(Solo)With My Own Two Wings

[Exodus Scythewing]

Summer, 511 The night was glorious. The sky was liquid black, and there were no clouds to veil the uncountable stars. The half-moon was bright, its gentle, chilling beauty crystalline. The endless plains stretched out of thought, out of the eye’s gaze, becoming one with the horizon beyond care or comprehension. The air was pleasantly warm, though when the breeze chose to stir a small breath of coolness would wash over the traveler’s body. He perched silently on one of the many stone obelisks that reached to the sky in this great expanse, this Sea of Grass. Below him a well-worn path cut through the tall blades like a scar, earth upset by multitudes of turning wheels. Though the grass might have once tried to invade this passage, this small spark of civilization, merchants’ regular caravans had since taught it that the road’s immortality came from the constant change of life, a direct opposite yet direct sibling to the land’s immortality, the eternity of life. A silent bargain had been struck. It was a simple one, but nonetheless powerful: keep to your own kind. He arched his back, commanding life to flow back into his body after so long in unmoving reflection. His crouch deepened and his muscles trembled with new energy. He rose, inhaling deeply as his did so, straightening to his full height. His wings were silent as the opened to their full extent, stretching soft skin over strong, if brittle, ribbing. The Zith deepened his stance, leaned forward, and fell into the air. His wings caught him faithfully, and with a few strong beats he rose into the air. His possessions remained at the top of the stone marker, but as he brought himself closer to the sky his mind remained on more immaterial thoughts. Keep to your own kind. A sensible deal. It was the universal creed of the unacquainted, of strangers in a strange land. It was the call of the untrusted, the unfamiliar, even of simple travelers like him. Safety is what is known, where everyone is the same. If someone is different, they are automatically separate from safety, and if something is not safe, does not that make it unsafe? Give it the potential to do harm? Such reasoning has saved countless individuals in the past, but so too has it harmed others. War itself is created from differences. Differences of desire, culture, differences in belief, ideals. Though such a deal can be useful, it is a Gray Lizard, a self-destructive cycle. Yet is that not why you forsook Xy in the first place? To seek differences? To see faces other than those of Zith, and talk to those faces as equals? Your pursuit of the extraordinary? Yes. That was why he was on the Sea of Grass, to search for differences. Yet even as the words ran through his mind they sounded alien, unreal. Like a poem that is nice to the ear, yet too complicated for the mind to grasp. An art form pleasing to the eye, but too in-depth to stir an undeveloped heart. His goal sounded noble and profound when put into words, but it was too philosophical. Yes, he could come up with such poetic on a whim, but understanding such words was another thing in itself. He had always been told that such prolonged and fruitless introspections were pointless, but his small seed of doubt had flourished since he had left the colony, though he was unsure what it would blossom into.