Birth

Lya and Gyle enter the world.

My first breath burned like fire, scorching the new and tender membranes of my throat. I coughed, tasting the bitterness of blood, and I spat the blood from my mouth. Air is so different from the watery world I came from. To eat and to drink there was to breathe, but air could not provide all that I needed. Eating and drinking had become separate actions, other tasks that must be done on their own... how time consuming. 

My first sight was light and I blinked in its brilliance. The light came from high above, from a sea that bore no weight and whose waves were frothed with heavy, white foam. This light pierced through projections of the earth, branches that bore slow heartbeats and thin ornaments that soaked in the light. Ah... heartbeats. 

I could feel my own heart beating in my chest, it was faster than the branches of the earth but they shared a common rhythm. For every ten beats of mine, there were two beats in the branches of the earth. My heart pounded life in my body but the branches of the earth resonated with life like plucked strings. What music they made with my heart. 

The thought of hearts stirred my memory, had there not been another heart beating with mine inside the egg. The egg was in ruins, the top had been ripped off and thrown aside from my own hatching, leaving a deep basin filled with fluid. From that fluid was a strange shape breaking through the surface. It reminded me of the branches coming from the earth but its ornaments were splayed between sub branches splitting from the main branch. The main branch was curved and I slid my finger along the curve, causing a tremor in the branches. 

"Brother," I said soothingly, "the shell is broken." The branch pulled deeper into the fluid, the fluid slipping over it. 

"Go away, I sleep." 

"No more sleep, it is time to wake," I commanded him and he shook in agitation, flinging yolk into my face. The smell of the yolk appalled me and I covered my face only to be splashed from above as my brother flew over my head. I wiped the sticky stiff from my white hair, flinging it off my finger and then turned to the branch my brother had landed on. 

His form was different from mine. He was small, his magic smashed together within his tiny body under a layer of black scales. He had a squat face with two horns growing straight back from the crown of his head. And from his dark face were two golden eyes. He perched on the branch with his legs and spread out behind him were the curved branches that had been sticking out from the yolk, wings. 

"Sister, we are not the same, you and I," my brother said as I gazed at his wings. I stretched out my own hand, spreading my fingers, hoping to see the same leathery membranes spring between my fingers. Why was I different? Where he had scales, I was made of flesh; and I had no wings. Could he really be my brother when I was so different? 

"We are different" my brother said, "but you are still my sister." My hand dropped,  focused on my brother. 

"I am Gyle," he said. 

"If you are Gyle, then I am Lya." 

I stepped toward him and raised my arm, Gyle stepping down onto my arm. he sidestepped down my arm until he could drape himself around my shoulders, his tail gently wrapping around my neck. It felt strange that he was my brother even though we were so different, but I knew it must be so. I could feel, I felt it in the magic that bonded us together. And I was happy it bound us together, he was my brother. 

"Gyle," I said to him, "Where should we go?" 

Author's Note

Please be patient for new installments. I will try my best. Also it would be awesome to get some critiques on my work. I'll be sure to review your work if you take the time to review mine. Thanks.

Reviews

[Georgie]

I really enjoyed reading this! I love the imagery of being born into light and the connections with nature and earth. It does leave me wanting to know more- why are you different to him? What are you- are you human? What kind of world is it? Really great stuff. Look forward to reading the next installment!

[SpeedyHobbit Armstrong]

This was an intriguing opening. I am looking forward to learning more about these two characters and the world in which they dwell. It was interesting to read their interactions