Fledging

Chapter 4

Chapter 4:

              The next morning around sunrise, one of the human slaves came in as usual to let us out of our cages.  Master didn’t trust his pavox slaves in any way whatsoever.  The enslaved humans slept in a small building next to ours, but they weren’t locked in as we were.

                Before I left, I shook out my wings as much as possible with the rattling chains to release any loose feathers.  Quite a few came out, coating the floor of my cell with white downy feathers.  Bringing my wings back into their resting position I rolled my shoulders and neck, before stepping out into the aisle of the barn where the others were just waking up as well.  Nodding to a few who looked at me and wished me good luck for the day, I returned the sentiment and braced myself for what I knew would be an interesting day in the least.

                The sun was just coming up over the horizon when I exited the barn.  Birds living in the nearby trees were beginning to wake up, singing good morning songs to the world.

                I walked over to the small wooden table where some of the one hundred or so slaves that frequented the manor stood in a line, waiting their turn for their meager ration of food for the morning.  Taking my bowl of slightly seasoned water filled with questionable lumps that passed only barely as soup and a brick of near stale bread, I moved over to the ring of pavox that had woken up earlier than I and were already eating their portions on the ground.

                Meal times were always my favorite as these were some of the precious, rare moments where we could talk about the latest things and catch up on what our comrades had experienced in yet another day of slave hood. 

I saw Auriel, one of the pavox that I was closest to in bond and age sitting in the circle of already gathered pavox.  She glanced up at me as I approached but hardly gave me a second glance. I was alarmed at her presence.

                What is she doing here already? I thought, my brow creasing in worry, she usually took the longest to leave her cage of all the pavox.  Cautiously, I lowered myself to the ground next to her, my scaled lower legs sliding against the smoothness of the side of my feet.

                Pavox didn’t usually sit, at least not on the ground as our talons kept us from relaxing comfortably, not to mention that the farther away you were from the ground, the better.  Only criminals and prisoners had ground seats in pavox society.  However given that there were no chairs out for our use, nor could we relieve our legs by flying, it was the only way and one of the only times that we could allow our legs rest before carrying our weight for the rest of the day.

                “Morning,” she muttered, barely giving me a glance before looking back down at her bowl.

                “Morning, what’s the matter?” I asked alarmed. “You’re not exactly an early bid.”

                “Not normally no,” Auriel agreed.  “But something happened last night, I couldn’t stand to be in there anymore.”

                “What happened?” I asked even more alarmed now.  Besides Kenneth’s intrusion, there hadn’t been anything big… at least not that I had noticed.

                “Look at the back of my left wing, near the tip.” She said with a defeated sigh.

Leaning backwards to see the place she pointed out, I stared at it for a moment, not understanding what I was supposed to be looking at.  All of the sudden I saw a darker color sticking out of the white plumage.  Two blue grey plumes were poking through.  I felt a rush of awe as I stared at the two feathers that marred the otherwise pure white wings.  I felt happy, but only for a split second.  As soon as I realized what had happened, and what that meant for my friend, a wave of horror overcame me.  I looked back at my friend’s downcast face, unsure of what to say.