"Water&Wings" by Katherine Nicole ´dys´ VanHoorn

The worst thing was not the fact that the ship had wrecked, that it had scattered its contents like it was purging itself of them. The worst thing was not that. It was not even the fact that he ahd been blown so far away, apparently the only survivor of the ship, and was lying on a beach. It was not that the leather of his collar and his pants
had dried and was now plastered to his skin. It wasn't even the fact that his wings and back were
burned from the sun, that the chain attached to his collar had heated up from the light as it wrapped around his hand, and now felt like fire against it. No, that wasn't the worst part.

The worst part was the fact that Jagkie had been on the ship too. Sparrow thought back to him, back to his face when the ship had been wrecked apart. They had hung on to each other's hands, screaming soundlessly under the water, as other bodies flailed around them, trying to grab something. The waves had ripped them away from each other and he
had yelled Jagkie's name in his ehad as they were swept away, and he had found a board eventually.
Jagkie, on the other hand, was most likely dead. A dull ache in his chest as he thought about it, but it was nothing next to the heat on his back and auburn-brown wings. He needed to get up... he needed.. but he didn't have the strength.
For hours he'd been trying to get the strength up. The strength to crawl back to the water and kill himself. He wanted to be with Jagkie.. but he simply didn't have the strength, or the motivation he supposed.

SO he simply lay, unable to think of anything that he might do to get out of this mess. He heard a splash and tried to bury his head deeper into his arms. No.. not another big wave. He'd been drenched by one earlier and the salt stung in his eyes and made him cry, salty tears with water he coudln't afford to lose. He felt empty, raw, overripe.
There wasn't any meaning now.. not to any of it. Never again.

Then a scraping sound... at first he thought it was seaweed or something dragging, but it was rhythmic. Almost like the sound of someone crawling towards him. Mustering himself, he raised his head and looked into the face of the strangest creature he had ever seen in his life. "Great Mother..." he whispered.

THe eyes were huge, and luminous, a color between blue and silver and lined with long, thick lashes. Currently those eyes were wide, and surprised, or perhaps confused. Gills on the side of its neck, pressed flatly shut, probably so it could breathe the air. THe hair was spiky and stuck out from its head in bluish white bunches with two long
clumps falling down into his eyes like water. THe ears, slightly pointed. It was wearing nothing at all,
and had the body of a boy, of about perhaps ten to thirteen. But the oddest thing about it wasn't its body. It was it's legs... covered in scales from the hips down all the way to the ends of the feet. Even the toenails were scales,
bluey-green and faintly iridescent. Sparrow had never seen such an amazing thing in his life. And its wings... beautiful things, rising from it's back, covered in water droplets. There seemed to be feathers attached, but when they brushed his face they felt more like rubber, perhaps. And he saw bits of webbing peeking out from graps between the feathers. The wings were a bluish white too, but with enough silver that they were beautiful beyond beleif. He'd never seen a creature like this in his life... He tried to sit up, but was too weak, and with every move his wings and back protested vioilently. He murmered a curse, too polite to yell it out where he might be heard.

It giggled and reached out, touching a wing. Looking at the creature's fingers, he shook his head back a forth. He didn't want to be touched... it would hurt... but, too late, the thing's fingers had brushed across his wing with the dainty certainty only small children have. "Wait..." At first, he felt a burn and shivered a little from
sheer pain but then it was like.. cool air running voer his wings, or water perhaps, down and in between the
feathers to where the skin had burned. Breathing a sigh of releif, shaking his head back and forth slowly. He would have mumbled a thank you, but he didn't know if the thing even spoke English. Or anything human for that matter. So he
simply forced himself to sit up and watched it. Watched the fingers travel around, cooling any area of his body that had been burned. It looked up at him and it struck him that if it wished it could put someone in a trance with those eyes... he began to edge away, getting a bit nervous about it, but stopped when he heard a voice come from it for the first time. A childlike, breathy voice with a hint of laughter in it.

"Don't be frightened." It smiled at him, showing teeth like pearls and he had to smile back. Even if it was faint, he felt like he didn't really have a choice in it. "I'm not going to hurt you. I'm a Protector, we don't hurt..." Before he could react it slid its little-boy arms around him and held him. And rocked him. Sparrow definitely saw
the absurdity of this situation but he didn't say anything. Despite the whole thing, it was really rather
comforting to have someone hold on to him again... since Jagkie never would.... never... Fighting tears, he realized the creature had let go and was watchinf him, timidly, sadly. "YOu don't like me?" It sounde dlike it was the end of the
world just because SParrow was crying.. or trying not to...

"No, no, that's not it at all... please don't think that..." The first he'd spoken, and he found his voice cracked and was wavery withthe effort of holding his sobs inside. "I just... miss someone is all." He coudln't hlep it, the tears came pouring down his face and he curled himself up, folded himself into a tiny little ball with his wings
shading his face and sobbed. The sobs shook his body, and he never would have, except that only this little
creature was here. Watching him. "I miss, a friend of mine.."

"Oh." It sounded at a loss for words, and then it wriggled around his wings and up next to him and hugged him again, laying its head on his chest, near his heartbeat. "You have a good heart," it said softly. And he knew it would help him to tell, to speak, at least for once, to tell someone what was wrong with him. Jagkie had simply always known,
had protected him from the people who would ask. "It's... it's a friend of mine. He was.. was with me,
and the ship.. it sunk... Jagkie..." He coudln't finish, the words got stuck in his throat and against his will he saw Jagkie, fighting to swim against the waves, pulled down, into the dark, into the darkest sea where nothing lived but the
tiny white-skinned blind fish that never left. Imagined Jagkie settling... gone.. onto a pile of bones where others had fell... And he shuddered, so violently the creature in front of him pulled back for a moment, then only held him tighter.

"Don't think of bad things, my friend. I am certain your friend is fine. I was at that storm, I saw the ship sink. More than just you would have escaped from it. The wreck was not that bad.. no, not at all." Sparrow thought for a moment that maybe the creature was lying to him, simply trying to make him feel better. "This Jagkie," it went on,
softer now,"was he... more than a friend? Was he a love?"

"Oh! Oh, no, of course not!" He felt himself blushing, so bright red... the blood in his fac elike roses in his cheeks, like they bloomed when you were embarrassed. "He was just a friend. More like a brother. I loved him like a brother..." He was losing his voice, it grew more wavery as he kept talking. He HAD LOVED him like a brother.. not DID
LOVE. Never again. Jagkie was gone... Somehow, though, he got up the courage to ask one more question.
"Uh, um.... what are you, exactly? Are you a he, a boy, really?"

"I will tell you later. First we msut get you food and water." It smiled and helped him stand and took him over. Looking, he saw that the beahc they were on led to a wood nearby, and he collapsed on the grass around the trees gratefully. Near him, by a freshwater river flowing into the sea, a statue and he stared, wide-eyed, at it. It was of a
huge fish, a whale maybe. He knew it wa shuge just by the proportions of its body. Its mouth was open,
showing row after row of exquisitely carved fangs, the tongue lay against the bottom of the mouth. One eye was focused on him and SParrow shivered. He would have been afraid of seeing one of THOSE coming towards him. It was.. so large... come
to think of it, the fish's dorsal and tail fins looked a little like the creature's wings that was helping him. When it came back, holding a pile of clumepd together seaweed and a shell of water, he asked what the fish's name was. THe creature looked at it with what Sparrow thought might be love. Awe, reverence. Whatever one usually reserved for gods and goddesses.

"That is my mother. The people around here call her the Animamor. There are only five hundred in the entire world. If there are ever more, they eat each other. The Animamor lay eggs that hatch me and my kind. Most of their eggs, though, hatch Animamor and they eat their young if it would mean five hundred and one of them in the world. There
is a balance..." It trailed off, looking at him. "And you coudln't care less." It grinned and he noticed,
for the first time, that it had tiny fangs next to its two front teeth. That its nails were sharp as claws and it could have scratched off his face. Instead, it smiled, as if it was suddenly shy. "What are you called?"

"Me? oh, my name.. you can call me Sparrow." He'd always felt his name was good, as he felt plain and brown and everything that a sparrow is. Jagkie had always been the bluebird, the cardinal, singing out and showing off. Not that he ever KNEW he was showing off. Jagkie was too good to want to make others look back. The crow, the blackbird...
Sparrow shivered, thinking of pale men with red eyes and black wings rising from their backs with all the
menace in their eyes that the statue of the Animamor captured. "what's your name?"

"Well, the people who recount my legend call me the Airfish. So I suppose you can call me Tenku." It nodded up and down. "And don't worry. I'm very much a human boy right now. Well, except for the gills.. and scales... and, well...e verything." It laughed, a silver-bells-chiming sound and SParrow wanted to laugh with him, even though he had no
reason at all to laugh. It reached out and touched his face and he closed his eyes. The cool fingers, the
nails like scales against his face. Like being touched by a mother-brother. Mother brother... Mother, brother... He knew who his brother was...

"All right, Tenku." He said softly. "What do we do next?" Opening his eyes, seeing Tenku watching him closely, carefully. Like you watch someone you want to spend your life with. And he blinked. Wondering what exactly Tenku was. It never had told him. Airfish... he wondered if that was just a referrel to the wings, the gills, the scales.. how
he said he had a tail in the water or when he wasn't on land. So he flew with the tail...

"Well, first?" It smiled again, the sunlight made his teeth so white, so white... Sparrow smiled. He was safe here. "We get your pants off."

Sparrow turned the darkest crimson he ever had in his entire life.

END OF CHAPTER ONE