Wings

The Third Part

Peri danced around her room, ecstatic about what was to become. Today she would be an official member of the Church of Phlaron. After that she would be able to save souls and take part in holy ceremonies with the rest of the church.

This is where my memory begins to fade, it happens from time to time. I have learned now not to expect much from these bits, Carissimi would always use her "calming" techniques about now, make me more pliable to the wishes of the high lords. They manipulated me, a child. At that time I was only seven years old, a child. They destroyed my life. Soon after this I was incorporated into the church. That was when I started to realise something was wrong.

I was scared, sometimes I was forgetting things for hours at a time. And another thing; my wings weren't white anymore. After a year of having blank spots in my memory; these were the soul cleansing ceremonies, when the high lords needed me at my most obedient, my wings were turning grey, and every day, they are getting darker and darker. I truly don't know what happens at these "soul cleansing" ceremonies. The dark spots in my memories always deposited me back at my room, as though nothing had happened, only hours had passed. Carissimi never offered any explanation for this and, like the innocent child i was, left it at that and tried to pretend nothing had happened.  

After an especially long blank spot, i went to bed late at night. Then, in the morning, i woke to see, instead of my normal light grey or white wings, my bed was covered with pitch black feathers. Overnight, my grey feathers had fallen out and, as though it was simply another layer, revealed pitch black feathers. My scream had awoken the entire temple and brought every priest, sister and bother running. As soon as they saw me, lying on a bed covered in a sea of inky black feathers, they had run away. All of them, except Carissimi.

She had just stood there, staring, as though I was some kind of monster. I had begged her, crouched at her feet, cried into her night gown, but she had just flicked her nightie away from me and walked away, glaring down at me as though i was the lowliest and most disgusting creature to walk the earth. The last thing she said to me before i was cast out into the mountains around the temple were these, "I asked for a savior, and all i got was you." After that i roamed the mountains aimlessly, like a corpse that had been reanimated and let loose to roam the earth. I managed to survive, barely however, and ever since then i have been living with a small group of hawks that accepted me as one of their own.