Sights Set Higher

A mark of holiness. Holy or not, at least it had been wondrous. As a child, it had been awing that I possessed the same eyes as my wingless sisterlings, the Myw. Even now, near twenty cycles later, the night I discovered my sight is vivid in my mind.1

I had been eight-moon, busy at play with the other pups near my 'span. We climbed halfway up the long trail of steps hewn from the stone wall of our lightless home-cavern before launching ourselves off into the outstretched wings of our ever-hovering Omas.2

It was a point system. One point for reaching one of the three ladies that waited four full-beats beyond the edge of the well-worn jumping step. Three points if you reached all the way to Old Mut, who perched atop a stalagmite halfway between the stairs and our mothers’ roosts. No points if one of the moon priests-in-training had to swoop in and save you. They waited below the stair in little alcoves, supposedly meditating, but everyone knew they were moping about being stuck with rescue detail. I was never rescued. Only babies were rescued.3

I knew something was wrong when Jarvis, my older, third cousin, my dear puppy love, took a lazy, well-practiced leap...and plummeted. Even worse, the moon priest that swooped to catch him missed. Jarvis was caught by a Flightless, a Nothing unable to gather food for the colony and therefore deserving no share. Flightless or no, though, the Nothing caught Jarvis at the last moment in a great leap and saved the pup from breaking his wings, still supple-soft, by taking the force of the fall on his limbless back.4

I was hunched over the ledge with the rest of the pups on the stair, chirping madly, trying to tell what was going on in the gloom below, when a strange…feeling from above came ever-closer until my eyes constricted, and for the first time I saw Jarvis down below. I would like to forget that vision of a large, upturned snout and wrinkled folds and to go on thinking of the older pup as I had before (pleasingly sharp wing angles that swept through the dark), but it was my first sighting and therefore unforgettable. My second sighting was, unfortunately, even more disturbing. Bundling up my third cousin in dark great arms, holding him to a body that was muscular in a way that no flyer could support, was the Nothing. To me, to my horror, he did not look like nothing, and I turned away rather than stare at the Flightless that flew in the face of everything I had been taught. The Flightless were supposed to be less than ugly. They were supposed to be nothing.5

So I turned my head away. If only I had turned towards the bottom stair, as the other pups had, but wanting to turn this strange, new gazing as far from the Nothing as possible, I looked up. I looked up and saw them: the priestesses. They walked down the steps, globes of glow in their palms, their Myw sisterlings rubbing at their ankles. I only later learned that the globes were glow. Glow was painful. Glow hurt. But to me, the globes were beautiful.6

While the other pups whimpered and backed down the stair, I took several steps up and took in the faces of the priestesses. Thanks to the globes, there was more detail to see than I had ever been able to make out by chirping, though thankfully they weren’t so grotesquely...intricate as Jarvis. As I came near, those faces twisted in a way that seemed strange, but pleasant. Later I would learn it was called smiling. The priestesses smiled at me and asked me my name. I gave my puppy name, much though I loathed it and yearned for the name I would receive after my first flight Out. One of the priestesses called out for my mother. Chula's Dam, they asked for—no, demanded.7

Chula's Dam, the female called, like my aunts would sometimes cry out Skimmersea's Pup in that tone that said I had better come quick or else. My mother came. She flew to several steps below us, then painstakingly walked the rest, although she had prided herself in never taking a step since her first flight. She walked bent in the way the Nothing bent, head bowed at a deep angle where her ears were near-useless for gazing.8

She reached me, and the eldest of the priestesses told her I had the mark of holiness, and my mother held me tight in her wings for the next three nights until the priestesses took me away. 9

They took me Up. I spent the next ten moons meditating and being moved from room to room, each with more glow than the last. There were many Omas in the glow-lit temple complex, but only a few pups and none near my 'span, so I turned to the Myw for friendship. They are wingless like the Nothings, yes, but attractive enough that their limbless backs are not unsightly, and anyone who has seen a Myw launch herself into air knows better than to call the sisterlings Flightless. No, the Myw are just that sort of female too snooty to fly somewhere herself when someone else may carry her. As they are my friends, I don't hold it against them.10

My best friend I call Bast-et. If he finds offense at the female name, he must simply put up with it because he was the one who chose to be born a male sisterling. He is dark and pert-eared with a pointed chin. He reminds me of my other puppy love, the one I was never able to shake.11

Secretly, I think I could have shaken it on the night of my first flight, but it never was to be. The priestesses serve the sun that only they can stand to gaze upon. The priests of our people are different, servants of the moon, the heavenly orb by which the brotherlings fly, and so the brother pups who fly most impressively on the night of their first flight are accepted into the ranks of the priesthood. From what I remember of my short glides from the step to the Oma's grasps and of my Mother Skimmersea's enviable wingspan, I likely would have grown to be a high-ranking priest's consort. However, from what I remember of gliding, I would not have been a good consort. I glided, not because I was desperate to keep Jarvis's chirps focused on my wings, but because I liked it. Were I wed to a priest, I would have broken free of his ceremonial roost inside of three nights, taken to the sky, and damn the impropriety. Come to think of it, my mother had done just that.12

…I hate meditation. I never truly become one with anything, but instead think of everything in convoluted order until I feel dizzy and need to reach out to steady myself on the statue of the first Myw, Mother of us All. Like I would not have made a good consort, I am not a good priestess. I do not sit in solitude and stare at the statue of Mut as I meditate. I stand with the statue steadying me, only Bast-et with me for solace as I set my sights higher.13

———14

How cruel is it that I am gifted with Myw eyes and can see the sun in all its radiance but can not fly to it?15

They cut my wings. The day before I would have flown my first flight Out, they forced me down and severed my wings at the third joint. I cried. I cried for my mother, who had left her man to keep her flights; I cried for my puppy love; I even cried for Jarvis; but none came. Now, this morning I stand by the statue with heavy, gold wings, wings of my status as a high priestess. I was given the position solely because of my appearance: my sleek frame and regal wingspan, long even with the flight webbing hewn off. The gold is agonizing in the glow to all but the priestesses of my people, but glorious to chime against. 16

Altogether I cut a fearsome and awing figure, even in the dark of the priest's cavern where Jarvis, now a high priest named Darkfall, sometimes attempts to woo me. He is very full of himself, and I think that, had he Myw eyes, he would still be blind to the fact that I have no interest in him. I only enjoy the too-short flights to the priests' domain when several of the priests-in-training ferry me in a sling and I pretend I still have wings.17

I have offered, many times, to grant my puppy love a similar ferrying flight Out, but he always respectfully declines. I suspect he fears the priests-in-training will drop him into the sea in disgust, but I like to think that he is fearless as I first remember him when he launched from his clawhold on the cliff face of the home cavern to save my idiot cousin who had plummeted, blinded by dim candlelight in murky globes. I also like to think that he loves me, though I fear that he feels nothing for me.18

———19

At last the sun reaches the point in its path across the sky that marks the end of my daily meditation. I walk through the curtained doors that lead to my waiting attendants, who, in theory, had meditated on the cushions framing the entryway. In practice, half the time the flighty things skive off to preen and select pretty things for the evening they will spend with the priesthood.20

I walk past them, and I do not enter the litter, much to my attendants' dismay and the hastily shushed sigh of relief from the youngest of the blindfolded Nothings that bore the litter's weight. Let the priestesses walk. They kept their wings and did nothing with them save to adorn them with heavy, reflective metals. They could fly but instead scrabbled and clawed to be among the select few that the priests ferried to their temple complex so they need not fly.
Need not. I could not. I could have, had I looked away from the glow. So damn them and let them whimper as they walk.21

I stride down the halls towards my quarters, my pace faster than is decorous, much to the groans of the priestesses, though the Nothings do not seem overly taxed. Good. My puppy love couldn’t see the look on his face after he returned from attending to a collapsed temple Nothing, but by the light of the dim candle globes I kept in my quarters, I could.22

I leave them all at the door of my quarters, the four priestesses sent to limp off and the litter gone off to only Bast-et knew where, the Myw having leapt from the crook of my arm to the main throne-like seat of the thing and curled up for a nap. Once inside, the gold wing-extensions clatter to the floor as I tear them off, and I look up to find my wingless puppy love already materialized in the shadows beyond the lazily lit entry hall. 23

Much lighter, but horribly off balance, I manage the six steps required to carry me into the pool of darkness before I fall, but my Nothing catches me in his dark, muscled arms. He carries me to my bed and makes to leave me there, but I won’t have it and wrap what remains of my wings around him. After the usual awkwardness we settle together. 24

He does not love me. He stays, I think, because I feed him. 25

But as long as I have food, he will stay, and I will be content to be in his arms and only dream of flying.
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