Forgetting The Sun

Beginning Of An End

I remember when I was young, when problems didn't exist because I was new to the world, naïve...ignorant. Now it feels like my whole life is about problems generations before me started and generations after will continue to have to fight. The country won't even be my responsibility to take over, and yet here I am worrying as if it's going to be.

I close my eyes and raise my head to the sky, wishing I could be anywhere but here. I wish I could be a bird, with the ability to go wherever my wings could take me. But with that thought a soft feeling of guilt sets in. Callahan is my home, my legacy, my namesake... I couldn't just leave it all behind just to stretch my wings. Selfishness pools in the bottom of my stomach, I didn't want the responsibility I was born with but I don't want to give it up either. A strong caw beside me brings me out of my thoughts and guilt, causing me to look down at the crow.

"Hey fella," I gently hold out my finger to rub along its neck. "At least one of us has wings to get out of here, I'm almost envious. No burdens on your back, no weight on your shoulders. You just come and go as you wish and no one will hate you for it."

I wince as there's a sharp bite to my finger and yank my hand away. 'Can birds be offended?' I think as I hold my hand to my chest. The crow just stares at me, it's eyes staring through me as if it's peering into my soul. It's unsettling. As if the bird did know what it was like to hold the weight of the world and I had just mocked it for even suggesting it didn't.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry. You're right. I don't know your story. Maybe there's more to you than just flying." The crow gives me a chuff before taking flight, stretching its wings and heading out for places unknown. But it will come back, it always comes to me. Or I find it watching me from trees in the palace garden. I can't remember when it started showing up, but as long as I can remember it's always been somewhere near me. My mother told me that animals pick their people, that they know who the good souls are. I'd like to believe that maybe there's still a goodness in me that I'm not aware of.

"Princess Ember, your presence is being requested from your father."

I turn away from the outside view of my balcony to look at my fathers advisor. I give him a small smile, "Thank you Henry, I'll go right now." As he nods I wait for him to leave my room, running a hand through my hair. I don't have a good feeling about this, not quite suffocating, more like my head is being held underwater and I'm not able to escape. On the other hand I could be overreacting and it could be nothing. It's doubtful, my gut feeling is rarely wrong but I'm hoping on my lucky stars that this is one occasion where it is.

"Ember... sit with me a moment." I ran over to my mother, burying myself in the folds of her dress. "I'm going to tell you a story about the animals that roam our home and Gods that used to walk among us."

I giggled, "Mom, Gods aren't real, father even said so. He said those were just bedtime stories."

My mother ruffled my hair. "They seem like bedtime stories now, but I promise they're real. As real as you and me, how else would we have the stories? Stories have to come from somewhere, darling, each story has truth to it." She pulls a wing shaped pendant from her neck. "This was passed down in my family for generations. It's said to grant wings to the user, it was a gift from the Gods themselves."

"If the Gods were real, mom, where are they now?"

"No one knows Ember. They and their animal counterparts were so common thousands of years ago, and now it's much less common. Or maybe it isn't, we could live among them still and not know. Or their animals could be with us, watching us and guiding us as we live our life. A silent hand pushing us when we need them the most. The luckiest people get chosen for a God to follow them, to favor them." Her smile was soft and she pulled me into her arms. "We worshipped them so heavily then. We prayed to them for a good harvest, for health during childbirth... We even prayed to them in times of war that all would be well after. Gods of the land, Gods of the sky. But there was one amongst them who was more sacred than the rest. He seemed to control it all, and no one dared disrespect him. Stories have it that he had the wings of a bird, and often was seen as a crow... or maybe it was a raven?"