End Flight: Chapter 1

            The world in which Friday woke was not familiar to him. The ground was dry and dusty underfoot, the air completely still. There was a metallic scent in the air and the atmosphere was all but buzzing with an ancient magic. The sky was gray, indigo clouds smudged across an endless storm. Something flashed between their shadows. It wasn’t lightning. It felt more dangerous.

            Friday stood slowly. He stood on two legs and wore the tattered remains of a pale t-shirt that might have been blue, and shorts that looked like they might’ve been normal pants that had been hastily cut off above the knee. Dirt colored his pale legs in shades of gray and brown, but he had no memory of what might have caused it.

What was he doing? Where was he?

Right. He came from Zanyr. More accurately, he was running from Zanyr. He didn’t want to look any closer than that. Thoughts of the city hurt, and they didn’t help him with his current predicament.

            A memory, or something like the ghost of one, flickered across his mind. He could recall the feeling of soft words said to him, of nice hands patting his head, of a powerful presence that had been there since before he existed. He couldn’t put his finger on who that might be, or what they might’ve meant to him. Whoever they were, they weren’t with him now.

            He was out in the open. There were few landmarks aside from the charred remains of bushes and trees. Deep fissures ran through the earth, making the terrain resemble fractured glass. Some were shallow and could be easily hopped out of if he should fall in. Others were so deep, he couldn’t see the bottom.

            Or, more accurately, he could see the bottom. He could see the darkness, the nothingness that made up something emptier than void. It called to him, that darkness. It sang a song that he knew by heart but didn’t dare sing.

            What on earth does that mean?

            In the distant northeast, cliffs as gray as the sky rose above the horizon. A shadow lay at the foot of those cliffs. Trees? Friday couldn’t tell from so far away.

            Whatever they were, they had to be better than sitting in the middle of an empty expanse of barren land.

            It occurred to him that he could fly. Flying would be much more efficient than walking. Why didn’t he fly to begin with?

            No, that’s right. He did start out flying. He flew out of the city, the sounds of war fading behind him like the sticky remnants of a bad dream. He flew to the mountains (the Minor Mountains, though they felt rather significant to him) and out of the valley and across the plains and into the desert.

            He’d stopped at a lake, an oasis paradise set in the middle of a sea of sand. Why didn’t he stay? What compelled him to continue north? Zanyr was far away. He would’ve been safe there, right? Zanyrian roads didn’t even reach that far, construction still more or less contained to the valley.

            Friday had no idea why he wandered into such a desolate place, but he really wished he hadn’t. As he shed his clothes and shifted forms, the magic in the air made his feathers stand on end.

            Ah. Right. He recalled why he stopped flying.

            He’d arrived by the sky. Most of the time, it was easiest to. In this form (something resembling a massive owl crossed with a dragon) he was bigger, stronger. Safe. Flight was just an added bonus, in his opinion. As far as he could remember, Friday had never needed to cross so much distance before. As it was, he’s grateful for his wings after everything went down in Zanyr.

            From then, he’d kept flying. It was hard to recall every detail, only that the only reason he’d stopped was due to pure exhaustion. As safe as he felt in that form, it took an enormous amount of energy to maintain. After so much running, his body simply gave out.

            What happened wasn’t exactly a crash-land, but it was very close. He felt it when he crossed over whatever invisible boundary marking the area, and the sudden heaviness of the atmosphere nearly drove him out of the sky.

            His wings were sore when he raised them, testing his strength against the air. The heaviness was gone, or at least, it wasn’t as bad as it had been the night before. He could fly long enough to get to those distant trees.

            The ground felt uneven and loose, the sand slippery beneath his claws as Friday took a running start. His legs shook and his knees wobbled, he nearly stumbled face-first into the ground. When he threw himself skyward, he half expected to come plummeting back down.

            Then his wings caught him, ragged feathers pushing downward and sending a cloud of dust rising up after him. He was airborne, though the fact didn’t give him the usual joy and relief. Even when rushing against his face, the wind felt dead and stale, old magic crackling through like static. He’d never wanted to leave a place so badly.

            As an afterthought, Friday swooped down and carefully plucked his discarded clothes from the dusty ground. As worn as they were, he figured it would be best to have them just in case. Even if he didn’t wear them again, they might make decent fuel for a fire. He didn’t trust the trees that grew through the cracks in the rock.

            The ground passed by in a gray blur while the horizon remained unchanging. The only way he could tell that he’d moved at all was by the deep fissures that sliced through the earth like trails of ink. They slipped by one by one,                       Friday’s shadow passing them by and then leaving them behind just to soar over another. From that high up, it looked like the world itself was falling apart at the seams.

            The thought had Friday’s stomach twisting into a nauseating knot. His heart felt like it was being squeezed by a clawed fist. The world…

            When was the last time he’d eaten? Friday couldn’t recall. As much as he didn’t want to consume anything having to do with this wasteland, he needed to eat.

            But what? Nothing lived and nothing moved.

            His wings stuttered and he fell a few feet before he could catch himself.

            Friday swooped down, holding his wings still so he could glide closer to the ground. As he flew, he kept his eyes low, searching for even the tiniest hint of something living. A plant, an animal, he didn’t really care. Beyond his growling stomach, he wanted, needed, to know he wasn’t the only living creature there.

            However, the cracked earth gave him little hope. Friday wanted so badly to think that there was life hidden just out of sight, but in his heart, he knew better. The only things that could be described as ‘living’ were whatever might crawl out from the below.

            He needed to not think of that.

            Eventually, Friday was forced to land. His wings shook and his legs trembled, unable to hold his weight when he first touched down. His landing turned into a stumbling crash, rolling several times before finally coming to a stop.

            Why was he here? He shouldn’t be here. He could have gone anywhere! Why here???

            Coughing on the cloud of dust, Friday slowly righted himself. His feathers were ragged, several torn out from his fall. Everything was a sad color of gray, coating his wings so thoroughly that one might think it was his natural color.

            Around him, the world looked no different from when he woke. The forest he saw looked no closer. Had he even moved at all? Hunger and exhaustion gnawed at him.

            Now on the ground, he might as well try to look for food again. He’d landed close to a stand of trees. Their leathery bark almost looked like mummified flesh, pale gray smudged across black.  

            Friday poked around the roots where the trees disappeared into the rock. There was little to be found aside from some nicely rounded pebbles, but he kept searching, clawing through the softer sands as if he actually expected to find something. All he found was more sand and a few more pebbles.

            Overhead, the sky was growing dark. There were no pretty colors to signal the coming of night, just a shadow that stretched across the world.

            Friday felt his heartbeat begin to settle, his breathing become just a bit easier as the world dimmed from gray to soot. He found comfort in the darkness, the blessedly cool shadows. There was something quiet in the darkness that wasn’t there in the light. He could rest in the dark.

            And, when everything was dark, it was easier to see light.

            Before his eyes, leaves uncurled from the branches, leathery outsides peeling aside to reveal the glow beneath. Even better, round fruits grew from between the leaves. They bubbled up almost like pustules along the thin branches and then fell, suspended by thread-thin stalks. They dangled like ornaments, round and bright, surrounded by a glowing halo of blue.

            Friday felt like crying. Could he even cry in that form? He had no idea. He knew that fruit, knew it from the home he wasn’t supposed to remember. It could only grow in one place, a place that saw both the light and the darkness of not just the world, but the world’s core. He was the keeper of darkness. If the tree bore fruit for him, that meant that his counterpart had been there at one point too.

            Was Kii also wandering this cursed wasteland? Why? Where was she now? Why wasn’t she with him in Zanyr? Why was he held alone by the Black Gold Corporation?

            Too many questions. Night had fallen, the sky was dark, and food from his home dangled just above his head. For the moment, he could rest.

            He was alone, but he still had friends in the world.