Weaver & the Wight

the Unweaving Prelude

"They will never hurt you," said the angel to her daughter. "I promise you, Sylvian."

Green grass swayed beneath her bare feet as the oncoming storm approached from the dark horizon. This was the calm before the storm, air still with anticipation. The cold ground was moist with morning dew, fog settling on the weary grass.

The figure wore pale-white daisies in her hair, and in her arms her young infant held tightly onto a blood red carnation. Her warm scaly wings were folded between her back and her mother's arms. The angel kissed her child on the forehead.

Thunder drummed in the distance.

Why? she asked herself. Why in the name of our people have they done this to us? They've already enslaved us, why do they care for a few renegades like ourselves? The white angel just wished she could've seen the day centuries ago when her people had been free. She almost felt selfish that while she was living a secret life as free person, the rest of her people lived in factories and—

She remembered a dozen yards back her husband lay dead in the soil. He had died protecting her and their daughter. At least the Aurolite lay dead next to him.

"Sylvian," the angel in white murmured again. "Don't you forget him. When you're all grown up, remember what your father did for you. Please."

The infant mewed softly.

The woman wondered if these were false hopes for her daughter. Would she ever really see the light of an older age? How soon before they would find her? How long before they took her eyes and her voice like every one of her kin before her?

She thought Stran would have been a safe place for a renegade like herself, her husband, and their young child. A place where her daughter could thrive and grow up happy. It turned out she could barely last there a year before they found her. It was that damned Queen, she thought to herself. She gave us away, didn't she? She was always just one of the Aurolition's measly puppets.

The air was still calm and heavy, the howling winds just about to encroach on the valley. The storm was growing ever closer. The angel's white robes hung limply around her, and wax dripped down her long fingers. Around her the world looked so beautiful. It was damning to think that for centuries her kin had been blinded, never to see it. The whispers of a distant song trickled through the air. A song of hope that only an angel like herself knew she could hear. In it, faint sounds of death tainted its beauty, turning it from a hopeful chant to weary elegy of white angels and waxen hearts.

She grasped the lilting strands of music in the air and waited for the storm to come. Already a faint pitter-patter of cold rain had begun to fall, and the air was no longer still. Howling winds, like cries of her dying kin, whispered in the air, drowning out the melody of the song she heard just before. Black shapes flew through the mist towards the woman and her daughter. They were coming to kill them. They would show them no "mercy" like their kin.

"They will never hurt you," the woman said again. Her daughter nestled deeper into her arms and the milk-white velvets of her robes as the rain began to sting cold against her pale skin. "I promise you, Sylvian." Her voice was shaking now. There was no more confidence. No more hope.

She felt a hand on her shoulder and turned to find her husband, barely a specter holding himself together in a thin skeleton of wax. His ghostly shape was slowly dripping away around the faint cold candlelight coming from inside. His wax face was smiling reassuringly to her. He vanished in mere moments.

She turned back for a moment, watching the coiling black clouds of the storm shift over the sky, before another hand touched her shoulder, stiffer, harder, corporeal. She yanked around, frightened, only to find an Aurolite already waiting for her. She stumbled back, screaming curses in her tongue, foreign to the gas-masked man. He quickly held up a hand, and in it, he held no knife. No gun. He held it out gently to her.

"Do not be afraid," said the Man in Black in that wretched language of humans. "Please. Calm."

"You... you are monster," said the woman, trying her hardest to manage the human tongue.

The man bowed his head slightly. "Give me the child and I'll see she is hidden away. I promise by the Light and by everything you believe in," he said. "I promise."

Crying, the woman held her swaddled baby close to her chest. "No," she hissed, accent torn by sobs. "You say you promise, dark creature, but do you really mean it? You people promise and promise and promise, but they are always lying."

The man in the mask hesitated, stepped back. He looked at the crying woman one more time, his heart throbbing. How was he supposed to prove to her he cared? He was running out of time. The black shapes in the sky were approaching.

He could still see the torn feelings in the pale woman's expression. She was wondering, was it the right thing to give up her child? Who knew if this Aurolite was not just like all the others.

Nir had to prove it.

He took a hand and slipped off the dark gas mask, the treacherous scents of the Wastes nauseating. He had never done this before. But now was a time for change. A time for promises.

He eyed the woman, his eyes dark but kind, grim lips forming a slim, reassuring smile. "I do promise," he said. "And I hope you trust me for that."

The woman, wide-eyed saw what he had done and for once he thought maybe there was a hint of true trust. "You... your mask," she stammered. And then, a faint smile there on her tear- wet face, she nodded to him. "You give up your ways, do you really, man in black?" asked the angel.

He nodded solemnly. "I am not like them."

After a final moment of hesitation, the woman pressed her lips back to the girl's forehead, turned to Nir, and handed him the child. He took it gently. She knew now either way her daughter would die. Maybe there was a chance, though, this way. Maybe deep inside, she could trust this one more than the rest.

The man felt just as torn. So was he just supposed to abandon the woman? There is no chance, Nir told himself. The Aurolition already knows of her and are hunting her like hounds. They don't know of the child yet, though. She has a chance.

He started away, but turned back, nodded to the pale woman. She stared back grimly, her eyes wet with tears. "What is her name?" he asked.

The woman spoke softly. "We call her Sylvian. Sylvian of the Wind." There was almost a touch of a smile to her lips.

He nodded once more, and then, quickly and silently, the strange, maskless Aurolite turned and disappeared in a swirl of black velvet.

In the grassy field, the angel in white was now alone. She held her hands to her heart and whispered prayers that the strange man would bring her daughter to safety. She watched solemnly as the dark-winged Aurolites finally descended from the sky.

She died with an ashen spear through her heart.