i just uprooted this from my old story books as a child. I used to be obsessed with my own little imaginary world, featuring these magical elf like birds called Windriders, this was just a little extract of a history book I made about them. I just found it enchanting to read, as it brought me back to times when I lived in my imagination.
The History of Windriders
Windriders can only ever have one child. There was no such thing as a sibling or a twin, as nothing was ever possible. For a Windrider male, it would mean growing a second tail, and in most cases, this was not an option.
The bizarre process of birth, adopted by the riders, meant that the pregnancy began long before the wedding or even the first act of proposal, for Windriders still have weddings even though they seldom touch the ground. The very first step began when the male’s tail broke away from his spine, he will then present it to his weaver, or wife in olden day English and she would weave it in and out of her spindle like finger. As she weaved, each strand of silk tail spilt into thousands and then retwined with each other to make a new shape. A tiny baby began to form over the four moons she weaved, and at the very end of the last moon, when the wind picked up pace, she would whisper into the baby’s ear, and give it a name.
Another twelve moons would pass, where the couple played and taught there child the language of the wind, then when the wind died and the breeze slipped down, the male would take his child out on it’s first ride. Clutched in the neck of his cloak, he would carry the child to the end of the earth, where the moon was so low, it touched the clouds. There the moon would whisper to the rider and hearing her wise words he would drop his new born and send them flying down to earth.
Manny have said that seeing a Windrider fall is like watching a shooting star, there silvery skin glinting in the morning light, shimmering for the world to stare in wonder. Occasionally a passing fairy would catch the sky children and rear them as there own but Nims usually fly to low see the sky children and are too slow to catch them anyway. Very rarely they would land in a sky ship passing below and be eaten by the captain. It was considered lucky if a Windrider fell on your ship and was custom to eat your catch and bring all the luck to yourself. But mostly, Nims and sky ships were nowhere to be seen and the children safe to free fall through the clouds.
Most beings would think that dropping a 1 year old child from thousands of feet would be unintentional but the Windriders had a history to follow and the doings where perfectly intentional and right. Because although the baby was falling unaware, something inside of it awoke, and as the breeze shot passed the newborn, it began to change. Long shafts of silk billowed from its spine, weaving in and out of each other until they merged into one shape, a cloak. But it continued to fall. Lower and lower, until only a few hundred feet stood below the baby, and then suddenly when all was lost, and the newborn certainly done for. Its great eyes, that had been shut all this time opened, and all of a sudden these golden pupils where awake and alive with a knowledge no human baby ever could posses. With metres between the silk child and the hard stone, the creature that is a baby, but is something much more important as well, stretches it’ cloak as far as it will stretch and with the power of an angel. It’s lifted up by the wind, surging up towards the clouds even faster than it’s decent. It returns into its father’s presence, and embraces him in pleasure at his first flight. Together they ride the wind the long journey home, sharing a secret no one will ever tell.
And so that is how the first wind rider came about, a careless Irish elf dropping his son of a sky ship, only to find that in his fortune his son was restored to him, not only blessed with his life, but his wings.
