Flightless Hawk


    Tibarn, Janaff, and Ulki were together, as usual. The hawk king rarely let his two pages out of his sight, if only to keep an eye on them while they grew up. Tibarn, who looked about in his mid-thirties, and with a - converted into beorc age, three year old - son himself, often thought of the two (again, beorc standard) teenage laguz¹ as his own children. Janaff, the farseeing, the cocky, the jaunty, the clown; Ulki, the hearing, the silent, sturdy, inscrutable, five years older than his best friend at age nineteen. As soon as they turned came of age, Tibarn decided he would permenently make them his personal retainers...

    "Uh-oh," said Ulki flatly, breaking the warm summer silence.

    "Ulki? Heya, what's up? What's wrong?" Janaff danced around him, fanning his wings cheerily.

    Tibarn listened with half an ear, concentrating more on the letter before him. It was from Naesala, the king of the crows, talking economics, as was typical of him.

    "A little girl just said, 'Maybe I can too fly!... I can! I'll show you!'" He also heard two familiar 'bwarzp's that meant the girl had transformed, and back again.

    "So? Just another bunch of nestlings learning to jump off a cliff..."

    Ulki's eyes bored into Janaff's face. "I do not like youngsters saying 'maybe' when they try to fly. They always fail. It is sometimes tragic."

    "Yeah, but..." The compact little laguz raked his gaze over the side of Pheonicis Castle. "I see her! Uh... this is not good..."

    "Janaff?" The big hawk king leaned over the two of them. "Where's this nestling?"

    "She's running out of that cave down there," babbled Janaff rapidly, pointing. "Omigosh, look at her wing. That's not gonna fly..." Tibarn had swooped past him; all three could see the little hawk-girl with a long dress and one horribly deformed wing next to an ordinary one. She ran determinedly, jumped off the end of the cliff, and transformed. For an instant, she glided. Then, she began to fall, flapping frantically. Ulki caught one scared gasp out of her, but other than that, she was silent.

    Janaff had given a short yell of horror - "Yah!" - when he saw her jump; now he shoved his face in Ulki's shoulder, shielding his head with a wing. "I can't watch. What's going on?"

    "She's falling too fast. Tibarn's going fast as he can, almost there... almost... No! ...And you know, it's undignified to have the hearer telling the seer what's happening when he could see if he only looked."

    Janaff pulled away and looked, adjusting his ponytail nervously. The little hawk was sprawled on the ground below, all right. The king landed beside her, in untransformed laguz form. The young page could see the girl's eyes open, slowly transforming back, and exchanged some words with the king. Then, Tibarn looked up at them. "Broken leg! Janaff, get a splint and bandages, please. Ulki, go tell her parents."

    "Yes, my lord!" chirped the two laguz as they hurried to do his bidding. Janaff, back with sturdy sticks and strips of cloth in his talons, soared down to the crumped form next to the huge crouching figure. Tibarn reached for them, and before Janaff could protest about rank, he was binding the leg.

    When he was done, he picked up the little form and flew off to the cave the girl had indicated when he requested her parents.

    In the cave, the girl's mother came running out in alarm, pushing past Ulki, who bowed and left. The girl laughed. "Mommy, Mommy, I flew! Well, I glided for a little bit, and then it didn't work, but I flew for a little bit! I can too fly! Will you tell Daddy?"

    The woman gasped and took the girl from Tibarn's arms. "Oh, darling, you broke your leg... My poor Annie. I'm glad you flew." Turning to the big hawk, she bowed. "Thank you, so much, my lord, for helping her and bringing her back. Why on earth did you help her, my lord?"

    "Oh, helping nestlings is more interesting than reading letters..."

    The little girl wriggled out of her mother's arms, hopping on her uninjured foot. At least, she did until she gave a little exclamation and fell onto a couch. "Thank you, Mr. Tibarn sir. I'm so happy! Now I know I really will fly one day. Some day soon, you'll see. Then I can really play with my friends!" She kept chattering, making her mother blush, but Tibarn smiled.

    "Your daughter is a brave little hawk. No complaint, not when she jumped, nor when the leg broke, nor when I set it. She's wonderful. I wish all nestlings were like her."



    Some time later, Janaff was wandering. It was his day off, and for once, he was not within call of Tibarn. Of course, the hawk told himself, if Tibarn really needed him to see something, he could always call Ulki, and Ulki would hear and come and tell him. Ulki would know where he was. For now, he was trying to find Reyson, the heron prince who was only a year younger than he, and was his other best friend. Janaff came across two girls playing in the corridor. One of them had a bent wing...

    "Hi there!" he called cheerfully. "How's the leg?"

    One of the girls looked up. She still had a splint on her leg - that much Janaff could easily see. "Um... uh... it's getting way better! I'm... um... so grateful to you. I remember. You were the one with the bandages." Her eyes flickered back and forth nervously; Janaff guessed she was uncomfortable speaking to an older boy.

    "Yeah? Well, I didn't have them with me; I had to go and get them. What're you playing?"

    "We're playing hopskotch!" chirped the other girl. "It's easy to do when Anne's gotta hop like that."

    "I've got a strong leg," said the first girl, Anne. Janaff sat down to watch them. The wing didn't look so horrible now, it was just that enough bones were bent out of shape that she would find flying extremely difficult, if even possible. It was also a bit smaller than the other one, but that was no real shortcoming.

    Anne chattered away, rather nervously, with many ums and ers in her sentances. Janaff found out that she was four years old, and she thought of Reyson, who looked age thirteen, to be grown up, him, at age fourteen, to be grown up, Ulki, at age nineteen, to be old, and Tibarn, at thirty-three, to be positively ancient. Eventually, she began to talk of the day she flew.

    "And, um, we were all playing, and the others... decided to play, tag, in... in the air. So, I couldn't because I hadn't, hadn't learned to fly yet. So, they called me stuff like... um, humanfeet and featherbrain." She giggled. "I don't have feathers in my brain. They'd be coming out my ears! Um, Daddy says there are some animal owls that have, um, feathers coming out their ears, but I'm a hawk, not an owl."

    "Yep," said Janaff, grinning.

    "So, Mr. Janaff, I had to try to fly. And, and it was fun! I, um, I did glide a bit. Emily, here, she told me she first flew by running and jumping and then transforming, and my other friend who was there, um, Gimbal, said to glide because that's easy. And that's also what Dana said. So, I did! I did! I did!" she chanted, hopping on her 'strong leg'.

    "Hey, I've gotta question. Why do you wear pants under your dress?" asked Janaff.

    "'Cause, um, 'cause I try to fly jumping off my bed and flapping, and um it doesn't work very well. I go like this - I'll show you, but you have to catch me if you don't want me to hit my knees." She took two practice jumps, and then jumped with all her might in a forwards direction, flapping crazily. Janaff, who had stood up, caught her a bit awkwardly, chuckling.

    "Well, what about your knees, then? If you pick up your feet like that, then your knees will always hit the floor first."

    "Except when I'm on my be-ed!"

    "Yeah, except then. Is that why you wear them?"

    "Well, um... they do get kinda beat up..."

    "Can I see?"

    "No!" She shook her head vigourously.

    "Please?" Janaff was grinning his face off; it was fun to talk with nestlings.

    She shook her head, but a bit less emphatically.

    "C'mon. I won't tell anyone," conspiratorially.

    "Um..." she considared. "Okay." She sat down and rolled up one leg of her pants, the unbroken leg. Underneath was a large, clumsy bandage. She tried to untie this, but needed Emily's help. "I put these on because if my Mommy or my Daddy found out, I would be in trouble. Mommy doesn't want me to hurt myself, and Daddy doesn't want me to fly. Anyway..."

    The knee was black, purple, green, and covered in scrapes and shallow cuts. Janaff just barely managed to stop himself from gasping and forced a smile. "Well, you're very determined and brave and strong, that's all I can say. That's incredible."

    "I know that the other kids don't have knees like that, but they all learned to fly already. My wing just doesn't work sometimes."

    'All the time,' Janaff said to himself, but kept his mouth shut. "Hey, when you jumped, were you scared at all? I won't tell anyone that either," he added hastily.

    Anne hesitated, looking at her friend. "Um... Well," she looked at him again, then flickered her gaze all over in embarrassment, "I was. Especially when I started to fall, then I was terrified 'cause I didn't know how high the cliff was, I just jumped. But it was so fun to glide! I wanna do it again! I'm gonna do it again! You just wait and see. I'll be the best hawk ever! And, you know, hawks are the greatest!"

    "Better than the crows or the cats, anyway. What about the dragons?" asked Janaff.

    "Umm... I guess they're pretty good. But we're still better!"

    "And how about the herons?"

    "They're not, um, fighters like the hawks, but they're really nice and beautiful, so I guess they're as good as us."

    "You like herons. You ever meet one?"

    "Noooo..."

    "Hey! Janaff! We've been looking all over for you!" Reyson and Ulki approached. Emily ran away. Anne didn't notice.

    "Yeah? Hey, listen. I met that girl again, the one who broke her leg last week or whenever, and her name's Anne, and..."

    "Janaff, playing with nestlings?" Ulki asked, mock-incredulously. Janaff growled hawk-style and lunged at his friend, pinning him against the wall.

    "Hey! No fair!" yelped Ulki, grabbing the younger laguz in a head-lock.

    "Uh... hey, you two. This is the girl with the bent wing? So?" Reyson put in. Janaff spared a hasty buffet of the wing for the heron, who ducked easily. The scuffle intensified briefly, and then Ulki slowly forced Janaff down on to the floor.

    "Grrffmf," Janaff muttered as he picked himself up and brushed himself off. "No fair, you're older and bigger."

    "We can do it again, if you like," said Ulki calmly, "without your benefit of surprise and speed."

    "Mmmg, no." Janaff put his long, golden brown hair back in its ponytail.

    "Um, Janaff?" Reyson was waving his arms and white wings around. "I thought we were going to..."

    "Yeah, yeah, but I want you to meet this chick first. She's brave, I can vouch for that. When Tibarn fixed her leg, she didn't squeak once."

    "And when she jumped, the only noise I ever heard out of her was one gasp," Ulki continued. He bent down to the girl, running a hand through his dark brown hair so it stood up. "I'm sorry about your 'friends'..."

    "Oh, it's okay. Um, 'cause, my close friends don't mean it. So, it doesn't matter what the others think."

    "You're leaving me behind, as usual," complained Reyson. "What friends? And what happened? Start from the beginning, please."

    "Okay-dokay-doke," said Janaff, stretching. "Anne was playing air-tag with some friends, only she can't fly... yet, and they called her names like human-feet -"

    "What!?" yelled Reyson, going rigid. "Are you serious? Those..." He broke off abruptly.

    "What's wrong, Prince Reyson?" asked Anne, hopping close to him. The heron sat down on a rock, gritting his teeth.

    "The humans burned my forest. Don't you know? I thought everyone knew."

    "Oh, right... um... someone got killed, and the people in some country thought the herons did it. Only, you didn't. Emily told me her aunt told me... I mean her aunt told her that her friend told her that you were the nicest people ever. Um, Prince Reyson." She hugged him sympathetically.

    The heron smiled. "That's nice to know." He ruffled her hair. "So, you decided to show them just what you were made of, hm? Good for you!"

    "I glided for a bit! It was fun!"

    "Excellent. Perhaps you will fly someday. First, let's get you walking again."

    "Reyson?" Janaff leaned over. "You're gonna heal her?"

    "Why not?" The young heron untied the splints, scrambled into a kneeling position, closed his eyes, and clasped his hands in front of his chest, concentrating his power. There was a brief flash of blue light.

    Anne lifted her foot experimentally. "Wow... Thank you! Thank you so much!" She flung her arms around Reyson's neck. "If there's anything I can ever do to help you, please ask me!" She jumped up and down.

    "Go show your friends, Anne!" said Janaff, clapping.

    "Okay!" chirped the hawk-girl, opening and closing her wings like a butterfly. She ran off to find her vanished friend Emily.



    Many years later, a short, shapely girl with one bent wing danced the corridors of Phoenicis with apron, pail and mop. She was Tibarn's housekeeper, in a sense - she had just come from scrubbing his bathroom.

    "Hiya, there, Anne!" came a cheerful yell from the direction she was going in.

    "Hi, Janaff! What's up? Where are you going in such a hurry?"

    Janaff came down from the ceiling of the corridor gallery where he was zipping along and transformed from full hawk form. Hopping from one foot to the other, he told her.

    "Reyson's in trouble. He didn't come back last night, so we're heading over to Kilvas to ask if Naesala's seen 'im. Seen or not, Ulki's keeping an ear out for him upstairs. I've plotted our course, and now I'm gonna go get food for the trip."

    "Can I help?"

    "Sure! Can you grab a couple of vulneraries from the hospital?"

    "Yup! Just let me throw this stuff in the closet, and I'll be off! I'll make it faster than you, with all your fancy flapping!" The two hawks laughed and darted in opposite directions, Janaff zooming through the air, and Anne running and skipping on her skinny legs. Despite Reyson's repeated and earnest efforts to sing her wings straight, she still could not fly, and used her wings mainly to advertise her present mood, or simply kept them neatly folded away across her back.

    She was at the king's balcony before Janaff, as she predicted, and the other two were waiting for her.

    "I got some vulneraries, King Tibarn," she said, panting, offering a satchel of the little jars.

    "Good girl." Tibarn was still fond of his young cleaning girl. Janaff came in, a small backpack slung around his shoulders and waist.

    "Well? Let's go! We'll be back soon, Anne, so keep the castle clean!"

    "I'll do my best, you goofer! Goodbye, Ulki, Milord Tibarn! Be safe! Good luck, and I hope Reyson's all right!"

    The three hawks, transformed into full fighting glory, called once in reply. Anne smiled wistfully at their distant forms, then turned back inside, already skipping and humming again, to get back to her next chore.


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    ¹ An explanation of 'laguz' is in order, I think. In the continent of Tellius - from Fire Emblem 9, where this story is set - besides the humans (beorc is the polite term), there are several races of people who are shapeshifters. They are called laguz. There are cat, dragon, hawk, crow, and heron peoples. They have a more-or-less beorc form, in which the cats look just like people who have cat ears and tails, the hawks, herons, and crows have wings, and the dragons don't have anything, except occasionally any kind of these people will have a short stripe across their cheek and/or pointed ears. They also have their 'transformed' form, in which they take the shape of their 'category', so a cat laguz would be, transformed, a six-foot tall cat. Tibarn is the biggest laguz I know of, being about nine or ten feet tall when tranformed into pure hawk. Perhaps he is even bigger. I am going by the impressions the game gave me.