Rosa

There is a legend, told late at night in the flickering shadows cast by flame, of folly and pride and hope and despair. It begins with a vain, headstrong young Skydancer and his idealistic mate. They were the pride of their generation, with gleaming white coats and shimmering feathers the color of morning mist; they were destined, their elders assured them, for greatness. And so they were.

It began with a dare: to sneak into the Tangled Wood, the Shadowbinder's domain, and return with a symbol--a leaf. Sky was proud and capricious; he embraced the challenge despite his mate's protest. Dismayed, Cloud followed him into the dark realm, determined to bring him home safe. But as they entered the Wood, and she felt the shadows close around them, her heart whispered a different challenge. You could make this place better. You could bring to it light.

So when her mate selected the trophy with which he would return, she bid him wait, and set to work on a small grove. She tore down vines, cleared tangled weeds, began shaping it into a clearing. Sky was impatient at first, but he knew his mate well; he knew when she set herself a goal, nothing would stand in her way. So instead he helped her. Together they cleared the ground, and with combined magic, planted there a garden. A place of joy, of comfort, of light, there in the midst of the Shadows.

But the Shadowbinder was not pleased. Her Realm was as it was for a reason; this garden, this Light, disrupted the balance she maintained so carefully. So when Sky and Cloud finished their work and took to the sky, they found the way barred to them. The Shadowbinder would not permit them to leave her domain.

And so they remained. They became the Stormbound; bound to the skies of the Tangled Wood, tasked with warning those would would try as they had to disrupt the balance, bring Light to this place of Shadows. And so their descendants remain bound to this day, with coats of white and feathers of mist, yet now with darkened stripes along their backs, the mark of Shadow's touch upon them. And if you visit the Tangled Wood, and if you look up on a stormy night, you just might glimpse them, and remember that Light does not belong in the Shadows.

Or so the legend goes.