Wind Under Wings

Chapter One, Part Two

A breeze had roused, washing gently into the thicket, and with it came a distant noise from somewhere uphill, in the meadow beyond. Both Kardina and Taliak looked in that direction, listening intently. Wind poured through again, shivering the brush, and this time they could make out the distinct voices of a griffin family passing through. Parents guiding their young back to the den, most likely, before setting out to hunt also.

Taliak's heart leapt. He was about to go peek through the entrance to see if he could get a glimpse of these other griffins when his mother crouched above him and lowered herself, nearly squashing him to the ground with her bulk. It was a protective stance, he knew, but he wriggled impatiently against her belly and started to protest until she silenced him with a hiss. They waited.

The voices moved on, and only when they had died away in the distance completely did Kardina at last raise herself enough to allow her son to slip out from beneath her.

"You know better than to struggle like that. How many times must I say you can't be seen?" Kardina's hard voice resounded like thunder in her anger, all playfulness gone. The feathers on her ruff were bristling. "What if someone heard you?"

"Why can't I be seen? Or heard?" Taliak challenged. He was angry enough to growl himself, though his small voice wasn't nearly so impressive as his mother's. "Other nestlings get to go out and explore, you heard them. Why can't I?"

For a moment Taliak thought she would refuse to answer him. Her tail lashed against her thick haunches and her black claws gripped the cool earth. But then she let out a long sigh, and it seemed as though her anger released with her breath. Her feathers smoothed against her neck and when she spoke next her rough voice was lower, gentler, than before.

"The Order is not ready to meet you, Taliak. Not yet."

Taliak's tail thumped against the ground. Always it was about not being ready. He did not see how the Order wasn't ready to know him when he certainly knew enough about the Order, about the many other griffins that lived on their mountain home called Tekma, about the hierarchies and the ruler they called the Gryp. What else was there to be ready for?

"The other nestlings are out," Taliak insisted, stubborn. "If they are ready then so am I."

"That is for me to decide," his mother growled, becoming stern again. Then she plucked him up before he could say another word and turned back inside the den. She deposited Taliak by the farthest wall, in a loose pile of twigs and feathers that had once served as a crude nest for his egg.

"You will stay here," she rumbled, and her voice was so firm Taliak dared not to argue. She gathered feathers and scraps of fur from the floor and buried her nestling in them. Taliak snapped his beak angrily, for she had not treated him like this since he was a small hatchling with an egg tooth, but she pressed her beak against him so that he was forced to lay down underneath the stuff.

"Stay here," she repeated. "Stay here and keep quiet until I return."

Taliak heard her move away then, and slip out of the den. Then came the soft rustling of parting brush. She had left the thicket and was gone, leaving Taliak alone. Again.

He sighed and laid his chin on his paws with disappointment. He itched to stretch his wings in the full light of the sun or moon, to sprawl out in the grassy meadow and stalk through shadowy forest paths of the mountain. So many times he would peek through the thicket to the outside world and glimpse its glory and splendor. Occasionally voices would float over the air, some of them having the forceful, heavy inflection of adult griffins but more frequently these days they were the shriller voices of nestlings. Nestlings who got to explore freely without their parents always insisting they hide. Taliak had never been able to spy them from his hideout, but each time he begged his mother to let him go out and meet them. She would lift her head, glance uneasily around, flick her tail, and say no.