Curiosity's Price

Chapter Three

And yet, there must always be something to stir up the monotony of life. It is called "curiosity", and it doomed two tragic Angels to a life of poverty and unhappiness down on Earth.

"Sera! Go do your chores!" boomed a tall man with brown wings to match his hair.

A slight girl, whose long hair was almost the exact hue as her father's, nodded and sped off to attend to the birds. She scattered the seed and watched them peck at it, even occasionally do battle over a mound of the food.

"Soon... I'm gonna find her," Sera vowed as she crouched down to observe how the sparrows and ospreys fought for the grain. "My sister..."

Though the adults didn't know it, young Sera remembered clearly a day when she was nearly nine and a half years old. Her mother had had a huge belly, and everyone was buzzing with excitement. That elation had rubbed off on her, and Sera began to draw pictures of herself with a littler version of herself beside her.

'It's gonna be a girl. I'm gonna be a big sister!'

And then... Nothing. Mother wasn't as big anymore, but she was very sad. So sad, even, that it made little Sera sad. And there was no little sister to play with and talk to and fly around with when her wings were strong and coordinated enough.

Sera had been told that the sister had died. She accepted that story, too, until she learned about what happened to some unfortunate babies. Babies that were born without wings were cast out of the Angels' society and sent to live down on Earth. The thought made Sera's wings shudder.

The stories she'd grown up with painted a contemptible picture in her mind. Evil people with horns and curling, forked tails prowled around, looking for little Angel children to snatch into their claws and drag under the earth, away from light and the sky and freedom.

"But... If she's down there..." Sera mumbled, crossing her arms and sitting on her rump. Her wings fanned out behind her a bit, allowing the breeze to ruffle her feathers blissfully.

'If she's down there... she could be in danger' she finished in her mind, because she was too afraid to say it all aloud. 'And she's my sister... Well, she could be my brother, but I want a sister.'

Still, there were so many questions to ask and things to go wrong. What if there were more of those demons lurking, lying in the shadows as they waited for her to fall into their traps? And even if those were just stories to scare children away from Earth, then how would she find her sister? After all, the Earth was so big. She could be anywhere!

'She could not even be alive...'

"No, stop thinking that!" Sera berated herself loudly, scaring a few sparrows into flight. They alighted on the ground a few yards away and resumed eating on the far edge of the grain piles.

"She's alive somewhere," she insisted to herself, feeling like she could slap herself for even considering the slight possibility that her younger sister wasn't among the breathing.

With that thought resolved in her mind, she took flight and held the empty sack in both hands tightly so she wouldn't let it accidentally slip from her grasp. But as she wheeled through the clear blue sky she'd been acquainted with all her life, Sera contemplated and played around with the idea of taking a break from all of this tedious blue.

She was still tossing and turning thoughtfully in the air when another pair of wingbeats interrupted her train of thought and focused her attention elsewhere. "Sera!"

It was a familiar boy of eleven, with light blond hair and dark, indigo eyes. His vision was notably poor and a strand of his hair refused to be tamed, so it curled around once and stuck out over all his other locks.