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t a k e your t i m e
wintershadow | 5 of 5 | 188 words

"Take your time," he says, watching: watching his son practice training the eagle that Bird's Eye View had given him. He had received it as an egg, and has spent a few hours each day training it -- but the eagle's surly disposition matches his son's nasty nature. They have not made much progress. They stand in the cleaning underneath the hot summer sun, and the eagle glances between them.

"This bird," Chase says, "is an idiot."

"No, it's not," says Wintershadow, "it's an eagle. It knows how to hunt, and that's about it. There are no mountains here, this isn't its home."

"Where the hell did Bird find it, then?" Chase wants to know, almost flinching when the eagle fans out its wings and resettles. Its talons are long enough to rip open a hide.

"Presumably the mountains," Wintershadow says, mildly.

The eagle surprises them both in the end by indeed taking its time. It is only in a lull in their conversation that it launches itself off of the branch it sat on, retrieves the target, and returns to the branch.

Chase looks impressed. Wintershadow sighs, "See?"

Farewell Smile: 4/5

1. Kiss

Kisses were affairs of the moment for her. She kissed because that was what time and feeling told her to do, even if some other part of her was caught in the past and screaming. It was an expression of something she wanted to feel more than she actually felt. As with everything else in her life, it has become a part of her repertoire that she hopes to turn into truth and reality through repetition.

If she repeats the motions, words, and expressions enough, perhaps one day they will become true. So she lets herself kiss and be kissed and some future version of herself that neither screams nor cries, and truly loves, is there too, kissing and feeling comfortable in her skin.

124 words

Farewell Smile: 5/5

25. Honorable

Farewell Smile was not honorable. She didn’t feel like she had the luxury of honor when she did not have the luxury of feeling like her skin felt right. When she could not even honor herself, be loyal to who she was, and have fidelity to what she believed, how could she claim to honor anything beyond herself?

There was no honor in how she lived, she just hoped to survive the day and if she kept surviving, one day she might find honor.

She might be able to honor the kin she met.

She might be able to honor the beliefs she held.

And she might be able to honor herself.

112 words

Double Vision 05 - silence

He woke as the birds sang up the sun. In the morning, the sound of his own voice met his ears through the air and his jaw as he lectured, advised, and answered questions. The day was full of the sounds of kin and their pets in motion. The evening was occupied mostly by chatter. Only at noon and night, the times of sleep, was there a brief reprieve. But the swamp had its own constant background sounds at all hours, insects and animals and wind and weather.

While sound was not his chiefest sense, he did still rely heavily on it to navigate the world. He knew that some kin lacked hearing the way that he lacked sight - only more, he supposed, since they didn't have a heatsense analogue to make up for it. He wondered, sometimes, what it would be like not to hear, but generally considered the thought of true silence entirely too spooky to contemplate.