i am a leaf on the wind

Has she ever been good at games? Maybe, but of her other sibling’s, she was the worst. Corbin was cunning and quick. Finding him a game of hide-and-seek was impossible, and catching him in a game of tag was even worse. And Adelene just hated to lose. It was worth throwing a game just to avoid listening to her whine about it. Which didn’t make the girl good at games. Actually, maybe it did. Maybe she knew just exactly what she was doing. Corbin coddled Adelene, in a way he never coddled Lyanna (she appreciated him for that). He let their little sister win just about everything, but he always creamed Lyanna in the process.

She’s sure this isn’t going to be the same type of game though. Their games never started with a Frankenstein creature and a forest of bones. The creature (monster?) remains silent, eyes leaving hers, passing over each of the horses. There are a few that he seems more interested in, and she wonders what draws something like him (it?) to specific horses. He seems too remote, and too far above them, for any of them to matter at all.

He speaks, and the air grows cold again. She pulls her wings closer to her side, reminded of Frostfall. She’s tired of Frostfall, and beginning to wonder if whatever lies on the other side of this game will be worth it. But it has to be worth it, or they wouldn’t all be here. The vines move around the creature, snaking toward each of the horses gathered. She steps back before thinking, and then stills her feet, tries to slow her heart. It’s not here to hurt you, she thinks, but of course, she has no idea if it’s true.

Besides, she has so little to live for. What difference does it make? But that is an easier thought than reality. When faced with the actual choice, she suspects she might not want to meet death. Yes, she wants to join her family. Yes, she misses them. Yes, she wishes everything were different.

But is she done with this life yet? No. She is not ready to be one of the bones that dangles from the trees. His words are in line with her train of thought. Perhaps they sparked her train of thought, and she didn’t even realize. The vine has stopped in front of her, bobbing about like a feather floating down the river. Like the way she would have once kept leaves aloft with the power of the wind.

The bone in front of her is a wing. There’s no mistaking that much. But what could it belong to? The bone is massive, stretching much larger than her own wings. She unfurls one of her own wings, and finds the bone to be more than twice the size of her own. The body attached must have been massive. Markings cover the bone. She can make out a figure that reminds her of the creature standing beneath the bone tree. And moons. She reaches out, managing to touch the bouncing bone with her muzzle. For a flash, she’s flying, but the power that she feels is amazing and impossible and enormous. Something so like what she knew when she controlled the wind. A flight full of infinite possibilities. She’s left hollow and empty when the bone swings away, longing for one more touch.

“Who were you?” she say, voice quiet, to the bone. Her mind wanders back to all the stories she’s ever heard. There were plenty of them. She was a Princess after all, and spent long hours of her life entertaining diplomats from foreign lands. What stories did she know of massive, flying creatures with an affinity for the moon?

There’s only one story that comes to mind. “Bakunawa?” she asks, though she’s not expecting an answer. Rather, she’s asking the bone in a show of respect for the dead. “The Moon Eater,” she says, now to the creature, knowing she needs to answer his question. “He was a sea serpent, but with two sets of wings. One large, and one small.” The bone in front of her would have belonged to the large set, if she’s even remotely correct in her guess.  

The story of Bakunawa isn’t the first thing that comes to her though. She has to think again, for a moment. Past the night itself. The diplomats, with their light coats and black hair and slight accent. Past Corbin to her right and Adelene to her left, swatting their tails at each other behind Lyanna’s back.  It had been beautiful that night. The stars out, and the moon full. Ah, the moon. That’s why their visitors had told the story.

“He fell in love with a human girl,” she begins, recalling, her voice distant, reciting. “The girl belonged to one of the native tribes, but when the leader of the tribe found out about it, he burned the girl’s house to the ground. In revenge, Bakunawa left the sea and took to the sky. In revenge for the girl, he tried to eat the seven moons created by Bathala in the Beginning.” She remembers the story, remembers how they told her of the anger and the rage and the pain and the grief that Bakunawa must have felt. There were no words for it then, and there were no words now. But she looks at the bone with understanding, because her home had burned as well, and she knows how he feels.

She knows what it’s like to have everything ripped from you. And it’s the worst feeling in the world.  

“Bathala banished Bakunawa from his home in the sea. During a solar eclipse, some still believe that Bakunawa is trying to return home, trying to eat the last moon and find his way back to the sea and the girl.” She stops, focusing now on the creature. Wondering who he is in this. They were friends, he said. Bathala? The creator of the universe. It seems so possible, so likely, that this creature made up of everything could be the one who made everything. Perhaps not, perhaps she is wrong. But she knows how the Bakunawa must have felt. She feels it too much, too close to home, and the question slips out anyway. “Bathala?”  Do you know what pain you caused? But she does not ask that. Just the name. It seems like enough.

watch how i soar.

lyanna