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Niala-1
“You were the one that insisted on flying with me, Nodak!” I called out over my shoulder as my wings turned in the midnight air.
“F-sh- feathers.. Damnit,” his words rattled out between each breath.
Nodak’s muffled clap of feathers struggled to keep pace.
I eyed about, looking for purchase, and circled a section of fog to stir it up enough to see what lay beneath. The top of an old cargo crane creaked, lurching as I landed. It could hold more. Nodak swooped in after, scrambling to grab at cables over the rusting beams of its bracing, playing an eerie song through the thrum and friction. His wings tucked in, feathers shivering into place with a rustle as he stared out through the grey and up into the starless sky.
Finally, he moved to take a precarious seat, legs dangling toward the fog-obscured ground.
“Think it’s going to rain?'' My first impulse told me to answer, but a quick glance let me see the voluminous mess of his hair adrift from high humidity and the static of impending weather. He caught my eye with a half-smirk. Then, pawing over his head, he sleeked it back down as best he could and grumbled to little avail. With hair like that, I had no doubt as to why we—they—were called the Wildlings.
“Hah. You guys’ hair is always so fluffy.” I pulled my hand through my own short silken black locks, self-conscious.
“I wish I had hair like yours.” He grumbled as he struggled to contain the mess.
I fished in my pocket for a hair tie. When the soft edge of one graced my fingers, I pulled it free and slipped up behind Nodak with a short step.
I ran my fingers over his head. His locks curled in generous waves and tangled over one another as I drew my fingers back through his thick mane of chestnut brown hair. Tiny knots prickled over my fingers.
He smelled nice, like sour green apples and the bite of fresh ginger. His hair was saturated, and I grumbled. For days after, those cloying pleasant notes would linger on my hands no matter how much I washed them, and he’d be proud of it.
“Nesting?” He asked me. His grin spread—all flat teeth, sharp canines, and a teasing leering promise. In return, I grinned back, baring my own longer, sharper teeth. He shrank a bit from my smile. Most people did.
I quickly averted my steel blue eyes.
While we might be the same sort of creature—humanoid, winged—I didn’t look much like them at all. I didn’t think I could be one of them, but I tried, and I wanted to be.
“Kiss my ass!” I jerked his hair back, eliciting a yelp as I secured the tie around the short ends of his hair.
I wiped my hands over his shoulders, lip curled in disgust, to get some of his scent off.
“Gladly.” He teased, reaching a hand to tug at one of my primary feathers. Yelping, I jerked his hair again in response and lifted my wings out of the way, pinning them to my back.
Fidgeting, my feathers rustled to lay flat for a moment. Then, something in my back twitched, and my wings made a sharp involuntary snapping sound.
Nodak flinched at the noise and my tug. “Ow! I don’t want to be the first Wildling to go bald! Chill.”
“Then stop being weird!” I whined as my wings snapped again, another instinctive clap. Short of drawing my wings back into my body, nothing could make me stop, when my emotions went sour.
They’re all being weird lately.
“Hush, or we’re going to get spotted.” He reached back for my wingtips again in a tease and found them out of his reach.
“Ass.”
With the sky bright and full above us, I liked sitting in the moonlight like this. Nodak scouted for humans below, not that he could see anything through the blanket of fog. ”Flying creatures,” they labeled us part ghost, part rumor, reaper, and in Kiromir's case, Mothman—I just knew him by 'Ada,' our word for dad.
I grasped onto his shoulders for support as the crane swayed. My palms tingled, as he turned to look back at me. A gleaming red light flickered deep in his eyes like a flame.
Startled, I jerked my hands away and leaped back, sending echoing twangs through the metal with my awkward footing.
Sometimes, I forgot the boys had their fires, but I’d never felt that kind intensity like that on their skin before.
I longed for the day that my fires came.
Nodak blinked his eyes, dismissing the red within them. He stared at me, searching my face for answers, I didn’t have, “Did you feel that?” He wheedled with an awkward grin.
With a half ass shrug, “Felt weird….” Something hummed beneath my skin, and I didn’t like the crawling sensations racking through me.
He sniffed, letting his eyes draw up and down my lithe frame.
“Your eyes are really dark right now, you know?” Nodak squinted at my face and tilted his head, a slight grin tugged at the corner of his mouth.
I could tell Nodak liked my blue eyes, commented on them often, but what he saw now was anyone’s guess but mine.
I never had the option of being ‘prissy’ or feminine. Only recently had I started to delineate male from female in my one-track mind. However, little moments like this continued to remind me of that difference. His solid male presence in his fires felt raw as the static of it prickled off his flesh.
I looked out over the mists of the night and the shapes of buildings in the town below. From up here, the world appeared to belong to us.
My wings snapped once more, and I succumbed to my urge, drawing them to their full spread before diving in a deadfall. A breeze from the cool sea air rolling in from the shore nearby caught and carried me with the current in a curling stroke, easing the path for my way back home. I had to escape the moment.
Nodak barked “Hey, wait up!” The crane creaked and jostled from his takeoff. A loud and alien twang sounded through the mists from vibrating heavy cables.
“How about you catch up?” I rolled in the air and looped back to hover over his struggling form. His flapping wings amused me. Another Wildling couldn’t do this, glide over another.
I wish I knew what I am, if not Wildling?
He let himself drop a few feet with a shrug of his wings, and my slipstream ended with a tumble. Angling, he caught me mid-roll by my arm and swooped in for a rough landing, rolling on to the grass and dirt, falling out in peels of laughter. But he stopped, the moment over as I pulled out of his grasp.
I struggled to my feet. “Oh come on, we were too close to the gr—” My words halted as I noticed Nodak’s gaze rove elsewhere. My eyes instinctively followed his.
A red-haired boy with freckles stood out by our barracks, staring. With a sour stone-faced look strewn across his face, it took me a second to realize it was Gaffriel, my best friend since ever.
Nodak’s upper lip twitched, and he drew his tawny brown wings inside his body with a rolling hitch of his shoulder. Gaffriel and Nodak stood at about the same height, both dwarfing me. However, Nodak had bulk on Gaffriel, tensing it as he loomed in on my friend.
I stepped between them.
“You ok, Nodak?” I didn’t know what bad blood had started boiling between the two of them, but I wished they’d just get a room and get it over with.
Nodak glanced over at me and then back to Gaff. “Peachy.”
He dusted himself off, shoved his hands in his grass-stained pockets and lopped off towards the barracks.
I shrugged and moved to the barracks as well, heading to my room. I couldn’t muster the energy to figure out why the boys were acting weird. Gaffriel watched and lingered back as if he wanted to follow me. “You going to bed?”
“Yeah.” My tone went flat as I attempted to conceal my irritation. My wings snapped in a quick flit, betraying me.
He flinched at the sound but continued on. “Your wings are looking a little rough.” He approached me and hesitated, nose twitching. I could smell it too: sour green apples, the spice of ginger, none of the sweetness.
“You smell like Nodak.” He wrinkled his nose and squinted at me.
Why do I feel guilty!?
“Yeah?” I walked over and wiped my hands down the front of his shirt, “And now you do too.” I felt like I had something to prove. No matter how pleasant Nodak smelled, I hated having it on me.
He wrestled my hands away, blanching at the smell. Despite the disgust, he smiled and twisted his lips, trying to conceal a smile. He couldn’t hide his feelings from me; I’ve known him too long. I think he was just happy I touched him.
He struggled out of the shirt and made a noise in his throat. He was more freckle than Wildling with the dusting paths of them sprinkled over his cheeks, shoulders, clavicles, forearms, and hands.
The playful spread of his wing’s markings flashed by in a glimpse, sharp outlines of spread wings lay proudly over his upper back. They twitched beneath the skin, and the scent of him surrounded me in his wake: summer, leather, warm.
My cheeks went pink and hot.
I stared at him for more than a lingering moment as my face fell into a guarded expression.
Did he notice?
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Yeah… no. I’m not unpacking all this right now.
I stepped back and kicked my rusting door, closing it so hard that the frame shook-- latch rattling about from my annoyance.
I had packing to do.
-
Morning dragged me kicking and screaming from bed and I grudgingly got up to greet the day, both middle fingers extended.
I walked outside, blackberries dotting the landscape, the thorned memories of my youth passing through my thoughts. We were never there to see them grow ripe and dark, but an elderly couple always picked and froze them for me while we were away every year.
Torga and Ranna, female partners, spoiled all the children in little ways like that. So I made a note to myself to go see them before we left for the migration.
Despite having lived in my tiny room in the barracks for the past two years, surrounded by all the fledges, our youth, I couldn’t call it home.
All my best memories came from the building before me, Kiromir’s home, a long premanufactured rectangle of a thing near the edge of the base. I made my way towards it as my hopes soared at the sight of my dad’s old camper sitting out front with the hood up. Twelve years, this sight had always greeted me at the end of spring.
Kiromir must have just pulled the camper out of storage. Though, he should have had it out days ago. Its small shell felt cramped, but we shared it well together.
If he’d ever found himself a bondmate, I might feel guilty about occupying his space. But for now, things went at their own pace for us.
I looked forward to the year that the Migration held a purpose for me. However, since I had no family in the flocks and no need to find a lover, the Migration just felt like an unwanted vacation for me.
While Kiromir searched for his true love every year, I looked forward to getting into as much trouble as possible with Gaffriel at my side.
Hopefully, Kiromir would find the perfect woman this year. I think he'd stopped trying, but half the tribe seemed to believe that Kiromir didn't know something about himself that everyone else did.
I eagerly called out to him, “Ada!” our word for dad.
His sun-weathered back bent low over the motorhome chassis with a tool in one hand and his head in the other. Something always went wrong with our RV come the start of traveling season.
Kiromir had named it the "Chata Ryel Nah' machine'. Our swears were kind of vague, but as far as severity went, that ranked right up there with the f-word and the C-word having a baby and naming it after a German dictator.
Kiromir turned his slim frame towards me. His ashen brown hair spilled down the back of his neck, contrasting with the ruddy tan of his skin. His wings were drawn by magic into striking tattoos that spread in wicked, tribal lines across his back, the same as Gaffriel’s, Nodak’s, and everyone—save for me. The sharp shape of wings spread below his shoulder blades in dark ink tones, much like the flowing marks on his arms and legs of bands and feathers.
His golden eyes cut to me, and I could feel the anger and annoyance boiling in gaze. He tensed, anger flaring, but softened when I dropped my pack of things onto a dusty patch of ground.
Since I’d gone to live in the barracks with the rest of the kids my age, Kiromir felt so alone, had stopped looking. Now, though, I could feel his excitement bristling on him, and he’d even braided his hair for the occasion, putting fresh feathers in a lock. My own braids needed to be redone, I noticed as I felt over the lock hanging at my temple.
The feathers he'd woven into his braid were silvery grey, plucked, and shed from his own wings, unlike mine, sharp black and silver things. Since mine differed from the rest of the flock, It served as a constant reminder when my wings were drawn into my ikris tattoos.
Part of me wanted to stop putting my feathers in my hair because of it.
He shifted, sending his ikris rippling over his shoulders, the skin tugging them. I compared them to my own— a drawn pair separated by a spear. Their ikris always looked so confident and strong.
"Hold this for me, Ni," Kiromir said by way of greeting.
I kicked my bag of belongings further towards the camper.
I reached my hand out, fidgeting, fighting fingers for space and sight as his wrench tweaked some new part that he'd just put in. It said a lot about how much I trusted him to blindly stick my fingers into any small place that he had a tool.
"I thought you had this done days ago!" Secretly, I felt a little excited that we may have to stay behind another day.
"I thought I did, too. I just got back from the auto store because it needed new air filters," Kiromir grumbled.
The chipped plastic frame of an air filter lay at my feet. As I moved, a piece of it crunched.
It had dry rotted rubber bands, duct tape, and coffee filters in place of actual filter material. I had a feeling I knew who would do something like this.
"Dimal?" I asked. Immediately, Kiromir's shoulders tensed.
I'd struck a nerve.
Yep.
I loved Dimal. The phrase 'half-ass' described him to a ‘t,’ and the macgyvered air filter highlighted a prime example of a half-done job.
“Fucking Dimal. If Letti didn’t just have a baby, I’d be over at their house giving him an ass-chewing,” he winced.
"Maybe it's a sign we should stay behind this year," I said with mock hopefulness before turning my focus back to where my hands were.
His oil-blacked knuckles tensed, and shoulders braced as he wrenched the bolt of some kind of band free. The key to handling our strength was finesse. From my years with him, I saw his delicate balance of strength versus what the breaking point of his tools were.
His complete and unbent set of sockets and wrenches was a testament to that.
"Fat chance," he muttered, spitting a low swear beneath his breath, "Alsooth!"
He always used Wildling swears; the creator knows I'd never gotten comfortable with them. Nevertheless, Letti had tried to teach me, and I felt confident that I would be half as good as her one day.
“How’s she holding up?”
I adjusted my hands. “I stopped by yesterday. She’s sore, and baby Mesin is fussy.”
A band came free with a twang. Hot black dust stained our faces, and we drew back to cough.
"Chata, ryel nah!" he said in sharp tones beneath his breath. The machine earned its name again, and a soft smile crossed my lips.
Nostalgia.
It reminded me of the first day we'd met, almost twelve years ago, his clumsy Wildling words and anger fierce in his eyes. It's why I hadn’t feared him when he got upset like most of the flock did. I'd witnessed his genuine anger.
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