Trouble in Paradise

The next day, Angel was in the crow’s nest atop the Cloud Breaker, his fingers white with the tight grip he had on its rail. The feel of the wind on his face was nearly best thing he had ever experienced, second only to the sensation of the wind ruffling his feathers. Still, he had never been so high up before, and his fear of falling held a limit to his joy.

When he had woken up bright and early that morning, meeting Karp at the navigation deck, Angel had been quick to find work. He wanted to be useful. He was expecting manual labor or to work in the engine room, but to his surprise, Karp had acted like the thought of putting Angel to work had never occurred to him. He assigned the Avian to lookout in the crow’s nest.

So Angel was leaning against the rail, looking out into the bright blue expanse of sky all around him. The air was definitely thinner up there, but within minutes the boy’s lungs seemed to acclimate without any problem. He was imagining the clouds into familiar shapes when a flicker of movement between two of the wads of condensed water caught his eye. He stood up straighter, humming thoughtfully. He was just about to dismiss the movement as a bird when a similar blur flashed in the corner of Angel’s eyes.

He turned quickly to try and track the movement, but when he had turned around, he found himself face to face with a woman sitting on the rail of the lookout. He gasped when he realized she was an Avian, pure white wings expanding behind her. She had dark hair, braided and woven many times around her head. Her body was covered in shining armor shaped to her figure, and Angel could see a sword attached to her hip. She looked back at him with bright and curious yellow eyes. A pair of slitted pupils widened and narrowed to let just the right amount of light in.

With all the couth of a teenage boy, Angel managed to say, “You’re an Avian.”

A small smile broke out on the woman’s face. “You speak the human language. And the human attire. Why?”

“Oh!” Angel took a step back to lean against the rounded rail, giving the woman space to stand with him. He suddenly felt conscious of his wings, their rusty brown dimming in comparison to her shining ones. Subconsciously, his wings pulled inwards. “I’m from down there,” he explained, pointing down to Earth. Remembering what Radomir had said, he spread his wings proudly.

The woman tilted her head. “You’re not one of the original hundred. You’re too young.” Before Angel could answer, she seemed to come to her own conclusion, smiling again. “Oh, are you one of their offspring?”

“Kind of. My mom was a slave, and my dad was… a human.”

The woman took a step back, startled. Her face contorted in confusion. “What?’ That’s…”

“...Disgusting?” Angel offered, already expecting the answer.

“Well I don’t want to use that word. That’s a little rude, isn’t it?” she asked in her professional tone. “But it’s unprecedented in the least. What’s it like down there?”

The boy tried not to let his surprise show at the unexpected sign of acceptance. Maybe things would be nicer on the Floating Islands. “Well it’s… I’m from Gear City, so in there it’s a bunch of buildings packed very tightly together. It smells really dank, which I hadn’t realized until I was up here. And the people are mean. I usually had to wear a cloak to try and hide my wings. It made me looked like I was hump-backed,” he laughed.

The girl laughed too, and Angel found himself grinning. “It doesn’t sound very pleasant. Why are you up here? Are you practicing flying?”

“I don’t know how to fly,” Angel said, smile faltering. “I’m with some humans who said they have permission to come into the Floating Islands.”

The girl frowned. “Really? I’m not aware of the Exalt allowing any humans permission besides Omdahl. Maybe it’s a secret,” she whispered conspiratorially. The Avian giggled at this, her wings shaking with the laughter.

“What’s it like on the Islands?”

The young woman looked up in thought. “Well, it’s very peaceful. And spacious. And some of the old architecture is beautiful. I hope you get to see some of the historical buildings. Like the capital! Oh, the capital is so beautiful. It has these-”

The trapdoor to the ship opened by Angel’s feet.

“Angel!” said Terje, one of the crew members. “Sten is down. I need your help getting him to the infirmary.”

The Avian looked up to speak to his new winged fried, but frowned when he saw that she was gone. Just before he looked back down at Terje, he noticed a shimmer in the air that shrank in size, as if it was going farther away.

“Angel?”

The boy looked to Terje. “Yeah, let’s go.”

Sten was in the engine room, curled tightly in a ball by one of the engine’s furnaces. Terje explained that they had been shoveling coal when something in the furnace had made the coals jump out. Several of them had landed on Sten’s abdomen, burning straight through his shirt. Radomir was standing over him, poking the man with the his toe.

“Why didn’t you given Terje a hand?” Angel asked Radomir incredulously.

“I am not to be touching people!” Radomir shouted back, throwing his hands up and marching back to his work.

“You’re unbelievable,” he muttered as he secured a grip under Sten’s arms and Terje grabbed his legs.

The tinkerer whirled back to the Avian boy. “What did you say to me? What do you say, boy?” He shouted, visibly seething.

“I said you’re unbelievable,” Angel retorted, already on his way out of the Engine room. He was fighting the urge to vomit at the smell of burned flesh. “Don’t snap at me just because you hate my species.” His wings flared out, and at his aggression, Radomir stepped back in surprise. “Don’t you understand? Your stupid opinions and quirks are irrelevant when a person’s health is on the line.”

Angel continued to grumble angrily as he squeezed his wings to his body so he could easily get through the door. They maneuvered Sten’s writhing form up the ladder with the help of Karp, who had only just recently caught wind of the incident. Between the three of them, they managed to get Sten to the physician’s room fairly quickly.

The physician, Vitaly, was anxiously pacing back and forth in the infirmary, a set of tools and salves laid out in preparation. There wasn’t an excess of space in the room; it had one wall of cabinets full of medical supplies, a metal operating table, and a small countertop where a basin of water currently rested. Vitaly helped take over in carrying Sten in with Angel bringing up the rear. Karp gave the Avian a grateful pat on the back that went unnoticed by the boy. He continued to not notice when Terje and Karp left, leaving Angel in the most open area of the room.

He watched with bated breath as Vitaly went about meticulously caring for the large burn on Sten’s abdomen. He used scissors to cut the shirt off, then dipped a washcloth in the basin of water to wipe the crumbs of coal off the worker. When he started to cry out and grip the edges of the table, Angel instinctively reached out and took one of his hands. The man’s grip was incredibly strong, but the Avian grimaced and bore it, struggling to imagine the pain the worker was in.

Angel took a moment to take in the physician's appearance. He was tall - maybe as tall as Karp. His lithe figure was wrapped in the traditional lab coat of a physician. A mop of neat, combed blonde hair crowned his angled head. He had a sharp nose, upon which rested the traditional reflective visor of physicians.

As Vitaly continued to operate, washing the burn with alcohol and applying a salve, Angle studied the man he hadn’t properly met yet. He was tall and had messy, blonde hair. He was dressed in the traditional clothes of a physician, including the white robe and reflective visor covering his eyes. The physician was done treating his patient within minutes, much to Sten’s apparent relief.

Pointing past Angel, Vitaly asked. “Could you grab the laudanum from the top cabinet?”

“Oh,” Angel breathed in surprise. He whirled around quickly to open one of the upper cabinets. When he spotted the little bottle labeled ‘laudanum’, he reached for it. The Avian stopped when he felt a hand stroking the back of one of his wings. No one had ever touched his wings when he thought about it, and although the contact surprised him, it was not unpleasant.

“They’re so soft…” Sten whispered, a little reverent and a lot sleepy.

Angel turned around slowly, so as not to hit the man with his wings. He handed the small bottle to Vitaly, his eyes glued to Sten watching his wings. As the physician poured some of the tincture into a cup, Angel plucked one of the softest feathers he could find and handed it to his coworker. “Here you go, Sten. Hold onto that.”

The man threw back his laudanum before taking the father with a goofy smile.

“He’s delirious,” Vitaly said apologetically.

“Hm?” Angel looked up at the tall man.

“I was afraid you would be affronted by him touching your feathers. He’s just in shock from the pain.”

“I don’t mind if it helps him to distract it from the pain.” Angel looked down to Sten, who was absently staring at the ceiling. “You know they say an Avian’s feathers can grant wishes,” he said like he was speaking to a child.

Sten’s gaze shifted to Angel, his eyes wide as if he’d just heard the most amazing news. The boy laughed at his reaction, looking back to Vitaly.

“I don’t think mine can do that though, because I wasn’t born within Gaia’s reach. Plus I’m only half-Avian, so that probably doesn’t help,” he said.

Across the table, Angel watched Vitaly’s lips form a frown. “Half? Karp said you never met your father.”

“I didn’t. He conceived me when my mom was a slave. He’s human though. See?” Angel pointed to his very human and blue eyes.

Vitaly leaned closer to look, drawing back quickly when he got a good look. He seemed like he might be upset about something, but it was hard to tell without seeing his eyes. Clearing his throat, the physician said, “Are you sure you can’t do magic? Maybe it was passed down from your mother.”

Angel shrugged. “I wouldn’t know. I don’t have anyone to show me how.” Vitaly opened his mouth to reply, but Angel cut him off. “Will you teach me to help people like you do? You know, medically?”

Vitaly didn’t answer immediately. “Oh, uh. I suppose I could do that. Come back tomorrow and I’ll have a lesson for you.”

A grin marked Angel’s face. “Thanks, Vitaly!” When he turned to leave, one of his wings knocked over a canister of cotton swabs, and when he turned back to pick the mess up, he sent a bottle of cleaning alcohol flying past Vitaly’s head and shattering against the wall. “I’m so sorry,” the boy whispered, pulling his wings in tight and edging his way towards the exit.

*

“He’s just like his mother,” Vitaly whispered in the darkness of his captain’s bedroom.

Karp shifted uncomfortably in his nightclothes. “Having an interest in medical science hardly warrants genetic similarity.”

“I could teach him life magic!”

“And how would you explain that?”

“I don’t have to actually use any magic. I can just say the Avians taught me some methods.”

“He doesn't think he has magic,” Karp responded, tugging at the back of his shirt. “I swear to Gaia I’m about to stop wearing shirts in general. This is ridiculous.”

“Let me, Karp.”

The captain turned his back to the physician, and Vitaly held his shirt up so his free hand could hover over the scars on Karp’s shoulder blades. A soft blue glow emanated from his hands, and the captain’s body slumped as the irritation was soothed. He lowered his shirt and turned back to his companion.

“Karp, if I could just get him to accidentally trigger his magic-”

“Yeah, that already happened. And he attacked Radomir. Hardly life magic.”

“Defense falls under life magic,” Vitaly argued.

“I’ve never seen you use defense magic.”

“Well it just so happens that I’m not very good at it. You know he’s only half Avian?”

“Don’t change the subject,” Karp said. Then, after a beat, “Wait, what?”

“His father is human.”

“S**t.”

“What if he’s not enough to get us in?”

“We say he’s full-blooded. And Zinaida can shroud his eyes.”

“I’m starting to doubt this plan of yours, Karp.”

“Well it’s too late for that,” the captain said. “We’re past the point of no return.”

Author's Note

I've been in a slump. I blame the story. I was trudging through that really-boring-but-necessary chapter. Once I get these three out I'm going back to fix anymore typos I made.

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