[open] any kingdom/herd ;

[Brine]

I sleep, a soft cocoon of snow blanketing my blued frame. Wings drape over like a dead brides gown, splayed in an abnormal fashion across my resting body. I know the crows have me surrounded; they come at the crack of dawn, they always do. As if little guardian angels have taken possession of their bodies, they now follow me without fail. Loud, obnoxious and deafening; sometimes I pretend it is mother.

Mother. Mom. That one. The pretty one. She had tragically passed but not to fear, for she is guarding over my awkward and lanky two year old body from beyond the grave in the form of a crow. Other times I pretend they just aren’t there, and pray to God one morning I will awake from a brief sleep only to see they have dissipated into the abyss.

My front left leg reaches forward, talons scratching into the freshly laid snow feeling the cold stone turf beneath, before the other follows suit. My shoulders roll forward and all my body to rise.

Water melted from the night before now clings to my feathers in the form of tiny shards of ice. It annoys me, the sudden weight that isn’t normally there. My jaw tenses and my eyes seem to ignite, my blood coiling up in my throat and the feeling of aggravation boiling up in the pit of my stomach.

The fuse of my irritation is quickly diffused at the loud bellow of a crow cawing out into the sky, a sight I cannot see from ground level. It then turns back at me, analyzing my abstract frame with feathered features, large wings, talons, and a brightened orange nose. It sees me like the freak I believe myself to be, I know this. I can feel it.

That is why they left me. I am beyond their scope.

I flutter my wings down, attempting to shake off the nuisance of ice before meandering through the forest, elegantly gliding between bark and twigs. I am young, my sunken hind quarters and indented ribs prove so. My lanky legs and uneven mane shows.

The break of the treeline exposes my position, the sun rising and pegging light along where I stand, illuminating every blue roaned feather and allowing my wings to cast shadows of blackness.

B r i n e

[mandan]

Is she beautiful? No.

She is a slapdash mix of bird and horse; ill-made and terribly new to be out on her own - just look at how sunk in her hind is, how slack her ribs are, but malnourishment can be fetching in its own right.

Maybe that is why he trails her through the brush. Because she is a grotesquerie of myth - horse and bird, more than he is as he is - addax-horned, big, and hulking. She is tiny and speaks to some lost part of him that begs his protection but only incites his own ire; they are all so tiny and precious, until they bat their eyes and throw you out of their hearts the moment you’re not around, knowing and having known just how you are - wild. He cannot help the bitter snort that gives his presence away, never mind that his scent would have done that if she had bothered to smell the air around her.

Mandan does not see a freak any more than he sees an almost-mare feathered and odd. It could be that he is faintly intrigued by her origins, by the way there seems to be a murder of crows tailing her (their caws are loud in his ears, loud enough to drown out all other sound). Or it could be the way the sun illuminates her, and the way her wings throw large shadows down on the ground. It never was more than curiosity, he lies to himself, ignoring the protective instinct that rears it’s ugly head inside him but he squashes it down with a grunt, pretending that he grunted only at the way a twig poked his shoulder.

“Little young to be out here on your own aren’t you?”

It is all that he can manage to say and he makes no apology for the way it comes gruffly out of his mouth. Manners never suited him much, and he made no use of them now, encroaching upon her space though oddly respectful of the span of her wings and how they were outstretched enough to cast shadows.



MANDAN

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