@dragon-kiddos

When Niles is 8, he sees a pegasus for the first time. She's a beautiful thing, he thinks, even though she stands nearly three times his height and has her wings bound by thick, leather straps. Her seller jerks her forward, and she gives a stubborn stomp of her feet before the sharp crack of a whip forces her to walk.

“That one’s gonna be sold for meat,” someone says from his left. It’s Aiden—chipped tooth, foul tongue, and the quickest legs in their little lot of thieves. (He’s scared of heights. He sleeps in the afternoons. He killed a boy, once, over half a loaf of stale bread. These are things Niles likes to remember: what they’re afraid of, where they go, and what they can do.) “Her wings are fucked. I can probably run faster than she can fly.”

Niles looks back at her, and now he can see it—the left wing, bent unnaturally at its base. The right, with big tufts missing near its ends. Maybe she’d be grateful to die, then.

The next day, he hears the murmurs when he’s slipping through the alleyways, hugging the shadows with the darkest pitch. Curiosity gets the better of him and he approaches the crowd, easily maneuvering his way through their legs, idly plucking coin purses as he goes. And there, in the middle, is the seller from yesterday: a mangled, trampled mess, with a single Pegasus feather buried in his chest.

It probably says something about him, to remember a day like that when all the students titter excitedly about the pegasi flock, but it wouldn’t be anything that hasn’t already been said.

Black pegasi are rare, and for a flock to land so close to an establishment of people is even rarer. Some people grow excited at the mere chance to see the beasts, while others spread rumors of how the feathers are like elixirs to a mage’s strength. Nothing of specific interest to him, then, but it is perhaps something that might be of use to his liege.

Niles has barely slung his bow over his back when he hears the falls of quick footsteps from behind him. Too light to be an adult, but just enough to be—

“Kana,” he greets, feeling a familiar twitch of a smile come upon seeing the boy. “Where could you be in such a rush to go, I wonder?”