans, a unit of a dozen gunmen had defected quietly into the trees - it was these she pursued now, locating them easily as they stumbled over roots and scattered leaves in their mad dash to retrace the army’s route of ingress.

Galaran diverted them - through feinting charges and snapping at heels - onto the well-loved route she often utilized for this purpose: a winding path, fraught with hazards, that ended in sloping cliffs. What humans survived the gauntlet would find themselves trapped at the cliffside with two choices - the tiger’s jaws or the thick sea of twisted brambles below.

She always tried to guess, as they fled, which option each individual might choose; and these ones would jump, she reasoned. Rather than facing their deaths with dignity, they’d tread the same path of cowardice that had seen them quit the battlefield.

In the end, she was right. Though only one of their number survived to make the choice, he - having already lost his firearms and his comrades, staring down a tigress as she stalked toward him - took his chances with the fall.

He approached it wisely, doing his best to slide down the angled cliffside instead of leaping, as she’d seen some others do, directly into the thorns; but the thorns were inevitable, and soon he disappeared into them.

Galaran afforded him, and his comrades, a moment of silence.

Regardless of their intentions, they were simply obeying their commanders, who obeyed their commanders, who in turn served some inscrutable interest in the humans’ homeland that craved domination above all else - above even the multitudes of lives they’d consigned to drown in Mother Gaia, always aware that the next ones, like the last, would not return.

She shook her head. It was pointless to lament the cruelty of a land she’d never see - and, more importantly, there were more soldiers left to chase from her own.

As she turned to leave, though, a low moan drifted up from the brambles.

Human endurance, she thought with an aggravated swish of her tail. Far be it from her to denounce the urge to survive, but a quick snap of the neck would’ve been much preferable to the torturous death that awaited him now, consumed over hours or days by thirst and exposure.

Galaran could have just left him to his chosen fate, and almost did; but she wouldn’t leave wounded prey, or even a wounded rival, to spend its last moments in agony - and so, reluctantly, she slid down the cliffside.

The tiger’s traction and balance saw her easily to the ground, but instead of the treacherous maze of brambles she’d expected, she emerged into a small, almost perfectly circular clearing within the patch.

It was rather shocking; how had she never noticed this? The ground inside was completely clear - even the space above provided a wide, unobstructed view of the cliff’s edge; yet from the cliff itself, this area was entirely hidden.

The human had dragged himself to the center of the clearing, leaving a smeared trail of blood in his wake. He’d stopped, it seemed, when he’d realized there was no visible exit to this space - and now he laid in a broken pile, watching his end approach at a silent, measured pace.

Galaran had intended to end the man’s suffering in one swift bite, but seeing him up close made her pause. He was so young; beneath the blood and grime, he stared at her with the terrified eyes of a greenhorn, glazed with unprepared panic. His fair hair, blood-matted to his head, fell stringy and loose in his face.

This was his first battle, she realized; he hadn’t the experienced wisdom to react well in a crisis, or even to bind up his hair for efficiency. How unfortunate that his short life was to end here in Gaia’s uncaring wilds, so far from his home - but such was the way these humans chose to spend their fighters.

“P-Please,” the young man rasped, holding out one trembling hand as if it might stop her. “I’ll leave, I - I’ll never return!”

Galaran, having no power of speech in this body, merely swung her great head from one side of the enclosed grove to the other. Where would you go?

The man followed her gesture, deflating further at the obvious futility of his statement. But even beyond that, she thought, he’d lost far too much blood; he must feel it by now - the fatigue, the dizzy nausea, the knowledge that his life could be counted in minutes, in breaths, in weakening heartbeats.

And still he struggled, scrabbling in the dirt for some miracle. Humans always fought so hard against this knowledge. And why? It only made their deaths more painful than necessary.

She stood over him, pinning one of his shoulders to the ground for a clean kill, and opened wide her jaws -

But as the rich scent of blood filled her nose, the man’s brown eyes and flaxen hair both became a striking azure blue; his terror morphed to acceptance; the scattered straps and buckles of his uniform sprouted into brilliant white wings.

Galaran jerked back, frozen above her prey. Why did this scene remind her so strongly of Zakiriel? There had been no blood at their first meeting.

Or…had there?

Fragments of memory flashed across her mind’s eye: a child’s wailing; a white wing, broken; red blood dripping from giant, wicked thorns.

No - it was not the thorns which were giant, but her own diminutive view of them as a cub, as she’d crawled beneath the treacherous brambles to reach -

To reach a white-winged, azure-haired Featherling child.

Yes, that was it! She’d heard his cries while play-hunting at her favorite cliffside and, catching his unfamiliar, intriguing scent, had descended to investigate.

Zakiriel, he’d said. His name was Zakiriel.

Galaran snapped her head upward, urgently chasing the path of her memories, the dying human beneath her all but forgotten.

---

A thorn had snagged his wing as he fell from above, and now it hung injured and useless by his side, leaking blood into the dirt. Galaran wrinkled her nose as bitter iron tainted the novel scent she’d followed.

“How’d you get all the way down here?” she wondered aloud, helping the boy to sit up. As yet unfamiliar with Featherlings, or the oddity of their presence in the forest, she theorized that he was like her: possessed of two bodies, the other perhaps being one of those brightly colored songbirds her mother loved to watch.

The boy, Zakiriel, sniffed and wiped at his eyes. “I don’t know!”

He looked up at the canopy far, far above them. “Where is this? I was practicing gliding at the lake, and - and then I just…fell.”

“The lake?” Galaran tilted her head. “There’s no lake around here. You’re in the Ran territory; don’t you know that?”

Zakiriel frowned in helpless frustration. “What? Of course there’s a lake! I practice here every day - and what is a ‘Ran,’ anyway?”

He paused, mouth hanging open; his eyes went from Galaran, to the canopy, then back again, while his hands fiddled with the hem of his long, strange garment.

“Is - is this the great forest?”

“This is the Gaia Forest,” Galaran answered slowly, drawing close to inspect him. “Did you hit your head? You live here.”

Zakiriel drew back defensively. “I certainly do not! The great forest…then that would mean…”

He trailed off to indistinct muttering, studying the brambles around the clearing, occasionally humming to himself like he’d come upon some new bit of information.

“You hit your head,” Galaran decided. “You should rest. I’ll bring some food. Don’t change your body with an injury like that, okay?”

Zakiriel’s blue eyes slid to her in utter bewilderment.

---

From there, the memory became blurry again, fading at the edges like a dream. Galaran grasped wildly at its frayed ends, desperate not to lose it this time.

---

A woman descending, light as the feathers she bore on wings of snowy white, hair falling around her in waves of moon-silver; her kind face, downturned in sorrow; her cold fingers pressed gently to both children’s foreheads.

“I am so sorry, little one,” she whispered to Galaran in a voice as thin as wind. “This will protect you. Both of you.”

A flash of obliterating blue-white light; the witless drift of oblivion. And then -

Galaran sat alone at her favorite cliffside, clutching a satchel of roasted seeds.

---

She remembered that day. It had mostly blended with her other childhood memories over time, but she distinctly recalled being confused that she’d brought food with her, rather than hunting it fresh during her day’s adventure.

To think that she and Zakiriel had actually met that very morning! But why would she forget such a significant event?

The woman in white; Galaran couldn’t be sure, but she matched the description Zakiriel had given of his mother, Selhene. She’d performed magic on them.

He had treated that night at the cave as their first meeting, which meant both he and Galaran had forgotten their childhood encounter. Could his mother have been the cause? Could magic even do that?

More importantly, how had Zakiriel reached the forest? He himself hadn’t known, but the way he recounted being in one place, then suddenly another…

It sounded suspiciously like the legends her own people told - legends of a place deep within Gaia where one could, with a single step, travel to the Floating Isle. The portal; the mythical spot that no Gaian youth had ever found.

Galaran’s eyes, still turned upward, focused on the sight before her. The canopy was so thick here that it would’ve been nearly impossible for Zakiriel to penetrate it, let alone with only one serious injury. But he had fallen straight down - or else the brambles would have claimed him.

That meant he must have entered Gaia somewhere below the canopy but directly above this clearing; and now that Galaran really concentrated, the space overhead did look a bit odd from a certain angle - wavy, snaking, as if distorted by heat -

Cold metal pressed into the meat of her right foreleg.

Galaran looked down in time to see the dying human’s crazed, desperate expression, the glint of a handgun’s barrel against the foreleg which pinned him, and his finger squeezing the trigger.

A deafening bang rang out, scattering a cloud of birds from elsewhere in the bramble patch; searing white lightning cut across her vision; the sizzling stench of burning fur overwrote that of blood.

The human pulled his previously concealed firearm back, scrambling to reload it, but then his eyes landed on her wound.

Galaran saw it too, still partially dazed from the overwhelming volume of the gunshot; the iron ball had punched straight through, just above the joint, and the blood that welled from the singed entry hole was not the expected bright red, but a deep and glittering gold.

There was no denying it now, especially when, after a single breath, the fresh blood flow turned red once more.

“Liquid Gold,” the human whispered through cracked lips, earnest as a prayer, and instantly released his handgun to gather a drop of the substance on his finger.

It was his final act; Galaran closed her fangs on his neck and severed it.

She watched the body to ensure its demise; only when its spasms ceased completely did she turn her attention to her own wound. The pain had set in, lancing up her leg with each pulse of her heart - but, like the burn, the damage seemed minor enough that she could safely shift bodies.

In her two-legged form the bullet hole punctured her upper right arm, halfway between elbow and shoulder. The bleeding had slowed to a manageable trickle, the entry hole was mostly sealed by heat and, crucially, her arm remained operable.

Climbing out of the brambles would’ve been exceedingly difficult otherwise; the crawling path she’d taken as a cub was accessible only to the small.

She tore a strip of woven hemp from her chest under-bindings and wrapped the wound tightly - and then, with the most immediate crisis averted, her eyes fell again to the dead human; to the smear of gold across his hand.

‘Liquid Gold,’ it seemed, had been right in front of her the whole time - or right within her, as it were. Zakiriel would be thrilled to know that one of his many ideas had come quite close to the truth; there was ‘something’ about the Ran clan’s golden coloration that linked to the mythical cure - but, in the end, it had nothing to do with their diet or water composition, as he’d briefly theorized.

No, it was simply in their blood. And not all blood, Galaran wagered; both times she’d noticed it, the change in hue had immediately followed an extreme heat - once from flame, and once from a gun’s barrel. But she’d seen similar singed wounds on her fellow warriors all day, including her family, and all of them had bled uniformly red.

What was special about hers, then? Was this a hidden trait of the white tiger?

That might explain why a trait so detrimental to stealth, that required its bearers to become so much more skilled than their peers to compensate, would have been so prized in the clan’s history.

Did that mean her father had known all along? If he had, why had he refused to share it even as his people suffered?

No; no, he would never. Galaran had personally witnessed his guilt, his anger, his helplessness, whenever one of their kin fell to the Withering. The knowledge, then, must have been lost to the clan sometime before the elders’ generation - and what a tragic loss it became.

A carrier hawk’s piercing cry sounded from above, repeated twice more in quick succession. Galaran recognized her family’s unique identifier; three short calls, one of a different tone. Her siblings were searching for her.

Jae and Sai stood at the edge of the cliff, surveying the bramble patch. They couldn’t see her from there, Galaran realized; she hadn’t been able to see this clearing from there, either.

She returned the call, pitching it up at the end to indicate a need for aid.

Without blinking, Jae took his tiger’s body and slid down the cliffside, his ears twitching rapidly to pinpoint her location. Galaran made several more imitation chirps to guide him, and soon his fluffy coat of green and gold slid into view.

Out of the three siblings, Jae had always been the quietest, embodying the stoicism their father so championed. As he padded silently across the clearing, his Ran-gold eyes flicked from the dead human, to the discarded handgun, and finally to his sister’s bandaged arm in analytical succession.

Varran would have expressed his displeasure at once, Galaran thought; Sai might have even mauled the corpse a bit more. But Jae simply nuzzled his head against her uninjured side and crouched so that she could climb upon his back.

Before heeding his request, though, Galaran retrieved the human’s firearm. The clan normally destroyed them whenever possible, fearing their combustible threat to the forest - but without understanding, there could be no true measure of danger.

She’d believed that before Zakiriel’s stay in the village, but his conviction gave her the confidence to finally act on it.

Jae, in his way, took in her deeds but passed no outward judgment - and likely wouldn’t unless she sought it. He waited until she had a firm grip on his neck before scaling the cliffside.

Galaran strained to inspect that spot of strange air on their way up. It was almost invisible against the twined brambles that surrounded it, but the blurred, rippling oval remained in constant place as they ascended.

It had width; it had borders; it was real.

At the top of the cliff, Sai instantly began questioning her on the gunshot they’d heard, joined by Jae as soon as he’d resumed his speaking body. But Galaran gave only the most basic of answers, preoccupied as she was with her discovery.

“Look,” she said, interrupting Jae’s lecture on protocol.

She led her siblings up and down the cliff’s edge, demonstrating the constancy of that anomalous space in the air.

“What is it?” Sai wondered, bending her neck to view it at various angles. Galaran had counted on this; her sister’s intrigue had been a deciding factor in many a past adventure, able to sway any dissenters.

She picked up a rock with her good arm and tossed it in a high arc toward the unstable air; it sailed upward, slowed to its peak, then fell, tracked intently by three pairs of golden eyes. Had it completed its intended trajectory, the jagged stone would’ve clacked away into the bramble patch - but it didn’t.

As soon as it met the first curling twist in space, it vanished.

“The portal,” Galaran breathed, just as awestruck as the others.

Jae stepped as close as he dared to the edge of the cliff and squinted at the area; Sai ran to gather several more rocks, tossing them one after another, gasping each time they met the same fate as the first.

“Mother Gaia,” Jae murmured, barely managing to peel his eyes away. “You truly found it.”

“You found it!” Sai exclaimed, popping up behind Galaran and slapping her hard on both shoulders - a congratulatory gesture that would have been better appreciated by an uninjured recipient.

Galaran grunted through a spasm of pain in her right arm, warning her sister away with a flat-eared glare.

“We should report back to Father,” Jae said. “He’ll want to know about this, and there are more humans to hunt.”

He was right; of course he was right. Proper procedure always led first to the clan head. Whatever was to be said or done about the portal, Varran would be the one to decide.

But…

Galaran’s gaze strayed back to that curling, rippling air.

In his youth, Zakiriel had traversed it. She could traverse it now; only this tiny barrier, thin as a dragonfly’s wing, a mere stone’s throw away, separated her from the Floating Isle.

“You’re right,” she said quietly. “There are more humans to hunt.”

Sairan, sensing her sister’s intentions, blocked her view of the portal with outstretched arms. “Gala, no. You’re hurt!”

“You don’t know where it leads,” Jae added.

He, at least, knew better than to make an argument based on capability, but it was nonetheless incorrect; she did know where it led. The lake - the place where a young Zakiriel had honed his flying.

Galaran staunchly crossed her arms.

“The Floating Isle is under attack and I can provide aid,” she said with simple finality. “We have warriors, we have allies; they do not. I am going.”

Her siblings looked to one another, Sai anxiously and Jae blank-faced.

“Your injuries -” he began.

“I’ve fought with worse,” Galaran countered. “It won’t slow me down.”

They stared one another down, two stone pillars unwilling to budge.

In the midst of the standoff, Sai heaved a resigned sigh - though her manner remained suspiciously eager - and locked arms with her brother.

“Very well, then, I suppose we must go with you,” she said, convincingly put-upon. “It is our duty, after all, to protect the future clan leader.”

Jae’s jaw, which had been open and ready to protest, clicked shut at the invoked term.

He frowned down at the ground, visibly struggling to reconcile their circumstances with his rigid code of conduct. Sai had always been able to get him this way; unlike Galaran and their father, Jae possessed absolutely no defenses against her tactics.

While he deliberated, Galaran shot her sister a tilted, knowing smile. Sai could utilize her talents in helpful ways - when she wanted to, at least.

After only a few quiet moments, Jae lifted his head.

“If the situation on the Floating Isle is indeed so dire,” he reasoned, “then we are duty-bound to follow and protect you. It would take too long to retrieve other warriors from the village.”

Galaran grinned and squeezed her siblings in a tight embrace, one arm around each of their necks. In the next breath she was four-legged again, backing up from the cliffside, then taking a running jump at the portal.

Her wounded foreleg ached with exertion, but the thrill of leaping through open air, of hanging for a weightless moment over a sea of deadly brambles, easily drowned out the pain.

Hold on, Zakiriel, she thought, careening headlong toward the portal; its churning center smoothed into a perfect oval as she neared, faintly reflecting her image in bizarre hues - and then, all at once, it swallowed her.

---

She emerged from it as she’d entered: midair, accelerating, and falling.

Not even a blink had passed in transition, yet this place could not exist within Gaia. There existed no ground beneath her feet, or even within reach; all around and above her stretched cobalt-blue sky, broken by misty clouds that ringed a rocky island suspended in the air - the one toward which she now plummeted.

The Floating Isle.

By some enigmatic process, she’d truly managed to reach it.

The placid surface of a lake waited to greet her far below, its waters shimmering in the late afternoon light. Galaran reoriented her body for a dive as she fell, just as she would when jumping from the waterfall into its basin - but from much, much higher.

This was probably the lake Zakiriel had spoken of; and indeed, the portal was almost invisible from this side, too. Its swirling air was even harder to distinguish against the endless sky and in a constant wind; anyone, let alone a concentrating child, would have trouble noticing it.

In the distance, she spotted what must have been Haven: a gathering of buildings more than three times the size of her village, oddly colored and oriented, connected by wide paths of stone.

But Kazach’s report, if glib, had been accurate. Wild flames bloomed from windows and roofs all over the town, feeding a noxious black haze that hung over it; the shapes of people traversed the paths, but from this distance it was impossible to tell human from Featherling.

The airship, however, was unmistakable. Its wood and metal bulk - roughly the shape of a canoe, but compressed, and longer than her favorite waterfall was tall - hovered off the isle’s far side, suspended from what looked like a gigantic waterskin full to bursting.

Galaran couldn’t imagine how any of those heavy components helped the structure fly; only the fluttering cloth ‘wings’ affixed to either side made sense to her, but even those seemed far too small to hold the entire thing aloft.

The indistinct shapes moving into and out of it were definitely human, though - and even from here she could tell there were many.

Too soon, the scene disappeared behind the trees surrounding the lake, heralding the end of her fall.

Galaran knew well the often deceptive inflexibility of a water’s surface, and so took great care to pierce it like an arrow; even then, it shattered around her as hard as shale-stone, stinging her eyes in the brief impact.

But then she slipped beneath that fragile barrier in a sheath of tiny bubbles, propelled onward by her great momentum. Two more solid splashes, muted by water pressure in her ears, sounded behind her.

The three siblings waded, dripping, onto the sandy lake shore. They couldn’t communicate with any sort of complexity in this form, but neither could they give up its combat abilities. The humans’ superior position, both in numbers and location, absolutely necessitated a powerful first strike.

No matter; the Ran clan had a long history of overcoming larger forces. Galaran shook the water from her coat and bounded off at a sprint, signaling her intent for a frontal assault.

This stretch of land between Haven and the lake could only be called a forest by its most charitable definition. Its trees were so widely spaced that light passed through it at all points, but even then, little undergrowth filled the gaps. This would make a stealthy approach difficult; by their presences at her right and left flank, she trusted that her siblings had come to the same conclusion.

In the absence of thick foliage, afternoon light painted the trees’ shadows in black stripes along the flat ground; three sleek shapes flitted between them, barely disturbing the carpet of leaves underfoot.

Unfamiliar creatures, already panicked by flame and gunfire, added the further threat of predation to their shrieks, scattering in a wide cone to avoid a foe they’d never before encountered. Fear in all its sounds and scents covered the area like a thick fog, but luckily - or perhaps unluckily, for them - humans’ perceptions were not attuned to such warnings.

As they neared Haven, first Sai and then Jae split off from their tight formation without needing to be told. It was a maneuver they performed often as a hunting trio, the reverse of the three-pointed defense they’d earlier staged at the village; they would each approach from a different angle, then herd their quarry in toward the center.

Galaran breached the town first, barreling into the two infantrymen who’d been guarding its lake-facing exit. They saw her coming, of course - in this environment, there was no hiding her bright coat - but had little time to react; she tore into them savagely, ripping out their throats before they could alert their comrades.

Afterward, she found surprisingly few humans roaming the paths. Perhaps they believed their victory was secured - or perhaps they’d already completed their primary objective, and thus retreated to their airship.

As Galaran cleared building after burning building with no sign of any Featherlings, she dreaded what that primary objective might have been. At the very, very least, she’d not yet come upon any winged corpses.

At the convergence of two stone paths, she skidded to a stop. A new sound, close by, had joined the chorus of roaring flame and buckling wood: screaming, shrill and reedy. She quickly located its source - in one of the homes, inside a ring of burning furniture, lay a lone Featherling woman.

Sweat soaked her graying blonde hair, her white garments, and the bed beneath her, lending a feverish sheen to heat-reddened skin. Fire licked at the wooden bedposts, but she did not rise from her sprawl; though she choked on dark smoke in between hoarse, weakening cries, she did not move away from the thick clouds.

Her wings, soot-blackened where they touched the smoke, twitched feebly as if trying to ward it away - but they, too, remained as limp as the rest of her.

Galaran’s heart sank.

This woman suffered the Withering’s final stages, a pitiable state of immobility that many of the afflicted Ran had chosen death to avoid.

So the humans had, judging her a poor prisoner, simply left her here to burn?

Would their depravity ever cease?

The woman’s gray eyes went wide as, surely, she wasn’t expecting to see a massive white tiger picking its way across her greatroom. As soon as she’d cleared any burning obstacles, Galaran took her speaking form and held her hands out in a placating spread, making sure to duck low under the poisonous smoke.

“I’m here to help,” she said quickly. “Don’t be afraid. I am a friend of the doctor Zakiriel.”

The woman’s demeanor, though still shocked, lost its edge of terror. She lifted her head as high as it seemed she could - a mere inch off the bed.

“Zakiriel? Here?” she wheezed with great effort, gasping for breath between fragmented syllables. “Any…others? Children?”

The red tinge to her face rapidly darkened as she spoke, and her voice, with each word, faded until it was barely a whisper; though no rope or hand encircled her neck, she was surely suffocating.

Galaran lifted her urgently from the bed and made for the exit.

“You need clean air,” she explained as she navigated the burning furniture in reverse. “When we are outside, breathe deeply. Then we will speak.”

She chose a bed of soft grass, well upwind of any fires, and laid her charge gently upon it. As instructed, the woman endeavored to draw long, full breaths - but, worryingly, they remained shuddering and hard-won even after a few minutes, and a purplish-red hue still stained her cheeks.

Galaran maintained a calm exterior so as not to cause alarm, but she knew of this phenomenon. In the forest’s low-lying caves, where narrow passages snaked forever into the earth, the air could turn to poison without warning. It stole the breath like water, but at an insidiously slow pace; the bodies of its victims were often discovered in peaceful repose, as if they had laid down expecting to reawaken.

Stories said that one could survive by returning to the surface and breathing deeply of the clean air - but sometimes the poison was too strong, or the body too weak, and one would succumb regardless.

How long had this woman, already debilitated by the Withering, breathed in that black smoke before Galaran’s arrival? Minutes, at least - this outer row of houses was already burning when she’d surveyed the town from above the lake.

Even the shortest estimates were more than enough for the poison to take root.

Galaran brushed her fingers idly over her bandaged gunshot wound. Perhaps it was too late for clean air to save this woman - but what about ‘Liquid Gold’?

A cure for all ills, its legend claimed.

“Anahel,” the woman rasped, drawing Galaran’s attention. Though she fought for every word, she seemed determined to speak them. “My name. Yours?”

Such unflinching resolve could only be met in kind.

“Galaran,” she said, taking one of her charge’s hands in her own. “Anahel, do you still wish to live?”

Anahel’s grip tightened with a meager strength that, in the scope of her illness, may as well have been iron.

Galaran understood the answer perfectly.

It wasn’t difficult to find an open flame, or to slice a stinging line across her palm.

She’d thought her blood would turn gold as soon as she held it to a heat source, though; instead it took a moment for anything at all to occur - and when it did, the golden color first appeared where her blood was closest to the fire, after which it spread slowly outward.

Whenever Zakiriel’s experiments had changed colors, they’d done it like this, too. A chemical reaction, he called it. If she remembered correctly, he’d also once told her that blood could be manipulated just like the reagents in the storehouse - that it was very similar to the solutions he created.

She took great care not to spill a single drop on her way back.

An expression of awed confusion - the response Galaran was coming to expect - crossed Anahel’s face when presented with a cupped palm full of golden liquid.

“I don’t know if it will preserve your life,” Galaran admitted, unwilling to lie to a dying woman even for the sake of comfort.

“If not,” Anahel croaked, clenching her jaw against the strain. “Find my -”

A fit of coughing overtook her, gravelly and harsh in her scorched throat.

“My - my children!” Anahel gasped when she regained control. “Imariel. Mahir. Please.”

Galaran felt her own chest constrict. So this was their mother - the one they’d jumped off the Isle to save.

“I will,” she promised, and meant it. Dead or alive, she’d lay eyes upon them.

Anahel’s face, contorted in agony, relaxed. She ticked her head ever so slightly forward; her best attempt at a nod.

Galaran nodded back - firm, confident, like her father would - then tipped her hand just enough for a light trickle of Liquid Gold to flow out.

Anahel opened her mouth to receive it.

And then they waited, silent and apprehensive, for something to happen. Anahel relaxed her head in the soft grass and closed her eyes, tranquil in the way of those who’d accepted their fates.

Maybe this was why so many corpses discovered deep underground laid in repose, Galaran thought. If you knew the signs, if you were beyond any hope of reaching the surface…

What else was there to do but wait comfortably? If you awoke once more, you could continue upward - and if not, you’d be far beyond any such concerns.

Her people were not like the humans; they could recognize unequivocal certainty. It seemed Featherlings could, as well.

But when Anahel’s breath slowed, it did not proceed to cease. Instead it grew deeper, hardier, and her chest rose and fell smoothly - without the heaving toil it once required.

She was sleeping.

Galaran laughed once in thrilled disbelief, then again when she listened for a heartbeat and found it steady. Unburdened. Strong.

Mother Gaia, it actually worked.

It remained to be seen whether Anahel would regain the use of her body, but she was safe, at least, from the soot-black vice of suffocation.

Galaran clutched the hand she’d cut to her chest, momentarily overwhelmed by the potential contained within her body. Every anguished soul in the forest, on the Floating Isle, even in the human lands - just a few drops of her blood could restore them.

Zakiriel, she thought solemnly, may you live to witness your hopes attained.

After double-checking that Anahel’s sleeping spot was obscured from town, Galaran re-centered her focus on her original purpose.

What few humans roamed the streets, she easily dispatched. None of them were very well equipped compared to the host that had assaulted the village; they wore light, piecemeal armor and carried only sidearms, and there were no mages among them.

Given their history with the Featherlings, she supposed they must have known to expect minimal resistance; or perhaps their airship, like a bird, mustn’t be too heavy in order to achieve flight.

In any case, it made her hunt exceedingly simple; soon enough she’d regrouped with her siblings in the town center, and the three ran as one toward Haven’s far edge.

Part 2: Zakiriel

They hadn’t brought enough cages.

The one in which Zakiriel stood was wrought of thick steel, shaped masterfully and unmistakably for conquest. Rivets the width of his thumb secured its joints; the door, just wide enough for one adult to squeeze through, had swung silently shut behind him on well-oiled hinges, its lock covered from the inside by a metal plate.

Roughly half of the humans’ prisoners - Zakiriel’s kinsmen, the citizens of Haven; his neighbors, his patients, his friends - filled these sturdy cages. They were lined up neatly alongside the airship’s landing ramp in preparation, he assumed, for being loaded onto the vessel itself.

They’re taking us away.

The knowledge floated adrift inside him, unable to be processed, so numbed he’d become in a ceaseless torrent of calamity.

Haven burned; the remnants of his life billowed out in black clouds above the city, from rising embers to swirling soot to falling ash.

His people poured in from the wreckage, driven like cattle between lines of human soldiers, subsequently packed two at a time into the metal cages. Shocked beyond all capacity to protest - for no modern Featherling had cause to predict, or even fear, a tragedy like this - they went quietly, some with dreamlike acquiescence, others with flat, mechanical detachment.

Zakiriel dimly recognized himself in the second camp, though he found it difficult to define this reality at all; nearly everyone he’d ever known was arranged before him, being inspected, moved and sorted, treated with as much routine dismissal by their captors as if they were any other simple cargo.

But space within the cages ran out long before the stream of prisoners stopped flowing from Haven. The excess gathered in a growing crowd at the treeline, ringed by watchful soldiers who kept their long rifles at the ready.

Evidently, the humans had intended to capture the entire Featherling population this day, but they had greatly underestimated its size.

A handful of soldiers in more elaborate uniforms gathered to converse in low tones, too far for Zakiriel to distinguish anything but the frustration in their voices. They scowled at one another, shook their heads vehemently, gesticulated between the cages and the airship; for a tense moment, their dark expressions had him grasping at the bars, fearing what they might do to their surplus stock.

In the end, though, they just shouted irritably to their subordinates, a fraction of whom broke off to retrieve axes and begin chopping down young trees in the vicinity.

From the shapes they hewed, it didn’t take Zakiriel long to determine what they were building: more cages, with similar dimensions to the metal ones, but that looked to have much diminished structural integrity.

By the time the unlucky laborers had finished their task, their patience seemed just as thin as their commanders’; they packed in the rest of the prisoners without much care as to their comfort.

Would that he and Kazach had been captured a little later, Zakiriel thought vaguely. Perhaps they could’ve broken free from those crude boxes; as it was, his hours of struggle to loosen a rivet or reach for the lock had achieved only stinging, bleeding fingertips and aching arms, and still the cold metal yielded not a single hope for freedom.

Worst of all, Kazach couldn’t even help. He’d fought so fiercely against imprisonment, raining his wicked black flames down upon their pursuers, that the humans had bound his hands, feet, and mouth before stuffing him into the cage.

A bony elbow dug into his side; he looked over to find his brother’s ruby-red eyes, as they often were, narrowed in his direction.

Oh. Unfocused as he was, Zakiriel must not have been guarding his thoughts very well - and it must have been vexing, indeed, for Kazach to repeatedly read the scene of his own capture.

But, for Zakiriel, the images of his indomitable brother falling incrementally beneath the burden of weighted ropes were impossible to banish, especially when paired with the uncertain fate of the entire Featherling species.

Kazach rolled his eyes, groaned in muffled annoyance through his cloth gag, and tapped out a pattern on the metal floor using the heel of his boot.

Though often at odds, the two brothers had always been close, and through necessity had developed a system of silent communication; in the same manner that he concealed them, Zakiriel had learned early on how to clearly project his thoughts to Kazach, who could then give simple percussive responses.

This one had said, roughly: Negative. Come back. Focus.

Zakiriel frowned, confusion cutting through the fog in his brain. Come back? Come back to where? They were both trapped in the same place!

Positive, Kazach replied with one sharp tap, and then repeated the short chain for focus. He impatiently jerked his chin toward Haven.

Zakiriel followed the gesture’s indication, finding that the influx of prisoners had finally ceased. The soldiers had managed to erect enough wooden cages to contain all of the Featherlings, with some to spare, yet they maintained a tense line across the road to Haven - perhaps even moreso than before.

But what were they waiting for that could cause such disquiet?

Kazach replied, unknown.

Soldiers, alone or in groups, had been departing and returning regularly since the start of the humans’ invasion, but now they began returning with wounds. Gashes, punctures, fractures - Zakiriel logged all manner of grave injuries as the men limped past his cage and into the airship.

When one of them had to be carried, screaming, up the ramp, Zakiriel’s breath hitched; something large had ravaged the left side of his torso, leaving a massive bite pattern that he recognized immediately.

Beast girl, Kazach tapped against a bar. Having no way to convey proper names, he’d probably just approximated a short, recognizable sequence.

That would be the charitable interpretation of his brother’s chosen descriptors, anyway; but Zakiriel, in contemplation, lost his opportunity for rebuke.

Startled exclamations erupted from the soldiers guarding the road - first two, then ten, then twenty, rippling backward through the ranks as more of them detected whatever had sparked the alarm.

Someone in the crowd issued a command, prompting a line of riflemen to fire in cacophonous unison. Gunpowder smoke rose like a wall above their heads.

Another crisply spoken word laid that row of soldiers low, while a second row sprang into position above them and fired again.

Zakiriel’s ears rang from the twin blasts, distorting what sound he could discern, but he thought he heard a defiant, bestial roar boom along with the next volley.

A breathless quiet hung in the air while the veil of gray smoke thinned; all the soldiers stood, paused, uneasily awaiting confirmation that they’d struck their target.

And then, chaos.

First the soldiers’ ordered relays unwound into raw, frantic shouting. In the next moments, their disciplined formation collapsed on itself in a violent landslide, scattering bodies and weapons alike out from its center. Humans climbed over each other with abandon to escape, heedless of their fallen comrades’ cries of agony as successive pairs of heavy boots stomped them into the dirt.

As they scrambled mindlessly, they packed one another into a slow-moving wave of flailing limbs and open mouths; its face continually broke under its own weight, shed its foremost wailing layer, then reformed and crawled on with a visceral liquidity.

Zakiriel had to cover his mouth to keep from retching, but he couldn’t look away. He had to know if he’d heard true, if she was really here.

From the carnage - as he’d thought, as he’d hoped, as he’d feared - emerged the arched shape of a leaping white tigress, as lethally majestic as the night he’d met her.

Red streaked her coat aside its customary gold, and one of her eyes was shut tight beneath a long slash on her forehead, but this was unquestionably Galaran, as solid as the bodies that fell around her.

She had really…how had she…?

A quick glance to the side confirmed that this was not, in fact, some sort of shock-induced hallucination; Kazach - and most of the other imprisoned Featherlings - were watching her with the same mystified intensity.

Zakiriel spotted Sairan and Jaerran wreaking havoc as well, weaving their way through the writhing crowd of humans, pale coats stark against the soldiers’ brown uniforms.

Having witnessed the Ran hunt together, their coordination under pressure was nothing new to him, but that ruthless efficiency with which they chose, surrounded, and cornered their targets still inspired awe.

Among the three siblings, they split the humans as if they were any other herd - by isolating the easiest kills first, then systematically confronting the rest; and, just like fleeing prey, the soldiers quickly lost their group cohesion and any advantages it might have brought.

Still, the more seasoned among them retained enough of their wits to organize pockets of defense, forcing the hunters to split their attentions.

He gripped the bars of his cage, knuckles white with anxiety, wincing each time a bullet narrowly missed one of the tigers - or worse, ricocheted ominously off of a metal cage frame. So far it seemed like none of his kinsmen had been hit, but that could change at any moment in this disorganized crossfire.

As the human force’s peril became more and more apparent, its handful of commanders - who had thus far occupied the loading ramp, far from the bloody melee - disappeared into the ship’s dark interior, leaving their prisoners unguarded.

Zakiriel didn’t need another jab to the ribs to know what that meant, though his brother surely delivered one anyway.

Hold still, he mentally commanded, and for once Kazach obeyed; the wrapped cloth binding his mouth, however, did not. Zakiriel picked at the complex knots, trying to keep one eye on the fighting outside. Frustration burned in his throat; if he could just remove the gag, Kazach could melt through their cage in seconds, then they would be free to help -

Zakiriel froze.

A human he’d never seen before had emerged from the airship. The woman’s uniform was covered in medals and patches, her dark hair neatly slicked back beneath a short-brimmed cap. Were this a traditional sailing ship, these traits would mark her as its captain - and given her stature and ornamentation, far above the commanders’, Zakiriel thought it a safe assumption.

But none of that by itself would have given him pause. No, it was the weapon in her hands which had drawn his attention: a rifle, longer than the ones carried by the infantry, inlaid with brass and bearing a mounted lens meant to focus the eye.

He’d read of these firearms in the archives. They were specialized for long range shooting, borne by expert marksmen - and they’d been the humans’ primary tool in their endeavors to conquer the Featherlings.

This was the very weapon that had driven his people skyward, and over a century of innovation could have only enhanced its ruinous potential.

Out of the corner of his eye, a blur of white streaked toward the loading ramp, and his blood chilled to snowmelt.

With the barest twitch of a smirk, the captain lifted her rifle, braced its end against her shoulder, and aligned one eye with its focusing lens.

No. No. Galaran must have noticed the woman’s appearance, as well, and judged her a priority target - but even with a thin barrel trained on her head, Galaran persisted, making no attempt to skirt its aim.

in a moment of horrible clarity, Zakiriel realized that she didn’t recognize the present danger. Why would she? This type of rifle, despite a high precision and firing speed compared to its peers, would be useless in the great forest’s dense undergrowth.

The humans had never utilized it there.

She didn’t know.

His beautiful, deadly tigress was only a few strides from certain death, and she didn’t know.

No sooner had the thought struck him, Zakiriel thrust his hands through the bars.

With their movement he roused the winds, compelling them to accelerate, to strengthen, to push. A howling gale heeded his call, imbued with arcane translucence, and surged directly toward that abominable rifle.

He may have sworn a vow against using magic as a weapon, but neither the vow nor his personal convictions forbid its use as a shield.

The captain, blind to all but the narrow view of her lens, took the brunt of the gust; it drove her sideways, stumbling, against one of the metal cages, tore the cap from her head, and - though she kept a disciplined hold on it - jostled her rifle enough that its shot veered downward; instead of its intended flesh, the bullet tore through the loading ramp with a grating metallic crack.

For a stunned, fractional beat, she glared at the new jagged puncture in her airship; but just as she turned a raging, incredulous eye to Zakiriel - to this prisoner who had dared raise a hand to her - gleaming white fangs closed around the column of her throat.

Time seemed to slow before him as Galaran’s momentum carried both herself and her prey several feet onward; he immediately clenched his fist to disperse the winds, chest heaving with exhilaration.

Not on this day, nor any day hence, would this particular human threaten his loved ones. He reveled in a dark, secret moment of pride as her imperious eyes drooped to lifeless neutrality - and refused to acknowledge the low hum of commendation Kazach directed his way.

Galaran confirmed her kill before the captain’s body hit the ground, leaving it to slide limply down the ramp as she bolted into the airship’s cargo bay. He lost sight of her after that, but Zakiriel gathered from the five following screams that she’d rooted out the commanders hiding inside.

When she emerged again, she rushed straight to his cage and pushed her soft cheek into his hand, as if she couldn’t wait a single extra moment to convey her relief.

Zakiriel sunk his fingers into her warm fur to return the sentiment.

All too soon, she gave his hand a final, apologetic nudge and withdrew, hurrying down the ramp to rejoin the ongoing battle.

He watched her depart with aching familiarity, but understood. Earlier, before they’d dispersed, he must have counted close to one hundred soldiers; Galaran and her siblings far surpassed any one of them in strength alone, but they numbered only three. Time and probability dictated that, without coordination, they could easily fall to accumulated blows.

But the tigers possessed cunning in multitudes.

Under the auspices of surprise, they’d already whittled down the humans’ forces by half; they herded those who remained into a pen without walls, maintaining its shape through careful positioning.

Zakiriel thought, rather unsettled by the comparison, that it wasn’t unlike relocating goats. They were feistier than sheep, still wild enough to harbor the feral spirit of rebellion, such that a shepherd must subtly manipulate his herd into believing its every action completely voluntary.

In the same manner, he witnessed the remaining humans shuffle through a veritable book of defensive plays that, for all intents and purposes, they themselves chose to employ. They reacted strategically to the tigers’ every move and seemed to be holding their own, even gaining ground at times.

From this distance, though, Zakiriel had the entire picture. Though the route zigzagged and doubled back on itself, the tigers were steadily driving the humans toward the airship.

When their loose formation reached the array of metal cages, the soldiers realized that they had nowhere left to retreat; to a man, they threw down their arms.

From his time in the great forest, Zakiriel knew that the clans did not accept surrender from humans. He mentally prepared to grit his teeth through the inevitable bloodbath - but then Galaran’s eyes met his, and he saw in them reassurance.

Her siblings silently flanked the loading ramp, preventing escape by any means but a leap from the Isle itself, and then approached the group of defenseless men. They, in turn, backed up the ramp - and up, and up, as she continued her advance - until they’d all crammed into the airship’s bay.

Galaran stopped at the foot of the ramp and sat on her haunches, watching the soldiers expectantly, but they merely stared back at her, petrified.

A pointedly savage roar seemed to get her message across; one of the humans, a scarred veteran, promptly pulled a lever that withdrew the loading ramp and slammed shut the bay doors.

If a tiger’s bestial features could look smug, then Galaran’s did at that very moment. She tracked the airship’s every movement as some great machine engaged in its belly, grinding its canvas wings to life, venting a pillar of white smoke from its roof.

Such a marvel of technological advancement would have awed Zakiriel under different circumstances; but from within his cage, drained and aching, he merely saw another tool of subjugation.

The airship’s steel frame groaned as it dislodged from its mooring, swaying with the winds until it finally stabilized and began to descend. He didn’t exhale until its air bladder sank completely beneath the Isle’s rim.

At that same instant, Galaran relaxed her own tense posture. She rushed in a purposeful line to Zakiriel’s cage and, with one powerful swipe, rent the door’s locking mechanism and wrenched it open.

This time, neither of them hesitated. In the blink of an eye, Galaran had assumed her two-legged body - and Zakiriel had gathered her securely within the circle of his arms.

Once freed, all the wind in existence could not have propelled him faster to embrace her, and none of the hundreds of eyes upon them could have prevented it.

“How did you…?” he managed to ask, but the tangle of unanswered questions rendered him speechless.

Galaran laughed like she’d predicted his reaction, anchoring her hands in his hair and the back of his robe; it felt to him like a guarantee. A declaration.

“The portal,” she whispered in equal joy and disbelief.

He must have reflected it right back - gods knew he couldn’t have formed words, not with that revelation - because she just shook her head gently, as if to say the explanation could wait.

To emphasize her unspoken point, Kazach let out a loud, highly aggrieved groan from inside the cage.

Galaran reluctantly parted their embrace, lifting her hands from Zakiriel only at the last possible second, and sliced through Kazach’s bindings with her index claw.

In lieu of offering his thanks, or indeed any sort of acknowledgement, he spread his dark wings and dove over the side of the Isle - in single-minded pursuit of the airship, if Zakiriel had to guess.

He wished that the action had surprised him. Alas.

But his brother’s motivation, at least, was clear; little incensed Kazach more than a slight, real or perceived, and those humans had dared to confine him.

Faintly, Zakiriel lamented the deaths of men who had thrown down their arms - but the people here needed, and deserved, his sympathies far more than they.

He and Galaran went down the lines of cages, identifying the wounded and restoring what he could with healing magic. Zakiriel didn’t let her out of his sight while he worked; infuriatingly, she wouldn’t let him mend her several injuries until he’d inspected everyone else first - and he kept catching her staring wistfully at her siblings, whom he’d tasked with breaking locks.

Resilient she may have been - beyond all reason, even - but Zakiriel refused to let her aggravate her wounds needlessly.

By the time all of the Featherlings were free and gathered, the sun was sinking below the Isle’s edge; and though no one knew the state in which they’d find Haven, the city councilors decided that any shelter was better than none.

As a ragged, exhausted group, they set off down the road.

Epilogue: Zakiriel

They returned to a smoking ruin; the ravenous flames, it seemed, had at last starved for want of kindling. Charred, brittle timbers collapsed into the bare husks of buildings as the party passed them by, drawing muted sorrow from those who’d once called them home.

It became clear early on that few places in Haven had escaped the fire’s wrath, and fewer still looked safely inhabitable. They traversed street after street of blackened stone walls, their original purposes recognizable by memory alone.

Fortunately, they found the great hall mostly intact; only its antechamber roof - separated from the one which covered the main hall - had burned away, leaving the great majority of the building still protected from the elements.

Even so, it took hours to clean and prepare the hall for occupation, and to gather enough food and water to sate their number for the night. Citizens sifted through ash for usable blankets and edible food; the less exhausted among them hauled whatever vessels they could find back and forth from the wells.

The Ran siblings worked alongside them, combing the town for survivors and corpses and returning them, respectively, to the hall or the makeshift morgue Zakiriel had established behind it.

If any of the Featherlings objected to these foreigners’ sudden presences, gratitude - or perhaps a lack of energy to spare for disdain - stayed their tongues.

With a task list so daunting, no hand could afford to be idle - and so, though he itched to speak with her privately, to learn the tale of her arrival, Zakiriel had to settle for long, stifled glances at Galaran, which the two exchanged whenever their assignments happened to overlap.

Time and perseverance saw the group’s grueling work to its end. They gathered in the hall and took what solace they could in a warm, simple meal, and then huddled together atop the scavenged cushioning.

Zakiriel, wary of stretching his people’s tolerance too thin, established a separate camp with Galaran and her siblings a small distance away. Perhaps they sensed the fragile atmosphere, too, because Jaerran and Sairan - the latter only half-heartedly - departed after a short rest to patrol the Isle’s outer rim.

But there was no dispelling the curious, somewhat fearful mood entirely, and the Featherlings’ whispered musings drifted over in fragments. Were their saviors really beastmen from the great forest? Beastmen couldn’t fly, and they hadn’t arrived with the humans, so where had they come from?

Though he’d urged her to wait until morning, Galaran eventually shot him an apologetic look and rose from her spot beside him. He didn’t try to stop her; once she’d made a decision, there was no stopping her.

And aside from that, well - Zakiriel wanted to hear her story, too.

Galaran stood before the hearth and recounted the other half of the humans’ invasion - of her village’s harrowing defense, her pursuit of the battle’s survivors, and finally, her discovery of the fabled portal deep within the forest.

Zakiriel listened, entranced along with everyone else, to the tale; fantastical, yes - improbable, certainly - but all in attendance had borne witness to its veracity.

As if evidence of instantaneous arcane transportation wasn’t shocking enough, she proceeded to explain the true origins of ‘Liquid Gold,’ rendering her slack-jawed audience - none more than Zakiriel - entirely mute.

Blood.

Her blood - and likely that of any other Ran who inherited a coat of pure white.

She raised a claw, and all eyes glued to it; she used that claw to make an incision in her palm, and they winced; she held that palm to the hearth’s fire, and they widened.

Not a single listener drew breath.

Slowly, so slowly, the blood that trickled down Galaran’s hand converted, like water tinged with ink, from a vibrant red to an unmistakable, gleaming gold.

Exuberance bloomed all at once across the assembly in gasps and shouts.

It rose to a clamor of intrigue so deafening that Zakiriel had to join Galaran at the hearth to calm it down. He had to shout and gesture for silence several times before it took, but the crowd finally reduced itself to an eager simmer.

To corroborate her claim, he spoke of his own journey living among the Ran - as a guest, he emphasized, and not a captive, as some rumors already purported.

With Galaran’s permission, he examined her arm himself, making a great show of proclaiming the blood’s authenticity for the benefit of any Featherlings who still harbored doubts. And he didn’t intend deceit, for he could scarcely believe it himself; but there it was, the exact texture and viscosity of blood.

Liquid Gold, in truth, at last.

Hearing it from their primary doctor seemed to win over the final holdouts in the audience; what disapproval remained, he suspected, belonged to those who had earlier witnessed the two presenters locked in a heartfelt embrace.

While excited chattering filled the hall once more, Galaran quietly told him about her encounter with Anahel, who currently rested with the other survivors in a side chamber serving as a sickroom. Zakiriel, floored, absorbed every detail; he had thought, while setting up an area for those infected with the Withering, that Anahel’s breathing sounded easier than usual. In the hectic daze of his many, many tasks, though, the notion had quickly fallen by the wayside.

Brimming with ideas, he launched into a barrage of analytical questions immediately, becoming no better than the babbling audience - and, like them, Galaran had to repeatedly quell his demands.

There would be time enough later for research and experimentation, she’d said, but the most important thing, tonight, was to ensure the safety of everyone affected by the day’s trials.

Oh, he’d thought with no small amount of disappointment, she must return to the forest. Her clan, too, had fought to repel the humans.

But again she surprised him.

Instead of leaving alone to collect her siblings, she’d offered him her hand and asked him to return with her; to present her people, together, with the same glad tidings they’d shared here.

Of course he’d taken that hand without a second thought. Of course he had. With that serene smile and those resolved eyes - not a trace of fear left to them - how could he deny her?

How could he deny her anything?

#this part was very cathartic to write after all the tension last time #just go apeshit you little guys. wreck shop. KILL #also any practice writing extended action is so valuable to me #mega writes #image free to use from unsplash

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