The young raven, a spread of flying velvet, lifts on the air
pocketed under her feathers, and she realizes how much freedom she has, how far
she can go because her wings billow and brace to carry her, strong enough for
her whole self. For six months she had been in a nest wedged on a red cliff,
and had just tumbled off the rock—rock that had been her home—where she would
slip and scratch across to reach her father nipping beetles and crickets to
feed her. All she had known
then was hunger. Now there is the taste of wind she breathes instead of
swallows, weightless and clean, and there is time, not measured by stomach
pains, or by courage to grip the rocks, but by skylines.
At nightfall, weary from controlling the current under her
wings, she impulsively collapses her black sails for a break. Of course this cuts her barreling into her first crash with the ground. She lies, as her chest expands and falls opposite the hard floor under her back, despite the brittle pain in her bones. The once moonlit sky is buried above a mile of strange
branches, indiscriminate foliage, and the odd chatter of night creepers. She might never see the red rock of home again. And as far as she's flown, she finds herself so hungry.
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