Second Child, Restless Child

prologue
What is it like to fly?

A question always poised in every child, and one always dismissed. Perhaps that's why they were so worried about me. I never did grow out of it.

They say in the days of yore that sentient, speaking flying animals appeared in the Dawn of Time. They arrived from all over: the north, the south, the east, the west. The animals called Great Horned Owls settled and congregated within the sun-carved canyons of the Grand Ravine. The animals called Eagles populated the outbacks, defending the southern badlands from The First Threat. The animals called Flamingos came and filled all the oases and beaches they could find. The Toucans flew through the thick, damp rainforests, penetrating the lack of contact with the outside world that the tribes within had.

And closest to my heart is the Falcon.

Nowadays you see them, the birds tittering away in the trees. Mira herself, the great Heron, is the most graceful, beautiful bird of our world and our cosmos. But the sentient winged animals that once filled our society are gone.

If I could ask them a question, I would not ask them why and how they left. I would ask them how to fly.

The Falcons were the loyalists, as legend professes. They looked to Mira for guidance in all their problems. That's another thing, perhaps, that made them so worried. How different I was in comparison to the animal I looked up to.

My older sister, Jade, was a warrior. She graduated top of her class in the schools she attended and led the feline army troops. She was always against their ideas of leaders of each species, but barely protested when they knighted her "alpha" of the feline branch.

My younger sister, Basil, was a dreamer. I worried about her often. They laughed at her, called her a little beetle, said why don't you burrow back into the earth where you came from, shrimp. I hurried her along, tried to tilt her head up away from the grass for a moment with my sore neck craned upwards and my toes stubbing against the twigs I tripped over in my haste. She wanted to be an author. She wanted to burrow. Jade and I were born in the same litter, but Basil was born alone.

I was born between them. My mother said she heard an unearthly noise from Mira's totem as she gave birth to me, the second, the restless. The gibbous moon shone unblinking upon the crow's feather, painted blue, resting lightly upon the altar. For all that quiet, she said she knew I was born wild.

They said my siblings and I were the interesting bunch. When we walked along the path to school Basil stared at the ground, stepping carefully over stones and then stumbling against me as I dragged her forwards. I pulled her by one arm, my eyes locked upon the sky, and Jade stared straight ahead as she strode along like a haughty child born royalty.

I got into trouble. I howled at the moon and I dirtied my dresses and I set off firecrackers in the dead of night and I broke my arm and my shoulder and my hand and my leg and probably everything at least once jumping, falling from trees, too distracted by a passing wren to focus on what was in front of me.

That's why they were worried. That's why they were so surprised, even in the wake of my friend's death driving my drunken wildness into a cold sober, when I took on the job. They were surprised when I married Talos Brightdale (a snow leopard like her settling down so fast, imagine, they whispered). They were surprised when I had a son. They were surprised when love numbed my ferocity, if temporarily. It was temporary, I thought. Then my perfect little world fell apart. They were surprised when I took the second job, the one they thought I wouldn't be able to stand.

They weren't so surprised when I told them my name in the Arctic Rookery School of Magical Training would be Mother Falcon.

What is it like to soar?