Headwind has a minion!

Minion the Riverside Wren

Sunlight glinted off of a little blue and gray bird, fluffy with the remnants of down feathers. Headwind's little sister, Avis, was at the tiresome stage of childhood where she wanted to play with everyone but wasn't old enough or big enough to do what the others wanted to do. She hopped and pecked around Headwind, marveling at her fully fledged flight feathers. Headwind was steely gray down to her wings, then she was varying shades of icy blue. The long, lean muscles of a flyer gave her body a graceful bearing. Small but razor sharp teeth stuck out from her weathered beak, claws peeked from beneath her wings, and lined her toes. She had the appearance of a warrior, but she never had been. Headwind was just a traveler, worn and hardened from traveling in conditions no one else would.


“They say she's moonstruck” someone would whisper.
“Absolutely Loony” another snickered softly.
“Mad”
“Crazed”
“Daft”
“Dotty”
“Disordered”


There was no shortage of harsh words in Headwind's life but she didn't let it get to her. There was never a shortage of people who were afraid, or lazy, or simply unable, who would throw insults at anyone who was able, or courageous, or adventurous and lively enough. Headwind was very much lively enough, in fact the very blood in her veins seemed to be alive with the need to travel. She was terribly restless between flights and fidgeted nearly constantly. Even her closest friends questioned whether her willingness to travel unfavorable conditions was a benefit or a blemish to her character. She was named Headwind by her father, Ferdinand, who swore she was the most stubborn egg they'd ever had to hatch. “Always going against the grain, or against the wind as it turns out” her father had said.

Ferdinand was a wizened old warrior. He was a dull gray over most of his body, down to the tip of his tail, which still held a bit of icy blue. He would tell Headwind stories of his days as a fighter whenever she would hold still long enough to listen. His favorite started many years before, and ended nearly present day.


“Long after the human race had fallen their buildings had decayed into rubble, rubble wore into dust, dust washed into the earth. In the place of the mighty looming buildings forests burst to life, deserts spread, rivers flowed unhindered, and animals moved as they wished, without being hunted for greed. Some of those animals though, they'd spent too much time in the presence of humans. They'd learned greed, hate, racism, prejudice of every sort, and they learned how to arm themselves with more than just what they were born with. Any of them that were smart enough to pass down the knowledge passed down the greed and hatred as well. Most of all a race of gleaming golden Noktoa. They had branches sharpened and pointed so they'd cut through feathers, fur, or skin.”


“Ferdinand!” Headwind's mother would shout “That's no story for a little girl!”


“She's going to have to know some day” Ferdinand would say, before plunging back into his story, “Where was I? The Noktoa used these new weapons to kill, steal, and take over. They didn't believe anyone but the Noktoa themselves were worthy of owning and using any land with good hunting grounds or water sources. Many generations later, the Noktoa had learned hatred from their fathers and grandfathers. They had learned more about weapons than any of us could have seen. They tried to take our forest from us, for the access to the ocean and the islands. When they came, I was young, I was strong. I was a fighter, but I also traveled west into Nok as a spy. I found their homes and figured out what information I could. They were fierce and intelligent. They learned how to harvest fire from the great forests and how to sharpen gold”


That was all Headwind's father ever told her. He wouldn't go into details about the war or the fights. All that Headwind knew was that for several years the Noktoa had been reduced to women and children and they lived in a small forest on the furthermost edge of Nok. For the most part they'd been peaceful, not bothering to leave their forest. The females could be seen circling the moon far off to the west at night, hunting food for their children.


A wind blew in suddenly, and Headwind could feel the change in the air. She smelled the rain in the breeze and her wings tingled with anticipation. Her silvery head tilted one way and then the other, listening with super sensitive hearing, for the patter of distant raindrops. She was just about to take off when Avis hopped up to her.
“Can I come too?” She chirped.
“No, it's too dangerous. Go away” Headwind snapped, then she was off.


The storm was buffeting her first one way, then the other, but she was enjoying it. Lightning struck somewhere nearby and in the place of fear, adrenaline sang in her veins. A sudden updraft swept her off course, tousled her feathers, and knocked the wind out of her. She knew what she was made of though. She knew that she could handle it. She felt no danger encroaching, she felt no urgency or need to land. The only thing she felt was the need to sweep back up and to the east before she plummeted to the ground. No matter how far off course she got Headwind always felt a pull to the north. Even when she was traveling any other direction there was a light humming in her head that seemed to stay on the north star. Headwind took pride in her strange sense. She couldn't get lost, something in her wouldn't allow it.


Thunder echoed through her bones and lit her up with a desire to go further than she had before, but she felt a distant ache in her joints and wings and knew somehow that ice would be falling out of the sky if she traveled too far east that day. She would not be going to the great Island that day, she would not be perched atop the one lone tree, nor would she be pecking from the thousands of berry bushes. This came as a great disappointment to her. She loved to sit on the uppermost branch, worn smooth by her talons, and watch the mice scurry in and out of the vibrant green leaves and faded shrubs. She loved to see the flowers, ablaze in orange and red, ruffle in the high winds. They looked like dancing flames. Fire was a rare sight to Headwind. She loved the smell, the way it moved like angry liquid, and the way the light touched everything around it, but she'd only seen it once. When the very tree she longed to sit on was the lone survivor of a raging inferno, caused by lightning in the dry season. The flowers would remind her every time she sat on that tree.


With an angry grunt that chased away her memories, she flipped in mid air. She forced herself up against the sudden down draft to right her course and headed west away from the ice storm. The storm was in the east and the clouds broke up more and more the further west Headwind traveled. The light of the setting sun bounced off the clouds and shattered into a thousand golden shards. Rippling streams and lakes sparkled for miles, brighter than the forests around them, making the world look like it had been dotted with stars. Suddenly something moved in the distance. Headwind swept over the horizon but couldn't find it at first. Then something far away caught her eye. Like a bit of the sun itself swooped out of the sky and picked up a small, wriggling prey.


Headwind froze. Something clicked in her mind and she knew what she was looking at. With the knowledge she could somehow see more clearly. It was a golden Noktoa. A beautiful female that sparkled with life. She still couldn't see the prey, which was just as well, Headwind hated seeing the prey before it was dead. She preferred to eat berries or fish, something that she wouldn't have to kill, or could kill upon catching. Headwind could see the Noktoa's prey was still squirming and she looked away quickly.


She landed atop the highest branch of a tall red tree to watch as the last of the day's golden sky faded first to red, then to purple. For Headwind this was the most peaceful time of the day. The shrill animals and sounds of daytime drifted softly to sleep for the night. The quiet animals of the moonlight started to stretch out and awaken. The nighttime sounds were calm and quiet, most of the time.The day's colors drained, bleached white by the ivory moon, and sounds of panic filled the air.


Headwind was aloft in less than a second. Without thinking she pounded her way through the night, back into the thunderstorm, east toward home. She streaked through the sky, closer to home with every wing-beat, making the commotion ring more clearly in her ears.
“Avis” Someone shrieked. It was Headwind's mother. Her voice was ragged with agony, and the sound of it carried the pain straight to Headwind. Only once had Headwind had her flesh ripped open. She'd been flying in a Hailstorm and a chunk of ice had torn through her flight feathers straight down to her wing. She'd decided never to fly in hail after that, because it had caused her so much pain. What she felt when the single word “Avis” ripped through the air and straight through her that day was much, much worse.


She landed gracelessly next to her broken family. Just her mother and her father sat weeping next to a nest that seemed too big. There were two broken, sharpened sticks and one single golden feather.
“Dad it's the Noktoa, there was a golden one, I thought she was further to the west but...” Headwind trailed off, suddenly stricken by another thought, “but a skilled fighter wouldn't have left these behind. I think I saw a young male, golden and just large enough to pass as a slender female. Probably just old enough to fight. Probably starting to molt.”
Ferdinand was off before anyone could catch up with Headwind's hurried whisper. Ferdinand was too old for fighting, but he could more easily spy. His dark gray body was well hidden in the shadows and silence in flight had come with age.
“I'm going to find her,” his voice boomed behind him, “If this is a war, we're going to need help. Send someone to the great ice desert in the north, to the easternmost part of the desert there are more fighters, more spies”


Before Headwind even realized what she was doing she was soaring over an ocean, North-east, toward the people she'd never seen before, people who were skilled and trained, people who would help her. When realization finally did catch up with her she shook with pain, barely able to see in the blinding rain. She had to land on a small Island which sat about a mile out of her way. On that island she'd placed all of the treasures she'd found as a child. There, in a hole she'd scratched out with her talons, was a pair of old goggles. They'd been her father's when he would spy on the Noktoa. She slid them on in a complicated and jerky movement, then used a method that was rather like preening her feathers to make sure they were straight on her head.


She was off again as soon as the goggles were straight, cursing angrily at herself for having to go off course. With the sting of the rain gone from her eyes and her course very stubbornly set, she had little to do other than think. Why had Avis wandered out from the nest so far? Why had she been so mean to her before she left? What did the Noktoa want? Was Avis still alive? She shuddered and forced herself to stop thinking. She would only fly from that point on. She'd only fly as fast and as hard and as straight as she could to get to the people who would save her sister. She didn't really care at that point if there was going to be an all out war. She didn't care if it was just a hungry Noktoa who'd needed to hunt. She didn't care if all of the warriors in the world came and it turned out to be no great matter. She just wanted her sister back, and she would call the warriors down from the sky and up from the graves if she could, just to get her back.


When the hail started to fall, Headwind was jolted out of her numb, thoughtless flight. Large chunks of ice hit the water all around her, scraped against her beak and caused her to tumble around in the sky. She gasped as she saw the first pink sparkles of sunrise break over the ice in the distance. The light broke over the ice differently than it broke over the water, and even though the land was too far away for Headwind to see clearly, she could see the way the light broke into sharp points rather than wavy ribbons of color. She didn't see any closer land in sight. She had flown for eight hours straight through damaging weather, and didn't have a place to land. She was exhausted, bloody from hail, and too emotionally drained to care whether or not it was a good idea to keep going. The wind gusted violently back toward her, pushing her back with every forward stroke and shoving dagger-like chunks of wicked hail into her face, but she pushed on.


After what felt like days, when the sun was high in the sky, invisible behind the threatening clouds, the storm had calmed. It had only been hours but she had somehow struggled through a hail storm all the way to the ice desert. All of her effort and sleeplessness landed on her at the same time. Suddenly her wings wouldn't move, her wounds stopped hurting, and she didn't even notice that she was plummeting to the ground, amidst at least a hundred huge, well armed, male birds. All of whom looked just like her father had in her most distant memories of childhood; the very memories that were fading by the second, becoming blurry and unimportant. Right as she smacked into the ground she managed two words.
“Avis. Noktoa” she blacked out.


A harsh and bright light cut through the thick safety of unconsciousness, blurring and shifting the meaningless shapes that bounced around in Headwind's head. Shapes seemed to shift and take on meaning. She was flying, she thought, maybe she was even dead, her mind shouted and twisted around the idea. This flight seemed so effortless that she scarcely believed she was flying. She was caught in an air pocket, a perfect mix of updraft and downdraft that kept her floating right in a straight line. Other actions snapped into her conscious mind as she pondered. There were birds around her. They formed a circle, keeping her safely in the middle. There were birds above her, whose wing-beats created the downdraft. There were birds below her, whose wing-beats created the updraft. The shoreline of her homeland was just breaking into view when one of them finally spoke.


“Don't move too much, we're almost there. You look just like your father” The voice was gravelly with age, withered but wise.
“You knew my father?” She croaked. She was thirsty, dry throughout her body, and hungrier than she thought she'd ever been.
“Yes, I did. He fought alongside me. Avis, is she related? Have they killed her or have they taken her?” the questions flew out faster than she could keep up.
“Sister. Took her. Help” she couldn't make full sentences anymore. She was starting to feel sick and dizzy again from lack of food.
They alighted softly on the warm sand and were met with cheers and sobs. The first person that made any sense to Headwind's dazzled mind was her mother. Tears streaking down her face. Then her father, whose face was grave.
“No, she's...” Headwind couldn't even force the rest of the words to leave her cracked and swollen beak.
“Ferdinand?” The one who seemed to be the leader spoke up.
“Hailstorm, my friend! The news is bleak,” Ferdinand spoke up “I found feathers, but could smell no blood. They've plucked her but she's still alive. They're shaming her.”


Shocked gasps vibrated in Headwind's ears. She was having trouble keeping up. She caught only the words 'Prisoner of War' before she started shaking her head violently back and forth. A terrible high pitched noise was ringing from somewhere, seemingly distant and disconnected from the earth, but it was only seconds before headwind felt the stinging in her throat and snapped her beak shut. The noise stopped, but Headwind still didn't believe she'd screeched in such a way. Females of her breed couldn't normally shriek. They could sing, scream, bellow, cry, shout, but not shriek. Shrieking was a warrior sound. Shrieking was a sound that meant the warrior was ready to kill.


“She's worse than we thought” someone shouted near her.
“Get her water! Food! Now!” A voice snapped.
Her mothers gentle song washed over her, “Don't fret, my love. Rest. We've got a hundred warriors and more on the way. Weather it's war or a rescue mission, sweetie, we'll come out of this alright. Please try to relax for now. You're hurt”


She closed her eyes and allowed herself one brief moment of thought. Food brought more life into her. Healed her from the inside out, slowly and evenly. Water gave her lungs room to stretch and gave her mind room to concentrate. Headwind was female, and Headwind was injured, but she knew that on a moonless night, when hail would pound the forest of Nok, she would be the one to swoop in like a breeze and rescue her sister. She would come when they didn't expect it, when they couldn't run, and couldn't protect themselves. She would kill anyone who tried to stop her. Headwind made the decision as she lay nearly useless next to her mother that as soon as she could she would blitz through the forest of Nok. She would enter a traveler and come out a warrior.



_{Story by Chrystle
Profile and Overlay by ShalashaskaLayout edited by Dolly}