She woke with a start, blinking into the rising sun. Her body felt like a tru... tree had hit her, and she had a massive headache. And that was where it all started. Why did her whole body ache? What had she been doing? And what was a… She felt like her thoughts had given her a different word, but tree stuck.

Strange. To have words suddenly missing.

She looked around, registering the comfy nest of blankets and pillows, and the horribly beautiful view out of the big eastward window. Deep down, she saw sprawling hills, forests, plains, and a lake somewhere in the distance. Had she always been able to see so far? And why did she feel that the view was horrible? It was beautiful! Why, with the rising sun casting everything in a soft light. The whif of nausea she had at the sight vanished.

“Rethia, you awake?” someone called for her. At least she thought it was for her. Rethia. She rolled the name over her tongue, tasted the syllabels. It felt like her name.

“Coming!” with a groan, she crawled out of her nest to stand on her talons and stretched her wings and neck muscles. Looking down, she noticed the black-and-white checkered cloth bound around her waist. It felt strange, as if she should be wearing more clothes, but really, what for? She was covered in feathers from her neck to the talons on her legs. The feathers had a nice brown-white coloration, and her wings ended in blue flight feathers. Her wings also sported three claws each on the ridge, similar to fingers, which she now used to push back a lock of her short-cropped red hair.

“Rethia! Do I have to drag you out again?” The voice was getting impatient.

“No, I’m coming!” Clumsy, she walked to the entrance of her room, covered by a cloth hanging in a rioting mixture of green-red-blue. Pushing it aside, she was stunned by the scenery.

Before her grew a village out of the cliffside and rocky outcroppings. Colorful houses, built on stilts and connected by hanging bridges, dominated her view. Narrow paths in the cliffside connected caves. Every house had a different color. A different pattern. And yet it somehow matched. A multilayered, multicolored village of breathtaking beauty.

Harpies of different sizes and forms flew between the buildings, carrying baskets in their talons. A group of three decsended near a particularly large cave entrance with a large animal carcass in their grasp. A squawking sound that may have been a song floated past on the constant breeze.

“Finally! Good morning, Rethia.”

“Good… morning?” she answered haltingly, her gaze drawn to the intersection right in front of her house. Was it even her house? Who did it belong to? Maybe she was just a guest?

In front of her house stood a stocky white harpy with big talons. She wore a sash of skyblue with green stripes. The white harpy looked somewhat sleepy, until she cocked her head and stared at Rethia.

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“You’re different today. Yesterday, you barely dared to leave home and you were pale the whole time. I practically had to drag you to the training grounds.” She cocked her head to the other side. “Yes, you’re definitely different. What happened? An epiphany?”

“Yester.. day?” asked Rethia, blinking at the white harpy. Someone who knew about her past! “What was yesterday? i can’t remember anything about yesterday. Or the day before. Or… oh, please tell me! Who am I? Where am I? This is so confusing! I woke up and I can’t remember anything!” Tears welled up in her eyes.

Sure, there was knowledge, like what a house looked like, that the sun rose in the east and set in the west, that the harpy in front of her was a snow owl, but that was all common knowledge. There was nothing about her. About her life, her past, her family. Had she friends?

“You don’t remember?” asked the snow owl, eyes widening. “Not even that you fell into the lake during flight practice yesterday?”

Rethia tried to remember, but nothing came to mind, so she shook her head.

The next moment the snow owl stood in front of her and her head was pulled downwards by powerful claws, her hair carefully parted.

“What are you doing?” huffed Rethia, struggling to stay balanced. It wasn’t easy to walk around on talons! Then again – how would she know? She was a harpy, she had never had anything but talons to walk around with.

“Checking if you hit your head. Do you know my name? What day of the week is today? What month do we have?” shot the owl in quick succession.

“It’s… Thondersday? The… the fifth day of… the Sylphid month? And you… you’re name… uh…” she stumbled. Somehow she knew the date. As if someone had whispered it to her. But the owls name eluded her. She knew the owl. On a subconcious level, she felt that the owl was familiar, that she had seen her before, had talked with her, had spent many hours together, but she couldn’t remember.

The owl let go of her head, holding her shoulders instead and gazing into Rethias eyes imploringly. “My name is Isatha.”

“I… can’t remember,” whispered Rethia through tears. She wanted to know! Who was she?

The owl, Isatha, shook her head. “At least you remember something, if only common knowledge, it seems. I can’t find any obvious wounds, so I assume you didn’t hit your head. I’ll bring you to the shaman. Maybe she knows what happened to you.”

Instead of outright flying, like the other harpies, Isatha led the way through the maze of bridges and ledges, climbing up ladders, hopping down to platforms, crossing through large communal buildings.

Rethia followed slowly, wobbly on her talons and clumsy while climbing. Her wings always got in the way. But luckily, no one complained. Probably, because no one else was using the bridges, except for the very few old harpies, or the sparse amount of hatchlings.

“Isatha? Why are we walking?” she asked after climbing up a particularly nervewracking rope-ladder.

“You… right. Maybe it’s a good thing you forgot everything. You haven’t learned to fly yet. Because of your absolutely irrational fear of heights.”

“What?!”

“Funny, right? A harpy that can’t fly because she fears heights.”

Rethia stopped to look straight down, through the gaps in the bridge and nothing happened. No fear of the huge distance to the ground, no shaking, no nausea, nothing. “You’re making that up,” declared Rethia after her test. Then she fell silent, remembering her first thought about the scenery outside her window: horribly beautiful. Maybe there was something to it? But shouldn’t such a fear be innate? Could something like that really be forgotten so easily?