The Winged Ones

Chapter Five

Rohan could see was snow for miles on end. For about a week they had been traveling, though it seemed like they were getting nowhere. A snowy field was there when he fell asleep and was there when he woke. It was there as he was walking, and he could only just see the Bora Mountains, though they looked like nothing but a shadow or a figment of the imagination from the distance he was from it, though they remained, so Rohan knew that it wasn’t a joke. Behind them, Rohan could see the small town of Alpa, a small black dot in the distance, almost as shadowy as the faint outline of the mountains ahead.

            All four of them, Regan, Electra, Hali, and he, were trudging through the snow, making deep footprints on the ground. The cold didn’t bother any of them because they were made for it, but they could still feel the slight chill in the air. It was a long time of silence before Rohan summoned up the courage to talk.

            “You guys said that the reason I don’t have my wings yet is because I didn’t have the ritual done on me,” he said. “What ritual?”

            Hali slowed her pace from in front of him and let him catch up to her. “It is called the Wing Ritual. Every Winged One gets their wings around age five. But in order to have them grow, they have to have a Wing Ritual done on them.”

            “What happens in this ritual?” Rohan asked.

            “Nothing really happens, my prince,” Regan replied from a little ways behind him. “It’s just the parents taking a small moment out of their day on the child’s birthday to say a series of words that make the wings grow.”

            “So the wings won't grow unless those series of words are said to me,” Rohan clarified.

            “Yes,” Hali said. “A little bit of magic is involved, but it is the only magic Winged Ones can do.”

            “So, does it have to be the parents that preform the ritual on a child?”

            “No, my prince” Regan said. “But, that is what is normally done. Anyone can do it to a person as long as they already have their wings.”

            Hali sighed. “You want your wings, don’t you, Rohan?”

            Rohan smiled in a way that always seemed to get him out of trouble back at the orphanage when he was younger. “Maybe I do, maybe I don’t.”

            Regan looked around them, surveying the land. “We are far enough away that nobody will see, Hali,” she said. “I think it’s about time that his highness was to grow his wings, don’t you?”

            Hali sighed, “What do you think, Electra?”

            Electra, who had been strangely quiet, perked her ears up. “I don’t see why not,” she yipped.