The Princess's Feathers

Snowflakes swirl around me as I pass my head through the dense branches of a mallowshrub. The sudden snow shower has coated the underbrush in a light dusting of snow, muffling my talonsteps as I stalk prey through a heavily forested section of the Great Valley. With prey becoming scarce, Kuro and I have begun to hunt the areas where Kin seldom go. For Dragon like her, hunting the ungroomed forests is practically impossible. Sequoias and cypresses grow low, casting thick branches to the upper layers of the underbrush. Try as she might, she’s simply too large to make it through the impenetrable wall of foliage. But not me! My diminutive size makes navigating these tight spaces possible, allowing me a chance to force prey from their hiding spots and into Kuro’s waiting jaws.

Perhaps I should be happy I’m making myself useful to the flock. After all, we’re hunting for communal prey to bring to the Grandfather Tree. The ferals we butcher will go on to feed those too old or infirm to hunt for themselves. It’s a noble prospect for sure, but I’m not at all content with myself. I’m frustrated! All I’ve been able to think about the past few days is how much I wish I weren’t here. I’m the Princess of Ellyntide! I should be at home in the palace, helping Mom by the warmth of the fireplace in our family’s reading room. Instead, I’m cold and wet, stalking prey through the underbrush of Felra like a flea-ridden dog.

This is so degrading.

I sigh quietly and step over the rotting trunk of a felled redwood, continuing to follow the scent of fresh prey. As thoughts of home fester inside my head, I lose track of the task at hand and don’t even notice a boulder lying deep in the grass.

SKREEK!

My foreleg collides, and I wail in pain, immediately aware of my costly mistake. I tumble through the underbrush until my wings snare on a thicket of mallowshrub. Hanging by my feathers, I hear the forest come alive with motion as birds take flight and prey scampers to safety.

Ugh! I could smell a family of Jimbal up ahead! I was so close to preying on them! Argh, that fweghing boulder! Why is there one sitting in the middle of the forest, anyways?

“Asha!” Kuro’s worried voice echoes through the underbrush. “Are you alright?!”

I strain to raise my head through the branches and call out, “I’m a little bruised, but I’ll live!”

As Kuro fights her way to my location, I pry my wings from the mallowshrub and lower my head to leave the underbrush, pacing along until I come upon the base of prominent sequoia that’s free of dense vegetation. I call out again to guide Kuro, and a few moments later, she steps through a thick patch of oshbush.

As she lays eyes on me, her face relaxes in relief. “There you are. What happened?”

“There was a boulder in the underbrush,” I explain, signaling to the ground. “I can’t believe I didn’t see it.”

A dusting of snow falls from Kuro’s wings as they relax to her sides. She steps forward to join me and says, “Ungroomed forests hold surprises. Don’t worry. We’ll find prey soon.”

I huff in frustration and preen the feathers on my chest. We’ve been hunting since early this morning but haven’t caught so much as a grepo. Winter has barely started, and we’re already having trouble locating prey. Is this just the beginning of bad times? How hungry will we become in the coming months?

“Come on,” Kuro says, trying to remain upbeat. “Let’s head back to the clearing. I know another place to search.”

As she dips her wings to leave, I swivel around and gaze through the thickets, trying to catch a glimpse boulder that ruined my day. How did I miss it? I’m pretty good about spotting obstacles while hunting. As I retrace the steps I took in my mind, I spot the felled redwood that I stepped over. And there below it is a pale-looking boulder, resting by a pile of snow-dusted leaves and dried oshbush. It’s shaped like…

…

Wait a second…

…

“Kuro?” I call out, keeping my eyes fixated.

“Hmm?” she calls back. “What is it?”

I flick my ears forward, showing the way through the thickets to the boulder’s location. Kuro returns to my side and gazes across the same mottled brown and gray expanse.

“Do you see that?” I whisper.

Kuro stares at me and asks normally, “See what?”

“The boulder.”

“Umm… yes.”

“Kuro, that’s not supposed to be here.”

“What is?”

“The boulder!”

Her muzzle curls into a coy smile. “Asha, why shouldn’t—“

“Here,” I interrupt, stepping past her. Using my jaws, I tear a path through the thickets and lead Kuro to where I tripped. As we approach, the supposed boulder comes into focus, and its true identity becomes clear.

I fail to contain a gasp. “Goddess above.”

A wall of stone blocks eroded by nature and time is nestled between the shrubs and grasses. The finer details become visible as I stick my head in for a closer look. Stacked in line five high, they form what appears to be a chest-high wall. The pitted stone is covered in dense moss and thick vines, but its origin can’t be mistaken. Ascendant animals laid these blocks!

Kuro levels her head with mine. “Asha, what is it?”

“It’s a stone wall,” I answer. “Or the foundation of a building. Here, in the middle of Felra!”

She blinks. “I don’t understand.”

“Kuro, these are the remains of a Farlander den!”

Her face flares in disbelief, alternating between myself and the wall. “How?”

“Look here,” I say, brushing my wing across the stone. As I do, my feathers stand on end — in a certain way, this is the closet I’ve yet come to returning home. “These are what we call stone blocks. Remember when I told you Farlanders build things with raw materials? This is a perfect example. This stone was mined from a quarry, cut into these rectangular blocks, and assembled here to make a den.”

“So, this was part of a Farlander den.” Kuro snakes her head around the branches of a mallowshrub and smells the wall. “It sure doesn’t smell like one. But how did it get here? No Farlanders have ever been this deep in the flock’s territory.”

“I don’t know!” I say. “Judging by the condition of the stone, it’s very old. It must have been laid down hundreds of years ago, maybe even in ancient times!”

Kuro studies the blocks carefully but doesn’t seem particularly impressed. Doesn’t she understand how significant this is?

“Kuro, this is the archaeological find of the century! None of our stories mention anything about this! It changes everything we know about Farlanders in Felra!!”

She pulls her neck back and gazes at the entire wall length. “So what?”

“So what?!”

“So, this stone means Farlanders came here long ago, maybe before the continents rose. Who cares?”

I stare at my friend, unable to believe what I’m hearing. How could she possibly dismiss the importance of this discovery? I thought Lithans had a great reverence for their past!

Perhaps sensing my shock, she continues, “If Farlanders weren’t important enough to be told in our stories, then they weren’t doing anything important in Felra.”

“Kuro,” I chuckle to myself. “I thought you were fascinated by Farlanders?”

She shrugs her wings. “They’re still prey.”

With Kuro’s blunt admission, I begin to understand her perspective. For the flock, ‘history’ begins and ends with their stories; the tales passed down through generations of Kin and the divine knowledge Keuvra shares with them. But for ascendant animals, history is not just stories. It’s all around us! The cities we live in, the buildings we inhabit, and the treasured items we pass down to family members and loved ones. To put it bluntly, we’re materialistic.

But there are no material objects in the flock. They’re ferals, utterly dependent on the natural world around them. Kuro can’t understand this discovery’s importance because it is just a pile of rocks to her. Why would it be anything else? She’s never seen the objects we Farlanders cherish and how they can be a tangible link to our past.

And when you think of it that way, is it any wonder that stories are the most valuable commodity in the flock?

“You’re sure thinking about something,” Kuro observes, interrupting my thoughts.

“Have I ever told you the story of the serpentine diamond?” I ask. Perhaps she could understand me better if I told a story. “It’s the rock that changed me into a Lithan.”

A certain glimmer reflects in Kuro’s eyes at mentioning the prospect of a story. Slowly, she shakes her head and looks at me with a yearning desire. As expected, Kuro is always willing to hear a new tale from the Farlands.

“The serpentine diamond was a national treasure of Ellyntide,” I explain, turning to lead Kuro back to the sequoia. “It too, was merely a stone. But to me and my Kingdom, the diamond was as important as a family member. Our stories tell us that generations of Lordanous have worn the diamond since ancient times. The heir to the throne, who would someday lead the Kingdom, wore the diamond to signify their status. I too, was wearing it on the day I transformed.”

As we pass through the thicket I tore open, I glance to my left. Kuro is staring intently, enamored by the story I’ve told so far. “But despite the significance of the diamond, What I’ve told you is all we know about it. Nobody knows when the diamond was forged. We don’t know who made it or why. And there’s certainly no stories of it turning Lemurs into Lithans.”

“How could your Kin forget such important stories? “Kuro asks in faint disbelief, dipping her head under a low-lying redwood branch. “Aren’t stories important in the Farlands?”

“Nobody knows for sure,” I answer, sitting beside the sequoia’s trunk. “Many generations ago, our stories were lost when Nortane invaded. Nearly everything we knew about Ellyntide before the Great Freeze was lost.”

Chilled branches moan as an icy wind hisses through the underbrush, sending snow flying from the sequoia’s branches. As the snow collides with my feathers, I ruffle unconsciously — thick as they are, I’m still cold. But before I can complain, a thick soot wing drapes over my body, and a warm head rubs against my neck feathers. I crane my head around and rub back to thank my friend for the kind gesture.

“Kuro,” I say, forcing myself to stay on topic. “The point I’m trying to make is that history isn’t so black and white. Stories can be forgotten even if they’re important and even by those who wish to tell them. This wall isn’t unimportant just because there are no stories about it — its story is waiting to be discovered. Kuro, don’t you see? The reason for my transformation might lie in this wall!”

Kuro stays silent, contemplating everything that I’ve told her. She lifts her head and gazes across the forest for so long that snow accumulates on her feathers. Is this the first time she thought history was more than just stories? Finally, she says, “I’ve seen other dens like this.”

“Really?!” I squawk.

She inclines her head. “We find them while hunting. I always believed they were strange-looking rocks. I never thought they could be linked to Farlanders.”

So, this isn’t even the only den in Felra! Unbelievable! Feeling a second wind of excitement, I stare out across the forest with Kuro, trying to imagine the continent teeming with ascendant animals. “How did they get here? Were they hunted as prey, or did they coexist with the flocks peacefully?”

“Asha,” Kuro says, pulling her wing back and shaking it of snow. “Deep in Loner territory, there’s a place with many of those Farlander stones piled high. So many that Loners live inside it. I always thought it looked like a Farlander den.”

I stare up at my friend and blink, trying to remain calm. “Kuro, why didn’t you mention this earlier?!”

“I didn’t know!!” She stammers, raising her wings in mock defense. “I thought it was just a pile of rocks. But it really could be a Farlander den, right?”

“Yes,” I say, folding my wings flat and turning away from the sequoia. “And you’re going to take us there. Right now.”

“Right now?” she hesitates.

“Right this instant!” I insist. “If it’s really a Farlander den, then who knows what’s inside? This could be the first lead we’ve had on explaining my transformation!”

Buildings in Felra! I can’t believe this was under our muzzles this whole time! When I first landed here, I was quite arrogant in thinking that I could stumble around the continent and figure out why I became a Lithan. For the past few days, I’ve felt awfully foolish about it. But maybe I was right all along. There has to be a connection between ancient animals in Felra, the serpentine diamond, and my transformation. There must!

But before I can get too excited, Kuro douses my enthusiasm. “First, we must attend Couple’s Night,” she says, sighing heavily. “The journey to Loner territory takes multiple days. We won’t make it back in time.”

“Fwegh it,” I say, waving my wings dismissively. “I don’t care. This is so much more important than—“

“It would be unwise to skip it,” Kuro cuts in. “I did so once before and paid a terrible price the rest of frostwing. I know how important this is to you, Asha. But it can wait. There’s plenty of time until you return home in greenwing.”

I stare up at Kuro, trying to gauge her expression. Calling it a ‘terrible’ price to pay is awfully vague. But her face looks measured and earnest, like whatever punishment was truly awful. It’s not like her to simply accept the flock’s rules. I already know that unmated Kin have fewer rights in the flock, so who knows what misery could be imposed on me?

“Fine,” I growl. “We’ll go after Couple’s Night. But not a day later!”

“Of course,” Kuro says softly. She smiles and lowers her head to rub it against mine. I return the gesture, allowing her scent to fill my nostrils and calm my racing heart. I can’t believe we finally have a lead on why I became a Lithan! It will be a long Couple’s Night, and I’m not especially thrilled to be mated with someone until morning. But if that’s what I have to endure to find out why I became a Lithan, then so be it. Besides, Couple’s Night can’t be that bad, right?