The sky was a brilliant shade of blue the day I took my first flight through the air. The wind blew around me, carrying me higher and higher. I felt a sense of freedom that was unlike anything I had ever felt before.
The sun’s rays shone brightly on my face, bringing a warmth and peace that filled my heart with joy. With each passing second, the world below looked like an ever-shrinking painting, eventually becoming nothing more than a distant memory.
I was still a child the day I snuck out of the cavern that my family called home. I’d woken up early, my wings itching to reach up and touch the sky. Of course, there was the large chamber further in that I used when I was first learning how to fly. But even with the hundreds of feylight stones that my father had meticulously placed throughout our home, illuminating every dark corner and making it seem much brighter and inviting, nothing compared to the freedom I felt in the open sky.
I can still vividly remember that euphoric feeling of soaring through the air, feeling the warmth of the sun on my face and the gentle breeze on my skin. It was pure bliss and joy that took over, a sensation like no other. I had never experienced anything quite like it before, the way it made me feel liberated in a way I could never have imagined. As the world spun below me as I glided through the clear sky, for an unforgettable moment, I felt like nothing was impossible.
But it was short-lived.
My parents had kept a short leash on me, forbidden from ever going outside without one of them nearby. Years ago, when I was still a newborn, my village had been attacked by angry humans who had mistaken some of us as daemons.
Even when they realized we were just winged feyries, they hadn’t cared. Humans hated the fey, and they proved it by slaughtering over half of our village. The few surviving sylphs had fled, but not before the humans had severed their wings. My mother’s included.
She had to run on her own two legs with me cradled firmly against her chest. The bones of her wings were broken and painfully exposed. Though she never said it, I could tell that her wings still ached every day. But none of that compared to the emotional pain of never getting to fly again.
So, she and my father had found solace in the depths of the caverns. There, behind thick rock walls, we were safe.
Until the day I snuck out.
The humans saw me flying over the forest, spinning in circles and laughing. Maybe, if I hadn’t been so loud, I could have gone unnoticed. But there was no benefit in clinging to these feelings of regret and remorse. I could not change what had happened and it served me no purpose to keep dwelling on the past.
They shot arrows at me, yelled, and called me an evil daemon. I was just a little boy, terrified of the world that I’d never been exposed to before. I turned tail and flew away as fast as my little wings would carry me.
And led the humans right to the caverns. I fell out of the sky into my mother’s arms. As she held me, I saw the fear in her eyes.
Quickly, she shoved me back behind her toward the mouth of the cavern and slammed her hand down on the rune she’d drawn in blood. It glamoured the entrance and locked me inside the invisible wall.
I slammed my body against it, over and over again, tears streaming down my face. I screamed for her, but I knew she could not hear me. There was nothing I could do but watch as the mob of angry villagers paraded towards our caverns.
Father dove from the skies upon them, the garden hoe clutched tightly in his hand. He fought fiercely, but there was no stopping the onslaught of arrows, swords, and spears. I watched in horror as he fell to his knees in exhaustion, completely overwhelmed by their numbers.
I choked on tears as my mother called out to him in vain, her voice broken and weak.
The villagers roared in triumph as they approached my mother. Her back was straight, her head held high as she stared them down with a fierce and unyielding expression.
She unfurled her vast, graceful wings from her back and snarled at them with contempt. I couldn’t fathom what the humans were feeling when they saw my mother in all of her glory. But from my point of view, she looked like an angel. Her pure white feathers shimmering in the sunlight, somehow standing out against the bright blue sky.
My mother spread her wings wide and launched herself into the air with all the strength she had left. The villagers were taken aback by her sudden burst of power, but it was soon forgotten. They raised their weapons as one and started a barrage of arrows that flew through the air faster than I could see, but none of them could penetrate the wall in front of me.
She fell to the ground with a sickening thud, her wings limp and lifeless at her side.
I screamed out in anguish, my body wracked by sobs as I beat against the wall. But it was too late. She had already been pierced through by dozens of arrows.
The sky was a brilliant shade of blue the day I watched my parents die.
It had been entirely my fault, and I owned that. But as much as I blamed myself, it hadn’t been my weapons that had slain them.
The glamour lingered over the cavern for several hours after my mother’s death, but when it finally broke, I couldn’t move.
My eyes were so swollen that I could barely see. It didn’t matter. Even if I could muster up the strength to shift my gaze away from my parents’ lifeless bodies, I had nowhere to go.
It had taken the Wilde Hunt three full weeks to find me, a shell of my former self. Physically alive, but my emotions had been stripped away from me. I felt nothing, my mind having long since retreated into a realm of darkness and emptiness that I didn’t know how to escape from.
I’m not sure I ever did.