Air Born | Generation Icarus #1

Kestrel - Mostly Human

Raven was doing quite well, usually managing to make foot-contact with the ball when it came near her, but then she saved a goal with a quick whip of her wing.

Falcon blew a loud whistle with his fingers. "Time out!" he yelled. "Doesn't that count as hand ball?"

"It's a wing, not a hand!" Miguel said, laughing.

"But it's football."

"We're going to need clearer rules."

Falcon tried to bounce the ball on his knees, then transfer it to his wing. But he hit it too hard and it sailed straight at me and Tui, and the dinner we were heating on the camp stove. Tui easily deflected it with a quick hand and it bounced harmlessly into the dust.

"Whoops, sorry, babe!" Falcon shouted.

With a little sigh and slight smile, Tui tossed the ball back to Raven who immediately kicked it past Falcon. Delighted, Miguel declared another goal, while Hawk dissolved into laughter at Falcon's face.

"So, Tui ... are you and Falcon, like, together together?" I whispered.

Tui snorted. "Yeah, nah, he thinks so, but we aren't."

Falcon, having obviously heard, mimed taking a shot to the heart. "I'm wounded," he announced, falling dramatically to the ground. Miguel immediately kicked the ball past him and awarded his team another point.

"Stuff this, I'm on Miguel's team next time," Falcon said. "Sorry, Hawk, but I like to win."

"That's okay, I'll join Raven's team, if she'll have me!" Hawk grinned. "She's going to make a great goalie."

Blushing from both embarrassment and the effort, Raven nodded and tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear.

While the boys kept messing with each other, she slipped back to sit next to Marcus, who touched her hand as they shared a glance.

"What do you think about them, then?" I murmured to Tui. "You reckon they're a couple?"

"Why does anyone have to be in a relationship?" Tui sighed. "We're only seventeen, it's not like it's the bad old days when we would have all been married off already."

"Didn't date much at high school, then?" I asked.

"I didn't have time, sis. Too busy with study, working part-time and training with the St. John ambulance cadets so I could get into nursing school." Her face was serious as she clunked the pot around. "Even though I'm only seventeen, I'd just been accepted. My division leader had nominated me for a full scholarship. All my hard work was finally paying off. Then this happened." She flicked a wing irritably.

"You could still be a nurse, one day," I said hopefully.

She rolled her eyes. "Yeah, right."

"Okay, so maybe not in a regular human hospital. But we're going to need specialist Icarus doctors and stuff, I guess. Maybe you could be the first."

Tui's face lost the fierce scowl and softened into something more thoughtful, the light from the camp stove's flame playing across her skin and feathers in the gathering dusk. "I guess we really don't count as human anymore? But where the hell would I go to train?"

"We're still mostly human!" I protested, gesturing to my body. "Arms, legs, organs, brain. We might have a few extra limbs, and really good senses, but we're still going to break and get sick at some point."

"Hmm." Tui began ladling the food into the bowls I'd set out on the rock. "I guess all the basic principles of first aid and biology and chemistry and stuff haven't changed. We can't fight the laws of the universe." She smiled slightly.

"I'd bet money that most of our DNA is still human, just with a few extra bits." I flexed my wing. "A few brilliant bonus bits."

"Our bio teacher made our class debate how to define a human, once. It got loud."

"Why's that?" I asked. As the rest of the Flight gathered around, drawn by the smell of the food, they began listening in.

"The question actually was: how do you define a member of a species?"

Hawk scraped his spoon in his bowl. "Can't you tell by looking?"

"What about caterpillars and butterflies, bro?" Tui countered. "Same species, totally different appearance."

"DNA, then," Falcon suggested.

"Yeah, but everyone's DNA is different, that's why we aren't clones. At what point do you say it's different enough to be a different species?"

Hawk thought hard. "Is it the ability to reproduce? Different breeds of dog look totally different but they're still the same species, right?"

I remembered something from my own science classes at early high school in England. "Horses and donkeys are different species, and they can mate and make mules. But the mules are infertile because of the DNA clash."

"And then people with infertility issues wouldn't be considered 'human' either," Tui said. "That would include a huge number of people."

"My head hurts," I pleaded.

Hawk groaned in sympathy. "Mine too."

Tui smiled thinly. "Now you know why the classroom debate didn't go well. Especially with an extremely Christian teacher aide in the mix."

In the increasing gloom beyond the glow of the camping stove, I saw Miguel's distressed face, and the way he was clutching his cross. Across from him, Falcon and Hawk were more thoughtful than upset, and Marcus and Raven seemed almost disappointed that the discussion was stuttering to a halt. For a moment, I thought maybe Marcus was about to say something but he kept his mouth firmly closed.

"I know one thing for totally certain," I announced brightly, determined to cheer everyone up before bedtime.

"What's that?"

"I don't care how we define it, but I know that we belong together." I gestured with my arm and my wing. "We might not be human, but we are us."

"Ick-are-us," Hawk added, grinning.

An appreciative chuckle rolled around the Flight and the tension eased. I knew it was a discussion that would return, probably soon, but I had said what I honestly believed to be true. And I would defend that conviction with everything I had in me, mutant DNA and all.