let your fists come undone; lior

[exist]

while collecting the stars, I connected the dots.
I don’t know who I am, but now I know who I’m not.

Flying is surprisingly difficult, and falling, at least gracefully, is not really that much easier. She plummets into the thick of the forest, half falling and half gliding, a silhouette of near copper and indigo as she disappeared beneath the uppermost branches and their canopy of rich green leaves. The trees reached for her, long spindled fingers of wood stretched out to catch her as she fell. They left welts along her skin, faint ridges of angry puckered flesh, and bruises buried deep and invisible beneath the orange. But they could not catch her so much as slow the progression of her graceless descent. She landed on her feet with a thud, keeping her balance only by spreading those soft, downy wings wide above her withers. The feathers were the richest, reddest shade of copper, much deeper than the pale rust of her body, and so soft they felt like the whisper of warm air against her back. 

But when she flung them wide above her, she felt them snag in the brambles she had fallen among. Reflexively, hastened by the bite of thorn and brier, she tried to pull them back to her, to pull them flush against her withers and sides. But the feathers were trapped, held open awkwardly by the ugly green of the plants woven tight around her. A sound fell from her lips, a bubble of frustration that had been trapped inside her chest for too long, and it filled the forest around her like a chime. 

She hadn’t expected wings to be so difficult. In her memory, in those first moments of life, born on the side of that mountain, her wings had felt like a part of her. No different from her eyes or her ears or legs crumpled beneath her. The magic in them had been intimate, had been hers. But maybe they had been gone from her for too long, because they felt different now, not changed, but somehow unfamiliar. Or maybe she was unfamiliar, maybe she was changed. She heaves again and this time she can feel feathers pulled free and skin pulled apart, raw and pink and aching beneath the feathers that still remained. A faint glow was the only indication of magic as her body began to heal the wounds. Closing her eyes and furrowing that dark, copper brow, she coaxed the magic in her wings, willing them to shift as she knew they could. Small, no feathers. But she had about as much experience with shifting as she did flying, and the result of her efforts was odd and ugly – a half shift between those dark russet feathers and the iridescence of glimmering dragonfly wings.

With another sigh, a sigh colored with just a touch of distress now, she gave up her efforts of shifting enough to pull her wings free, and relented to a forced stillness that made her skin crawl. It wasn’t that she minded the forest – she was no stranger to the brush and tree, she and Leliana had probably explored more of Beqanna than most had as children. It was that she was trapped and alone, something unusual for the twins, and she could see by the red and gold of the sky through the trees that what light still remained would be gone soon. Pulling gently against her wings again, testing the pain and pressure of the brambles braided through the feather and thin iridescence, she weighed the pros and cons of throwing herself forward, of ripping them free. She could, in theory, heal herself, but the image of such mangled wings that formed in her mind forced a stillness over her that she was not eager to shatter.

There is a sound then, a bird or a fox, or maybe someone passing by, and she can feel her breath stutter and catch in her chest. Those green eyes flash and widen, half-hidden beneath the tangles of an unruly forelock as she waits indecisively, wondering if it would be better to remain unnoticed or if perhaps this might be someone who could help. But she finds that the decision is made for her when a dark shape solidifies in the trees ahead, a pair of quiet eyes on a dark face that, for whatever reason, she trusts instantly. “Hi,” she says, breathless and sheepish, warm beneath the weight of his gaze, “it turns out that I’m really awful at flying, and also not so great at falling.” A pause and she brightens a little, the smile on her mouth slight and uncertain, barely there, like a question she needs him to answer. And then, as if it isn’t completely obvious, “I can’t free my wings.”

Exist