Blooding

A New Place

The oranges were nice. He never made a mess when chewing. Always kept his mouth closed, never bared his teeth, kept his tongue at the roof, lips tight, no juices would come dripping out then. Wonderful, squishy. If orange had a taste, it would be cool and tangy.

She always made a mess. Always. Not for fault of her own. No teeth in a beak, no lips, not even a muzzle, just a tongue to do all the crushing. Sometimes, she squished it with her talon. Then lapped it up. Juice running down her chin. Canary would look up, a sparkle in her eyes, orange giblets in her beak, and grin.

Her name wasn't alien to him. It fit her neatly. As if it had been behind a veil this whole time with only its silhouette visible to the audience, and when the curtains parted, there it stood. It had always been there. Are you so surprised? No, he wasn't. He realized she'd never been given a name by them because one already hovered over her. A name another griffon, somewhere in that glacier, had given her. Another name would have felt odd, fake like putting on another coat of paint. She didn't need it.

Her books laid scattered about as she had left them. Messy. Chaotic, but now it was empty. Dust motes drifted in veins of sunlight. Her lantern, its handle was stuck in an upright position from the last time she had grasped and set it down. The candle had waned. All its wax was cloistered at the bottom. The candle had burnt away. Her hut was a microcosm of her memory. A tiny universe where she ruled. A tiny, little room.

He swallowed the orange.

The book they had read together was somewhere in this pile. He wanted it. It wasn't particularly interesting, he had been bored looking over it. That night. But her eyes lit up at the smallest reference, the most insignificant mention of a glacial tribe of griffons. An off-handed comment. The stories were mythic, distant, they may as well have been on the sun.

These books were all they had, evidence of an old world. A very old world. Fossils of eras buried beneath their talons. How late of a history were they living in? She was clever, she could outline it all. But she never would. Never would, ever again get orange juice down her chin.

He recalled its exact title, could recall every line they'd read together. The memories were dusty and blurry when she was sitting next to him. Now that she was gone, every moment with her took precedence. Came into focus with perfect clarity. Everything else sank away into the depths.

He surprised himself how much he cared. How violent and razor sharp the grief was. His realization that Canary would never again gasp when she found something or never again make him reel back from her eating habits, was a black realization indeed.

Phylogeny of Northern Lineages.

Written by Ald----Xly.

The author's name had faded. The book was leather-bound with its tips curled up. Its cover was weary with sunburnt patches. The color of old parchment. Webs of red were still visible, but the book had lost its luster over.

A long time.

Strange, how only his name was gone. Incomplete. Who was Aldxly? He had once been real, breathing, loving, stupid, smart and even drunk. He had once sat over a desk with ink and quill, probably his own feather he plucked, and written his essays on the Northern Lineages. It may have taken years. The book was thick. Probably did.

And the universe faded his name first.

Aldxly. His words live on, and Lusik supposed that was immortality. Aldxly was standing right before him, a leather-bound book with sunburnt pages.

He took it. His claws were big and sharp. They were anything but clumsy and unkind. The cover felt like a desert, each indent and crater were sandy and aged. All its imperfections were written in its old face, in the missing middle of the author's name, in the curled tips that would never be flattened. Everything new becomes forever old.