laula, pieni lintu

it was a devastation. a travesty saddled normally with the rattlings of inconvenience. it meant more to her—everything to her. and yet, it was something so feeble to the world, so unworthy in the eyes of others.

it lay motionless at her feet. its demise unknown to her, but one she mourned all the same. she gathered it in her maw tenderly, mindful of its bodice despite the life that'd left it. maansiivet did not eat their elders, did not find purchase in the flesh of any who held wings, and soma only wished to continue that prosperity in the world she'd been gifted.

she would not bury, but instead wear the fallen proudly. a symbol of its worthiness, a remnant of its spirit prevailing. a perch would be made when the woman settled, when she'd found a home—a place of thanks and worship. a reminder and a gift.

and the wings would need to dry once she tenderly stripped them, the remains planted so that a new soul may sprout. without a home to offer them, a sanctuary worthy of the winged, she would mourn. gentle whimpers, howls of tender song—she would grieve. its brothers and sisters perched on the branches overhead, recognizing the loss as they always had before taking flight again. a cycle, a constant, a life.

and she would remain. their faithful wanderer. their anointed. their trusted. watchful, ever still.

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Dead and gone, dead and gone, dead and gone.

That's what they were, and that's what always repeated in his mind like a mantra when he needed to remind himself that he was the sole survivor. Who the fuck was he, for him to have been the one to survive? The guilt swarmed him, sat on his chest and bones and chipped away at his broken pieces. Saint pretended like he wasn't carrying the weight of all their ended worlds on his dumb shoulders, he was playful and greedy and lively and rambunctious and he looked away from the things that might dare to look like they were serious.

He didn't need serious.

He had serious enough for a life time.

Saint pretended, he was good at that. So when he found himself alive in a new place, in a new world, without being able to explain why, he pretended it was normal and carried on like it wasn't absolutely bat shit and he wasn't going bat shit because of it. He was startled by the sound of whimpers and howls that sung a song of grief, and Saint's spine shivered as he grew closer to the danger zone. Grief was dangerous, because he hadn't even really felt his own, yet he was drawn closer by the sound of someone elses despite the way alarm bells were going off in his head.

Stop, he told himself sharply, a voice that wasn't meant to be his, too sharp and too grown.

Stop, turn around, it was louder, harsher, bordering pleading.

Then he saw her, and Saint knew his battle was lost. She was strange and new and she was — well, he didn't know what she was doing, and the young boy's curiosity won above all else. Unafraid — a foolish boy, a boy, not a man, nowhere near a goddamn man with the way he woke screaming every night — he encroached, "whatcha doin'?"

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She had not been quiet. Her mind had urged her to hush, but it was the roots settled deep within her soul that forbade her from the idea. Let the world hear the loss, let everyone else mourn alongside her. But even despite those roots, she had never expected someone else to join her, never expected the stare of another in the midst of what very well might be something special—something private.

He was kind-hearted, she realized, curious but not to the brink that it tempted something harsh beneath the light of his pelt. He reminded her of the gentle dandelions back home; did he waver with the wind too?

“planting.” it was such a simple answer to his question. a loaded one, to be sure, but soma would accommodate herself to whatever more he asked. To learn, to teach, she could do that for him. “you can never leave them where they've died. above ground. does no good.”

her stare cut to him, youthful and daring. “what're you doing?”

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---

Planting, she said. She said it so simply, to the point, and Saint glanced down to her paws and blinked. She was planting the bird? It wasn't that he didn't like the idea, it's just that he didn't understand why. The boy squinted in thought before he looked back to her, realising she wasn't an adult at all either.

Both in that awkward place of youth, teetering on the edge of walking the path into what would later be adulthood, and he felt just a little bit more comfort. 

What was he doing? He chortled a short laugh, thick tail wagging behind him as he approached her some more. He was bigger than her even now, he realised, but they couldn't look further apart if they tried. "Nothin'," Saint answered her honestly, knowing she had met his daring, bold antics with her own. "Why do you need to bury them?" 

He was curious, okay, and she was new, and this was new, and he would do anything to have something be louder than the haunting screams he had bouncing around in his head. Saint dropped his rump down near her as if personal space wasn't something that existed, messy in the way he sprawled his hind legs to the side and looked to her.

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his question seemed to draw a huff from her. not unwillingness to share, more...disbelief that he did not already know. disbelief in all of that she saw from behind woven bark. “you plant so that it will grow. where else would the spirit go?”

she could not imagine a fate cast strictly to roam the earth they'd already been taken from, no matter how fruitful it might've been when breath swept through their lungs. the spirit of planting was different, an embodiment of peace and light and purpose. “when a clan settles, their wings are kept, used as a strengthful memory—remembrance.” she offered him a small smile, pride for her bird companions seeping into her tone.

“we wear their banner across our backs, or feathers in our fur, as a way to honor them. their bodies provide us trees—care and protection. it is a symbolic relationship.”

soma's ears lifted, her tender touch shifting beneath the small frame of the bird within her grasp. “we do not mutilate. it is an honor for maansiivet. for me.” because her home had not been created, the birds not buried where they must. it was all the beginning still.

“what do you do with your birds?”

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---

Her huff didn't go undetected, but Saint wasn't entirely sure what it was for. He eyed her, and then she spoke, and Saint was stumped. Planting birds so that it would... grow? His brow furrowed as he tried to work through the information, the implication, and reiterated her question to himself. Once planted, the spirit would... leave? Saint gargled a sound in the back of his throat in thought. He couldn't call her strange, because he had met stranger, and this seemed more of a way of life than just a hobby, if her further explanation was anything to go by.

He didn't speak, didn't retort or intervene, and only listened. Birds were important, then. To her and hers. Saint glanced back down to where her paws sat and the bird she had been planting lay, and regarded them thoughtfully. Whilst he was bold and playful, Saint could listen. For at least a short-period of time, and really, she was offering herself as a good distraction without realising it. "They are your Gods?" Saint asked curiously. He wasn't a Religious man and no God could ever give him a good reason for the brutal murder of his family, but he wasn't going to disregard someone just because they did.

Birds for him had always just been things to watch or to listen to. He had been human prior to this, and now he was a wolf in a strange world but it came as a gift, really, because he had no ability to go back to what was left of his home and torture himself visually. He could do that only mentally, and in his dreams. "I buried one once," Saint told her, "a bigger bird had pushed a baby out of its nest. I made it go away, but the baby was dyin'. I'm not a Healer." He was the furthest thing from it, he thought.

"In my world, birds are just animals. They live and die with nature, and some eat them for dinner." It wasn't going to be an answer she liked, not really, but it was the truth. Saint tilted his head as he looked at her, "what happens if someone eats one?" Did she, or they, have laws surrounding making a meal out of a bird? She was a carnivore, he assumed, as all wolves were, but that didn't mean she had to have every meat in her diet, he supposed.

This was the first time that Saint, in some time, was not bouncing off of every wall. He sat, intrigued by the knowledge, and let it happen.

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she supposed, to anyone else, she was strange. and maybe he didn't say it, but she could see his slight apprehension—his confusion. she had never been confused by it, not when it was all she knew, all she was ever taught. humoring anything else, wondering or adding anything else, it was never a thought that crossed her mind. this belief was enough...was all she needed.

but even despite his evident wonder, he listened, he paid attention, and soma was never apprised with such. it left her enlightened, brimming with the want to tell him more—to tell him everything.

“gods?” she wondered aloud, her head shifting into a soft tilt. “i suppose they are similar in a sense, but we do not call them gods. they are taivaan.” celestial. forever bound to the skies as the earthwings could only wish to belong.

his next words afforded her full attention, paws drawn inward so the bird pressed against the warmth of her chest as he continued. “they are most discerning creatures. they do not care for the weak-minded, weak-souled.” she shifted. “it does not mean they are not afforded the same burial; burying it was good.” a wise choice, even if he did not know it. an action she appreciated even if it was a stranger that did it.

“all animals are nature. maansiivet yearns to fly, to bear wing even when their feet touch the ground. we are envious, but not selfish. only the worthy are allowed to honor the dead, to touch the diseased and to bury. we are judged, just as everyone else.” and the unworthy, however selfish it might seem to be, were forgotten. it was not their place to question or to argue. not everyone was worth the mark of a feather.

soma's demeanor seemed to lighten at his next question, a girlish giggle leaving her. “we do not kill those who eat birds. not everyone favors our beliefs, not everyone wishes to conform.” her grin settled into a timid smile. “but.” a breath. “maansiivet are unallowed to eat those with flight, not unless they are given willingness. a lintu must freely give their life. it is as much a true sign of devotion and trust as it is permission to wear their wing.”

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---

Taivaan. Saint repeated the word in his head, his ears swerving on his crown as he listened to her.  Similar but not the same, and Saint wondered if that made it all the more confusing. "Taivaan?" He attempted not to butcher the word, but his accent was thick and heavy and he would always do the opposite of what he intended, by accident. "What does that mean?" He was feeling a bit greedy. Built for plenty, he had been like his brothers. Though a teenager, he had been broad and tall and good with a sword. He would go down the Fighter path, he had known that since birth, but Saint had always fancied the libraries when he could, too. He listened to his Nanna as she wove stories and lore, and he was always wanting to know the whys and the hows.

It carried with him here, too, it seemed.

His eyes followed her movement, tracking the way she drew the bird to her chest, flush against her fur. His ear twitched. Birds valued the strong, then? "The baby was weak-minded?" He asked her, "they do that, then? Kill their weak?" It wasn't an accusation or judgement but a mere curiosity. They were not so different from many, then, if that was the case. As she told him that burying the bird had been good, he shifted on his rump as he felt his spine tinge with approval.

He pieced it together, or so he thought. Maansiivet was her, or her people, he thought, and the birds were their... Taivaan. "You are worthy," he commented, "if you are touching burying the bird." What did it mean, to be worthy? Saint chewed on his tongue in thought, "what makes you worthy?" It was said bluntly, but not unkind, simply keen to know what it all meant.

She giggled. Saint's ears flung backwards and forwards at the sounds, and he decided that he wanted to commit it to memory so that he might hear that instead of the anguished cry of his family. Approval settled in his veins knowing that he had been the reason she laughed, even if it might have been because he'd asked a stupid question.

He was content to delve into her culture, so long as he could focus on someone else, and not himself, and not be asked questions he didn't have the answers to. Or the stomach for, at this point. "That's not any real loss," he said, "wolves have plenty of food to pick from. Losing bird from the menu isn't something to cry over," Saint shrugged his shoulders, supposing that he didn't really have a want to try and hunt a bird in this body anyway. Having them already hunted and available was different, and it had been for a different world.

Here, he didn't mind not eating them. She had cast them with a different light, anyway. He'd always thought of animals as sentient, capable of thinking and feeling, and had always tried to be kind to them where he could. Respectful, even. But she spoke of them as even more than that, and looking at the bird, he'd decided that he wasn't wanting to eat one.

"I prefer a meatier meal, anyway," something like pig, or cow. Or deer. Was there pigs out here? He would have to find out. 

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“taivaan.” she echoed in a soft coo. “born of the sky.” those who never touched the ground but were the beaters of the wind, the carvers of the air. those who gave them flight. soma listened to thousands of stories as she grew from juuri to taimi. root to sapling.

“i don't know.” soma had never witnessed a young banished soul. but it was forgotten as his next inquiry urged an ear to flick in soft recognition, noting his surprise—was it surprise? was it a common thing for his people to live amidst the weak or was that simply another thing they differed in? “if there is dire need to.” she remarked quietly, not ashamed but feeling for all the souls they lost, weak or otherwise. “but birds are excellent judges, they watch and listen. they know best.”

her smile broadened. “in moments like this, when a wing is left tattered on the earth's floor, anyone—weak or not—is allowed to touch them, to find them peace.” her ears fell in a soft sense of bashfulness, as if she couldn't quite believe she was worthy either. “but yes, i am. i have worked to be worthy in their eyes. and i continue to do so.”

the young girl shifted comfortably, turning herself to face him more than she'd been. her attention was his, and vice versa. “this. telling you, wanting to tell you all of this makes me worthy. believing in what comes freely from me, trusting that they are capable of guiding me even if we both may suffer in the end. i was sprouted—born—to live a life guided by another and i am content with it. not questioning it makes me worthy.”

she did not know if she possessed a weak soul, or if her words were construed by the workings of a weak mind. she was strong where the wing guided her, strong where the wind cut through fur, strong where the soil slipped between her toes. “i am with nature and sky. feather and wing. sapling and sprout.”

her eyes, gentle and curious, lifted to his and smiled. “you are empaattinen. most empathetic.” he did not have to listen, did not even have to let her talk. and to find that he would prefer anything else to her precious birds, it was more than enough to have her tail lifting in a slow tap. “i don't think I've ever had a 'meatier' meal.” she remarked with a soft laugh.

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