Mari Scarr

I was told my story was going to be written -- whether I wanted it to or not -- someone was going to write about it. Nessa said that if my story was to be told, then it ought to be told correctly, and not by any writer looking for a spot of fame. I never meant for any of it to happen. To be honest I never wanted it to happen, but of course as everyone knows I never had a choice in the matter; I had a promise to keep.

It all started when I was fourteen years old. My father was never around, but I didn't mind. I had my mother and sisters to keep me company. We lived in a small house secluded from any nearby village by a thick forest. There was little to do with the day (because my father made so much money) that me and my sisters would often retreat to that forest picking berries and climbing trees. I made quite a number of friends among the fairies that nested there. My mother would watch. She had grown tired of the books my father sent her and had little else to do.

Our house wasn't lavish, only two stories. Mine and my sisters bedrooms located on the second floor and our parents beneath us. But what always tugged at the curious edges of my mind was my father's 'study,' if you could call it a study. It was a large barn made of metal and twice the size of our house. My father, if he ever did appear, could only be seen walking from his car to his study or vise versa. His car looked to me a smaller mobile version of his study, the entire thing made thick with silver metal, the top lined with holes.

Growing up I was never sure what my father did. Mother said when she married him she didn't care as long as he paid her in books. And my sisters were too busy painting themselves in berries to realize we even had a father, I figured. And obvious to you I'm sure, I was too curious to let the matter go. I spent the next few years attempting to get inside. The longer it took, the more curious I was. And I wondered what it was my father did that needed to be so difficult to discover.

At last, I timed it perfectly. My father had grown cautious of me during my time, but eventually I found a way. I ran and slid under his trailer just as he was pulling up, and watched unnoticed from the dirt as he inserted his pin. When he entered his study I ran off to play with my sisters as an alibi, waiting for him to leave again. Those next three days of my life were the most painful of my peaceful childhood. But eventually my father left.

I ran to his study and inserted the pin I had been going over in my head for days -- and the door opened. Can you imagine my excitement? My life so far had little to offer in any range of physical or mental work. It was all rather dreamlike compared to what I experienced once that door opened. And I never went back.

My father's study was two stories. The second open to the first with a ledge that walked along the walls. The stairs to it directly to my left and right as I walked inside. The rest of it was quite indescribable to me at the time. The technology of our day, even its animals were unknown to me in that secluded house in the forest. But looking back in hindsight I could explain it to you now. My father's study wasn't a study if you could believe that; it was a stable.

Along the walls on both the first and second floors were individual compartments for animals. The center of the first floor were posts and chains to contain said animals and many other stations to extract, remove, and contain valuable and dangerous aspects of again said animals.

The animals themselves were what caught my attention the most. As I've said I was not familiar with the animals that roam our world with the way I was raised. The only way I knew animals had a name and were a thing was because of the fairies who nested in the trees of the branches I climbed. These were not fairies. No, they were much bigger. And they were feathered, or at least part of them were.

To imagine these creatures (and to help those with little reference I will use common animals) think of a cat, but enlarge it to the size of a horse. And add two feathered wings coming out of the shoulders and two much smaller ones coming out the sides before the hips. Its face and head were far too intelligent to be compared to any common beast. And its ears depended on the individual animal as well as the fur. The tail I never saw until much later when I saw one flying away from me, was long and feathered like its wings.