Chapter 1:Truthes and his wings

Authors note: All peaces are subject to change frequently and to never be spelled right, you have been pre-warned.

Truthes laid face down on fern and grass, soaked in his own blood and tears. His half grown wings lay next to him in a tangle mesh of feathers and red stains. His back ached in pain, but he didn’t care, he was rid of his burden. Finally he wouldn’t be mocked and teased; he was free. Tears flooded his view, but he was free. Truthes tried to stand, but fell forward and black out momentarily. Fear leaped to his throat as he heard a panic stricken voice calling his name, “Truthes!”

Truthes stammered back up and tried to run, but stumbled and hit his head again against the forest ground making him black out for a moment more. The voice drew nearer, “Truthes! Oh Truthes what have you done!?”

Mara stood in silence, unable to take her eyes off the bloody, stubbed bone exposed on Truthes’s back where his wings were once attached. Her own wings twitched in pain looking at his mangled back. She looked back and forth between the knife in his hands and his stunted wings. Coming out of her daze, Mara knelt by his side. Slowly, she took the knife out of his hands and placed it in her belt. A little roughly, Mara grasped Truthes left arm and leg and swung him onto her back above her wings and stood up. She carried him to the house, ready to remedy his mangled back.

Truthes woke with a sharp pain in his back, he gritted his teeth and moaned. Mara quickly came to his side. “You are awake.”

Truthes nodded.

“Why did you cut your wings?”

Truthes ignored her as a tear rolled towards his pillow.

“Turthes this is a great dishonor to yourself and our people, I must know.”

Truthes cried harder, “I don’t want them. They are no honor! They have only caused me pain.”

“Why do you say this?”

“I am never free from them. I am always teased for them. They are no blessing I am glad to be rid of them.”

Mara nodded, “You are never free of them Truthes. It is a gift that we have been give and can not give back, your wings will re-grow, and will be there just as they were before.”

Truthes hugged his knees close to his chest, rocking on the bed, and cried him self to sleep.

Truthes rose in and out of sleep for the next few days, as his wings worked to grow back to there original size. Many had come to see him, some to spit in his face for his disgrace and others to console him as much as they could. After a week he fully awoke from a long and fitful nightmare of pain and hopelessness. He sat up in bed and felt his silk feathers rub up against his back. A wave of emotions crashed into him as he feared what was to come.

Mara rushed in and had him turn around, “Your wings have completely re-grown. When you are able to rise out of bed, you are to be judged of your actions,” and simply stated, “I do not envy you.”

Truthes whispered, “Nor do I.”

Over the next day Truthes worked to rise out of bed and walk around his room, the work was terribly exhausting and after making a single circle, he crashed to the floor. When Mara heard the thud from Truthes’s room she scrambled from her pot of stew and ran to his side. Sternly, she helped him to his bed, and remarked, “You got farther this time, soon you will be ready to be seen by your people.” And staunched off quickly so he wouldn’t see the tear trickled down her check.

As Mara left his room she cradled her churning stomach, aching with emotion. There were so many words she wanted to tell him; so many times she wanted to hold him gently in her arms, as she did when he was younger as he cried from a scraped knee just to tell him that things would turn out alright. Mara had raised him as though he was her own son, even though she was barren.

But now things had changed, he didn’t show Mara the love he used to. He never touched her fondly the way he did, no more did his eyes twinkle with a smile as they did when he was little. As he was coming out of childhood and entering manhood he had grown tough and cold, gruff and closed and so confused. He had so much emotion that he was meant to control and hide, but she never showed him how like she was meant to and for that he resented her, she could tell.

She took out the carrots she had pulled earlier that day meant for her stew, and started to chop madly away at them, trembling in anger. Oh how she had worked to ensure that he wouldn’t be like her, so emotional, how she worked to let him love his people and the non-winged ones, how she worked to make him like his father, long since dead. But nothing worked as she had planned. He had learned somehow to hate what he is, and he disgraced himself and her! It was enough to make her scream! How dare he dishonor her like that! How could she comfort his pain when he had caused her so much! She didn’t know whether to nurse him to health or lash out at him in her bitterness! He had only thoughts for himself, his hurt, his pain, his dismay! Mara muttered under her breath, “Well what that of mine.” She trembled, dropping the knife on the table and reared back to sit in her chair. Holding her head in her hands she cried quietly and gasped, “What that of my pain…”