09-07-2016, 05:54 PM
The wings are commonplace, compared to what he was:
A boy of glass, translucent skin, wings paper thin and unable to bear his weight. A boy who had died, and come back; impossible.
(He doesn’t remember dying. He remembers her screams. He remembers a cracking noise, like tree boughs breaking. He remembers waking up in the field, alone.)
Where others bemoan this new morality, he cherishes it, for glass was never a blessing, only a curse, only a weight set upon his shoulders, the reminder: you are ever so easy to break.
A mare nears him, dapple gray. He no way of knowing if she was once magic and has been stripped of it; or if she has always been this way.
(For she is the first to see him like this – see a stallion who is solid, a stallion who could be a warrior, a stallion who does not have to watch his every step lest he fall and shatter.)
“Hello,” he says, and dips his head slightly, “I’m Contagion. Welcome to Beqanna!”
That answers part of the question – she is new, she was not bred here as he was (and oh, he was bred in such odd circumstances, between a woman once dead and a man who took far too long to die).
“What’s your name?” he asks then, because it seems polite. On his back, the wings shift again, and he marvels once more at the strength of them.
contagion
be careful making wishes in the dark