"Giullis! We've got one!"
The scampering of small feet echoed as they sloshed in the muddy water that filled the streets just outside of the small, beaten house. Two children clambered through the almost non-existent door, wiping their bare feet on the already filthy entrance mat. An older man sat, slouched, in a crusty and faded arm chair, looking up with bright eyes at the two children. They ran up to him and presented him with a large, white and black speckled egg; the perfect meal for them to share. The man called Giullis grinned at the two boys, taking the egg gently in his arms, but quickly his smile faded.
"Where did you get this?" His voice was frail but kind. The boys explained they had stolen it from the nest of an Aarakocra.
"Its mother was away, we were starving, we grabbed it and ran!" They were proud, but Giullis closed his eyes and sighed.
"Though hungry I am, I cannot in good faith eat the youth of an intelligent creature. It would be the act of preventing the life of a brilliant child much like you standing in front of me." He made to hand the egg back to the children, recommending they return it to its nest.
The egg was never returned. Its mother was sure that the contact with humans had plagued her soon-to-be child, and that it would prove fatal for the rest of her young. She chased away the children and begged them to keep it far from her nest. Upon returning to Giullis, the children explained with guilt that they could not return the egg.
"Then it is," he said once more in his kind, soft voice, "that the universe has blessed me with one more child." And so the Aarakocra egg was kept. With some assistance from an Aarakocran neighbor, who felt pity on Giullis and had known him long, the egg was kept stable until it hatched. Thus Celtra was born.
-
She was raised in an unforgiving city; Lashia. The rich conquered the poor, who were left in dirty villages directly under the floating city on which the elites flourished. Though she had no mother, Celtra had a kind soul and quickly made two young friends, coincidentally the two who had stolen her egg. She held no judgements on them and thought that if she were in their position, she would have probably done the same. Giullis was her father figure, and she was sad to see him go. He passed away from malnourishment a few short weeks after her hatching. He had provided her with all he had in order to see her grow strong. Though young, the Aarakocra mature quickly, and two weeks for her had felt like quite a few long years of being under his loving care. She would never forget him.
Before Giullis had passed, Celtra experienced odd dreams. Dreams about a place in the stars where she would play with other children, none with faces or names. There was a wispy someone, a person who would watch over their escapades and adventures as they romped around the starry playground. She was there what felt like every night, until slowly and steadily, the dreams stopped and faded. It was an odd memory, and it was the type of experience one wonders if it ever occurred at all.
Nelaeryn ("Nel") and Ailas, her two close friends, never gave up their thieving ways and in fact they could not, for they depended on it for survival. Dusk was usually the time they set out and promised to return with some sort of sustenance for their odd family; it became a routine. They now lived with their neighbor, Chamylla, the Aarakocra who assisted with the hatching of Celtra. She was not home much, and could not be described as a mother figure for Celtra - the passing of Giullis had quickly turned her strange. So each night the two boys would call to her that they were leaving and it would be normal, and Celtra would nod and tell them to be safe. She felt a sort of crippling guilt from eating stolen food, but as she grew and the ideas were pushed onto her, the guilt was pushed further into her heart until it no longer bothered her mind. All three of them were born into a cruel world with no choice but to do wrong, she reasoned.
