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"Wizzy!" Vera sobbed. "Wizzy, Wake up!" Vera chucked her pillow at the plump form of the calbrin sleeping on his mattress on the floor of their one-room cottage.
"Hm! What! What?" He rolled to his feet, staggering clumsily in the dark and tripping over his blankets. "Omph! Vera! What's wrong? Are you hurt?"
"Yes!" Though she was crying, she couldn't help but laugh at him through the pain. "Please hurry! My back! It hurts. It burns, and it itches terribly!" she sobbed, writhing every time her night shift brushed the inexplicably tender flesh between her shoulders.
Wizkand fumbled with the lamp, giving up almost immediately and seizing his ash staff to summon a tiny blue light to hover over his head. He rushed to her bed, dressed only in his night pants, and Vera giggled again at the thick blue ringlets of hair covering the calbrin's dark tan chest.
"Turn around and let me see, child," he grumped.
Vera pulled her shirt up in the back, whimpering as the coarse fabric ran along her shoulders. "Please, make it stop! It's awful!" she wailed.
"Where does it hurt?" He drew the light closer, examining her unbroken skin, anxiously looking for the source of her discomfort.
"Oh, ow!" She hugged her blanket to her chest and sobbed into it. "My shoulders . . . between them. And a little here, too." She pointed to the center of her lower back.
"By the gods!" Wizkand gasped.
"What? What is it?" She squirmed, resisting the urge to scratch. The calbrin's exclamation terrified her. "Am I bleeding? What is it, Wizzy?"
"Oh, no, of course not," he quickly answered. His tone shifted to one of comfort. "This is nothing to be scared of, Your Majesty. I'll put some salve on them to ease their tenderness."
"What is it?" she whined shamelessly through her tears.
"Your wings, Your Majesty."
"What? Wings? But I'm only fourteen!" she cried, twisting in a vain effort to see her back. "I thought—"
"It is alright. I suspected this might happen," he soothed. "The hibernation spell must have affected your magic's development." He shuffled to his supplies to locate a numbing balm to ease her pain. "It will be difficult to make a daily salve that won't discolor the waking wing buds. For now, this will have to do." He withdrew a topical pain killer and returned to her. "The itching will come and go with your growth spurts, but the burning is just irritation from laying on the new growth," he explained. "Start sleeping on your side, especially for the first few months."
Vera sniffled and nodded, rolling her shoulders to ease the torment. She only succeeded in hurting herself and stiffened. "Why would hibernation make my wings grow early?"
Wizkand smiled, carefully spreading an orange, mint-smelling cream over the hard pale blue knots in the valley between her shoulders and the white knots in the hollow of her lower back. "Though your body was frozen, your mind and magic were not. You were growing more powerful while you slept. I should have anticipated this and been prepared. Some very powerful fae develop wings young, and those wings often grow very large. This means you have the possibility of being a spellcrafter like your mother."
Vera looked over her shoulder at him. "Are large wings good? Won't I look strange?"
Wizkand laughed, helping her ease the back of her shirt down. "Your wings store magic. Like other magic-born races, your life force is directly tied to your body. This means that larger wings can protect you more by storing more energy. It also means that they can become a larger target for your enemies. If you protect them, they will protect you."
Vera shuddered at the thought of losing a wing. She yawned into her hand, and her eyes drooped as exhaustion stole over her again. "Mother's wings were so beautiful."
Wizkand tucked her in, clearing the lump from his throat. "That they were." Vera was already asleep when he leaned down to kiss her cheek. "As are you, my child."