Luneset 01OLD OUTAKES

The clouds overhead blocked all incoming light and it was now more difficult to make out much of the landscape through the salmon-tinted lens of her goggles. Fiel pulled them up over her eyes to wipe away the sweat from her brow, as she came across the familiar crossroads between the mountains and the sea. Contented as she was for making great time on her own, she found it was high-time to mount Atlas once more. She waited until she came upon the cliff-edge in order to hook the heavy cargo back onto Atlas’ saddle, who had recently molted and was getting bigger—and consequently, taller.

It was much more difficult to straddle the bird now, first, Fiel had to try to get him to sit first, which was no easy task. His thin neck would follow her motions like a coiling snake and snap back at her with his beak, probably thinking she was playing a game with all her frantic hand motions. His own thin-prick legs grew to a man’s height just over the past winter. She could stand right beneath him and use him as shade if she wanted. Atlas didn’t like that much. The bird would croak and jump anxiously, almost as if he were afraid he’d squish her accidentally. Fiel recalled a similar but reversed incident of her own anxiety back when Atlas was just a newly-hatched piper with the habit of pecking at her ankles. They grow up fast.

Once she was able to sit on him straight, she was in heaven. The aches in her legs relieved as though she were straddling a pillow, the fresh silver-white feathers were baby soft, and she was careful not to crush them under the straps. Many would believe canyon runners were easier than horses once you got situated on to them. They never bucked and needed little direction. Certainly, they seemed more comfortable to ride, less smelly. How hard could it be? Just hold onto the shoulder blades underneath the undersized wings, wrap your legs around the belly and lean back. Easy in theory. Many who thought along those same lines lost limbs.

In reality, riding Atlas was like riding a bouncing feathered ball that skipped across the ground whole meters in a single stride, all the while bobbing from side to side. Staying on was half the battle.

The bird hopped back a few strides, crooning and cawing as it managed the weight and with one great motion, it swept forward in a single leap and kicked off the edge of the cliff. A canyon runner can break a man’s back with a single kick—and with the strength of its muscular leg, it propelled them far off the cliff and they were as good as flying.

Fiel relished the thrill of the moment, crying out to the sky a holler of a yelp in excitement, her goggles now fogging up from the wind. When they touched down, Fiel could almost reach down and yank at the tall savannah grass from below, before the bird exploded back up again. You would swear there was a certain grace or elegance in the landing and the soft arc as it bounced itself back up again, then you’d hear its legs pounding the ground like thunder and remember its ferocity.

Fiel craned her neck as she looked back behind her. They were miles from the cliff-side now, a rain of dirt trailing behind them. They reached the gates of the city in a matter of minutes.

Half of the city before her laid pillaged, crumbling surfaces of concrete slabs and ground juxtaposed against the cliffs. Homesteads were torn and crafts thrown apart and abandoned. Everything was rubble, rods and dust. There was the stench of death in the air, and the silence of it too—that eerie variety, where the crows and the vultures gathered overhead. Atlas himself would cry out at them on occasions, the screech echoing through the canyon walls. But more than that, Fiel could feel death—the slow trickling of energy seeping, and almost calling out to her.

Fiel did not dare to dismount her companion, but she clicked her tongue, pressing Atlas to continue on. The canyon runner hopped from one stone slab to the next, less jubilantly now and careful, alert. She could feel Atlas' own feathers bristled up against her thigh.

Far from the debris, Fiel could see a blackened clearing sloping towards the center's town square. Here was only ash, the ground itself devoured clean. Fiel thought she could make out a few humanoid parts caked in the black of the mud. Bombs, she thought. She tried not to linger on the sight and kept pressing forwards towards the inner gates, while penetrated in several places, was mostly still kept intact and standing.

She noticed the obvious signs of life as she approached—wide-eyed children with stricken faces popped out, before slinking back into the shadows. There was a craft half-propped up against the wall, while a man and a woman hurriedly tried to fix the hover slides underneath. The craft carried injured and wounded men, countless of them stacked up one on top of another.

“I'd stop right there if I were you.” A voice called out to her from atop the single watch tower that stood against the distance. He was a soldier hoisting Varsomme's flags. Incredibly, despite all the damage, the city was still standing. Fiel gingerly hopped off from Atlas' plumage.

“I carry deliveries, and a message,” Fiel said. She had to secure her hood as the wind drowned her voice and threatened to reveal her face. Before the soldier could ask again, she indicated towards the cargo of medical supplies, Montroy Express stamped clear upon the boxes.

It was the Montroy's legacy, started by her great-grandfather. He held a monopoly in the freight and courier business back in his day, when they herded whole plantations of mountain horses, canyon runners, and sea dragons—before the steam engines, electricity and hover technology, of course. He was well respected before the business went under, and soon after his early retirement and death. Now they had only a pickings of the animals left, and not a single sea dragon due to her father's own mismanaging. He wasn't ready to take over the family business, but the Montroy pride kept the business going for a small niche of special orders. Such as shipping cargo through war-torn areas—war was profitable after all.

The soldier recognized the logo and called for his men to greet the girl's arrival and help unload the cargo. Only three men, himself included, came down.

Fiel stayed to help distribute the packages to the injured as long as she could, but the day grew long and she wanted to head back before the darkness. She didn't trust herself in the dark.

“I have just one more,” she said, reaching into her cloak to pull out a parcel wrapped in leather. It had considerable weight to it, Fiel thought it a book inside. “For a Mr. Avory, I've gotta get it to him directly. After this, I'll be off, I just don't wanna wait until—” It was then she noticed the soldier's expression fall.

“I'm afraid he didn't make it,” The soldier said, “He was our former Commander.” He took off his helm, his gaze directed straight at the ground. He looked like he could have easily fallen over. “May p-peace be with him—”

“No—I can't have that. Does he have any family members?”

“I'm terribly sorry, Ms. Montroy,” The soldier said, before walking away briskly without a farewell or word of departure. Fiel frowned.

Another soldier had overheard the conversation. “Aster City,” he said.

“Excuse me?”

“His family is in Aster City.”

A large bonus was waiting for her back at home on the condition she delivered the package safely. Mr. Rosch Nearton made it imperative it had to be given to Mr. Avory, directly. No one else. She weighed the package in her hands, wondered about the contents held within. There was no way she could head to the city by nightfall. What's done is done, she thought to herself. She'll just have to return home with it and present the news of Mr. Avory's death. It was a pity. Her family needed whatever change they could get.

By the time Fiel arrived, it was already dusk. She managed to make it just in time, though the return trip up the mountains went much longer despite the lightened load. Willsboro was just a mere fishing village nestled between rolling hilltops, the Widow River and crescented by the sea, but to Fiel it was home. It spread before her like square patches of individual farmlands that together formed a quilt.

The Montroys lived for many years in the house on the hilltop. Her grandfather said it was easier to tend to the animals that way, for he could survey his entire flock and count them one by one as they grazed. Now there was only the sickened mare, Atlas and Anji left of the birds—and Fiel watched over them together with her cousin Lucas, and tended over the crowberries, about the only thing left that would hold them over for another season.

The house was cold, even as she entered it. It was a large house with terraces, three landings, and even a dock that they used to transport the freight, but now held only an abandoned craft. Fiel had repainted the outer walls a mango orange color to contrast with the boundless green turf that surrounded it on all sides, but she left her grandfather's study tower intact, which still had the peeling white paint job. The tower acted as a lighthouse and bell-tower to the neighboring farms—but inside was her grandfather's enormous library with books nestled from wall to wall.

Fiel used to climb up the shelves when she was little and approach the high window, where she'd be able to crawl through it to the outside, and climb the ledge all the way to the very top of the tower. From that height, not even Atlas could hope to reach her, and she could see the far reaches even beyond Willsboro—to the Greater Cities where their distant lights twinkled and had always inspired her to study harder. She would manage to spend all day in that tower, reading through some of the books and seeing how far she could throw apple cores from that height.

But it was Lucas, who, afraid of heights and never dared to climb or even step foot in that tower who still managed to get the better grades. He left for a time. It was in order to study at the grand universities which Fiel would always resent him for, and came back with a degree and the picture of the girl he would one day hope to marry. Many moons ago, Fiel envied the girl in the frame. She was a fine girl with blue eyes, red hair, and a smile that reached all corners of her face. Koraliye, he called her.

He sold his craft just so he could buy her a suitable ring, hoping on the off-chance that she would say yes. And lucky as he was, yes was the answer she gave, but father became sick, the other crafts had to be sold, funerals had to be had, and he had no way of getting back to her, now.

Fiel didn't mind much, she missed spending time with Lucas, and the darkness made her afraid to be by herself. Sometimes, she would dream that she came home one day and found him gone, and found that she was once again alone in the big, drafty house.

But he was still there, sitting by the creaky porch right at the spot where the wood turned to rot. Fiel sighed, she would have to repaint. She clambered off of Atlas, who was soon joined by Anji—her feathers were a powdered blue, nowhere near as impressive or fanned out, and she was considerably shorter, but it was easier to tell them apart. Whenever the two met, their necks would wrap around each other like vines. They were siblings, but she wondered if the animal-world cared about technicalities, and if the birds would not mind making a few eggs...

Lucas seemed to have the same thought. “She's of an age to carry, now.”

“Still would take about two years for the eggs,” she said as she sat down next to him. The wood creaked in complaint. He looked at her expectantly, and she wondered why it was her who always had to be the bearer of bad news. She supposed it was a part of her job-description, and sighed.

“Avory’s dead, Luc.” There was nothing to it now but to go back to Rosch, perhaps he would still compensate her---no, who was she kidding? This was Rosch, afterall.

“I suppose that means no bonus,” Lucas said, simply. “Which means no getting out of this dump.” He threw the apple core he was munching on down towards the fields, but it didn’t fly far before Atlas grabbed it expertly from mid-air, like a whip and swallowed it whole.

“We could sell the farm,” Luc suggested for the umpteenth time. He was counting on her. This whole farm was counting on her.

“Maybe…” She hesitated. Part of her wanted to give it up already. Sell the place and move in with Luc and his soon-to-be-bride, and work in the city somehow, maybe deal with the information trade. The modern information trade. Not this, wasted, obsolete crapshoot. Little by little in some distance future, she would find the money to buy it back somehow, retain the little bit of a heritage she still had left to hold on to. This thought of her resented it all. What did heritage ever get her but loss? The hard weight of it like an imprisonment in acres full of gravestones.

And yet. There was another part of her whispering now, that cherished it, rotten apple cores and all. There was always another way.

“He’s got family in the City, Luc. Maybe, if I could head out there with Atlas, I might be able to deliver it to them in his stead…”

“Ellie, that's dangerous.” Lucas looked at her, his arm around her shoulder. With his other hand he lifted the hood, revealing two curled horns, black as obsidian. Fiel shook her head wildly.

“I'll be fine—nobody noticed today,” she said. “Besides, once I reach the city gates, I'll be fine. There are guards everywhere—”

“Ellie,” he said again, and this time, there was a firm tone to his voice. His head whipped away from her. It took a moment for Fiel to register what happened.

In a blink, the sky burned red. Then a flash of white and a force that flung the two Montroys straight off the porch as though ragdolls to an unseen tremor, shaking everything in its destruction. Bombs! Somehow, the birds knew what to do before they did.

Fiel screamed, as Atlas pecked at her, clenching her by the ankles and dragging her along. She whipped around, her legs saddling around him—the position most natural to her as a rider—and which way she went, she did not know. 

“LUCAS!” she must have screamed his name over and over, as she bobbed this way and that, coughing through a presiding smoke, but she heard not her desperate cry, she felt not even the vibrations of her voice, only a powerful, deafening ringing in her ears that focusing on it now made her black out.