Breezetail

“We are in the likeness of our deity, little one,” her mother told her when Breezetail was just a hatchling. “And you are His spitting image.”

Breezetail has taken these words to heart, even to her genes, where the Emerald Smoke curls like leaves on the wind. She blows through life as a summer breeze, gentle and warm. The birds take flight with her as she careens through the air, Shimmer flashing in the sunlight while she dives among the kites in the Twisting Crescendo. Even the bamboo stalks of the Ascent seem to herald her flights, the beat of her wings sending air across them and giving them voice in a windy song.

She curls along the tallest of the bamboo, twisting around and flapping her wings mightily so that she may cause as many different notes as possible, to the joy of the hatchlings below. More than once, she has been tangled in a kite-string, much to the dismay of her clan.

“Windsinger,” she prays as she flies, voice rising with the music of the Ascent. “May there always be a breeze beneath my wings. May your guiding wind always carry me home again, even as I soar through the world.” Breezetail looks to the Cloudsong, where the colorful pinwheels turn and the Windsinger kite soars above, higher than the rest. “And may my wings always have the strength to fly through the storms that come.”

When she is old and battle-weary, with many hatchlings grown and gone, her wings will fail her, she knows. However, she knows with just as much surety, that the Windsinger will give her wings strength to carry her one more time – to him.