She watched people, during the day whilst her mother did her strange, odd things. Some days it was placing rocks high up, on another it would be carrying Flats around, giving out food or drink to those who needed it, making things clean afterwards and barking at those around her.
She rested her nose on the edge of her nest and watched today's activities. This one was Cube Moving, lifting cubes from one place and putting them in another. Soon somebody would come around and take them elsewhere, but for now, they were building up into a satisfying pile. The cubes were coming off the Bad Floats, and she was giving extra attention to the process today, making sure nothing bad happened. She didn't like it here much, but trusted that her mother knew how to stay safe.
She was struggling with words. The people, her mother included, all knew what words were, and would bark them at each other all the time without care or thought, but they so rarely explained to her what they meant! Being left to infer on her own, to try and warp it to what her brain insisted communication should be, it was so tiring.
There was the bark that was her mother's name for her, she knew that one, but not what it meant, and there must be a meaning. Each bark had a meaning, and sometimes those meanings were shared between things, but she hadn't yet worked out what those meanings were, exactly, or how they fitted together.
She was learning though. She hoped she was learning… This was too hard for her to not be learning something!
She was learning to fly, too! Her mother allowed it when they were alone and inside The Big Dusty, as she thought of the big building near home, but for some reason, People weren't allowed to know she could fly. She was to keep her wings back when possible and to stay out of the way.
That last one she understood at least, people didn't look where they were going and were liable to kick out by accident. She didn't react well to getting kicked, even if she knew it wasn't intentional.
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
She had been learning in other ways, too, playing with her sense of Self. One day she had decided she wanted a change, turning her scales from their beautiful blue to a deep, natural green, and her mother had made pleased noises, clapping her paws and calling her the good things, and something of the worry that always clouded around her had disappeared.
She kept them that colour, for her mother's sake, but she didn't know why it mattered, until she noticed fewer stares in the street, less pointing from the little ones. They had gone together into a big home filled with patient knowledge and looked at the scripts there, and her mother had reverently shown her painted images of beings a little like herself. They were green, it was possible she had explained, and green was normal, people expected green.
Maybe on another day, these things would have rankled, blue was a much nicer colour, and her wings ached to fly, but she was so very tired. Lately, she spent most of her time sleeping, and it still wasn't enough. She always flew in the mornings, or beat her wings, or jumped off things as her mother cheered her on, but without that encouragement she would have slept straight through the waking time and the walking times, coming round only for meals.
With a yawn, she half shut her eyes again. Cube days were the worst, her favourite was the food-chewers, where they took the prey and chewed it up into pieces, parcelling out the big bits to others and throwing her scraps throughout the day. That was a safe place, she had no need to be on alert there. Unlike here.
With a sigh, gave the Bad Floats one last glare, and drifted off for a moment, letting her eyes slide shut. Her mother would wake her if there was trouble, and she wouldn't be asleep for long.
-
When she awoke, it was too gentle hands lifting her out of her nest. She didn't open her eyes, she knew by everything around that it was her mother, by the magic that swirled around her, by the shape of her hands, by the way she murmured stories of the day to her as they walked back home in the evening air. She smelt of sweat and dirt and food, and she resisted the urge to release her Self, to clean off those smells and leave only what belonged. She hadn't learnt how to stop the… clothes? Yes, that was the word, the clothes from falling apart, they wanted to be earth as much as everything else did, and she didn't have the willpower to overcome that, yet. Soon, though. Soon.
As she snuggled her nose into her mother's neck, she dreamed a dream of flight.
It would come, in time.