deepwaterwritingprompts:Text: They fell from the sky each winter, burning and beautiful, disoriented

deepwaterwritingprompts:Text: They fell from the sky each winter, burning and beautiful, disoriented, and hungry. There’s never any predicting where they’ll land, within the Nine Circles. But the lights aren’t hard to follow, out here in the desert, and they don’t move around much. This one was crouching in the hollow its impact had made in the sand. Six limbs - arms or legs, hard to tell in that position - and naked wings sticking up like spars from the thin back. I wondered what the feathers would look like when they came in. But for now I went over to it, crouching beside it and speaking in a gentle, soothing voice. “Welcome, cousin,” I told it, not touching it yet. “You’re tired and hungry. I’ll give you something, if you’re ready.” It lifted its head, showing me a still-glowing face, six-eyed and sharp-angled. It opened a mouth full of light and pale blue tongue, and made a confused sound. They often don’t know how to speak, right at first. But I wrapped it gently in a blanket, soft and worn by many washings, and poured soup out of my old thermos and into a cup that looked the right shape for its mouth. I’ve been doing this for a long time, and I’m good at fitting a cup to a face. It drank eagerly, then reached out a long-fingered hand to touchmy arm lightly, tugging on my sleeve like a child. “Uuuur?”“The words will come,” I told it, still quiet and soothing. I spread outa flat pad – my second largest – and coaxed it onto it, off the stones andsand. It huddled into the soft blanket and watched me while I brought over thefire-pot and lit it. They like the fire, watching its glow as the light thatburns inside them slowly fades. I fed it carefully… more cups of soup at first,then pieces of fruit and flatbread. It ate from my fingers at first, like ababy bird, and I had to be careful. They must not taste blood, during the firsteating, and they don’t know yet to be careful. When dawn came, the glow was gone, and I could see it better. It wouldbe tall, half again as tall as I am, when it stood erect. Two legs, four arms,and the wings, all long and spindly. No obvious signs of sex yet, but thatsometimes comes later. Its skin had settled to a deep twilight blue, but theeyes still shifted from colour to colour, pupils shrinking to cat slits, thenopening to circles or oblongs or ovals. Tiny quills were beginning to sprout onthe long, naked wings, their blue skin stretched over fine bones. It looked atme, when I put more fuel on the fire, and cocked its head. “Who are you?” Thewords came clumsily, but clearly. “My name is Sam.” I crouched down. Once the sun is up, it’s safe forthem to eat meat, so I offered it some. Its teeth had come through at aroundthree in the morning, pearly and square, and now it chewed carefully on meatstewed soft and flaky. “I’ll be here as long as you need me.” “Why?” it asked, when it had finished eating. “Why are you here?” I gave it the simple answer. “Because you need me.” That’s the simple answer. We’ve done it, my family, for a long, longtime. The long answer…There was a time when the Sky People were dangerous. Monsters. We livedin fear of them, the ancestors said. They hunted people as well as animals, andlegends of great serpents and other monsters come down to us. I’ve heard thestories, and driven out to the marked places, where claws have torn throughstone and strange fires have melted sand to dirty glass. You don’t become the Watcherwithout knowing the history. They *were* monsters, once.Then one came down near a family’s camp. Really near, near enough thatthey saw it when it was new. They went and looked, mother and father and three children, and they sawit crouching in the dirt, still glowing with the heat of its fall, naked andweak like any baby creature. They offered it water, and it drank, and cookedroots, and it ate. They covered it with warm fur – this was before we discoveredhow to make woven cloth – and told it stories until dawn came. That was thefirst Sky Person that was a friend to human people. It protected that familyand their tribe against the others, and remained with them for all its life.There were missteps, of course. The first person to make the mistake ofgiving them raw meat got eaten, we’re mostly sure. Cooked meat was better, but itmakes them fierce. Good, when we need protection. Bad, when it’s a time ofpeace. We learned over time to start with liquids, then plants, then bread orporridge. No raw meat, not ever, not even meat with a little pink still in it, andnever cooked meat until after the first sunrise. They like fire and warmth, andcalmness. Fighting in front of them is worse than giving them meat, so there’sonly ever one person with them now, and that one a trained Watcher who’ll staycalm. By noon, it was talking easily, rambling on the way they do when theflood of knowledge is still coming into them from wherever it comes from, andstroking my dog’s fur with gentle fingers. The feathers were coming throughdappled in black and white, just like Blue’s fur, and black hair was growing onthe long skull. I answered questions when they came, and otherwise I justlistened. You could learn some amazing stuff from the Sky People, when theywere listening to the Wisdom. We learned about nearby islands, and the landswhere only Sky People and animals lived because all the humans had died, longbefore we had boats that could get us there. Learned the world was round like aball, too, although the ancestors had been pretty sure of that before they’dheard it from a Sky Person. You couldn’t look at the moon and the sun and theplanets and so on without realizing that most things are round like balls, on acosmic level.It pointed up at the sky, in the afternoon, at something I couldn’t see.“There are glass eyes, watching.” “The satellite? Yeah, they always send one over when there’s a Fall.Some people think they’ll find out where you lot come from, if they watch hardenough.” It smiled, showing its pearlescent teeth. “They won’t.” “Think I don’t know that? My ancestors have been watching for you forthousands of years. We know what we need to.” I poked up the fire a bit. “Wanta cup of tea?” “Yes. I like tea.” By sunset, it was a she, and tired of the blanket. I brought out the foldedfurs and lengths of cloth, letting her choose what she wanted. Sometimes theydon’t want to wear anything, sometimes they leave draped in furs from head tofoot. It all depends. After much deliberation, she chose a length of black andone of sky blue. I cut them down for her into strips, and showed her how towrap them around her body so they wouldn’t foul her wings or pinch her soft,still-new skin. I hemmed the raw edges where I’d cut, through that night, whileshe watched the fire and listened to me telling stories about other Sky PeopleI’d seen, or heard of. They’re strange beings. No two ever look entirely alike. Some are morelike animals, and some are more like birds, and some are more like plants ortrees, and some are more like humans, and some are like nothing any of us haveseen before. Some only live for a season, or a moon. Others for years. There’sone – a huge, granite-skinned tree-creature – that walked halfway across thecontinent to a lookout over the sea, stopped there, and hasn’t moved since. Wecan’t tell if it’s still alive or not, but the stone doesn’t weather, it doesn’tfall if you push on it, no animals or birds will go within six lengths of it, andit’s been there for nearly two hundred years. We can only guess that it knows,or knew, what it was doing, and leave it alone. “Why do some of my kindred have names, in your stories, when others don’t?”She was sipping more tea, and Blue was asleep with his head in her lap. He’shad plenty of time to get used to the Sky People, and most of them don’t worryhim. I finished pulling the latest knot tight. “Some of them stayed withhumans, and got names from us. Some of them had names already, and told them tous. Others… didn’t.” I shrugged. “You can’t get a name until you’re finishedlearning the Wisdom. That’s a rule. When you’re done, you’ll know whether you’llhave a name or not.” “Yes.” She went back to sipping her tea, absently preening one wing withher two left arms. We had breakfast at about dawn, and she put on her wrappings, and thenwent and sat under a tree for a bit. Then she got up, and walked back to me. “Ihave finished learning all the Wisdom that has been given me,” she told me. “Thankyou, Sam. I am ready to go to my purpose, now.” “You’re welcome.” I didn’t ask about the name thing, or about her purpose.As a rule, we try not to ask them any questions that aren’t in the immediate hereand now, about food or drink or something. I don’t know exactly why. Thestories and the teachings just say that people who ask questions beyond ‘do youwant more food’ or ‘how about another cuppa’ or ‘do you want something to wear’wish they hadn’t. “You gonna want a ride back with me, or are you making yourown way?” “I will fly.” She stretched out her wings, longer than she was tall,now, and glittering at the edge of every feather. They were pretty, thosewings. Then she smiled, and reached over to pat me on the head. “You are a goodWatcher,” she told me, and then her face sobered. “I am the last, for thiswinter,” she told me. “But tell the others to pack well, next winter. Nextwinter… there will be many. You will need a lot of food. Goodbye, cousin.” “Goodbye. Safe travels.” I watched her go, and she was beautiful inflight, but I was worried. They didn’t often volunteer information about thefuture. Actually, I wasn’t sure any of them had ever talked aboutsomething as far ahead as next winter. About three months was the furthestahead they’d gone, if I was remembering right. In quiet times, peaceful times, there’s not more than two or three SkyPeople in a season. If there was gonna be ‘many’ next winter, that meanttrouble was coming. Big trouble. Could be a war. Could be a bad storm season.Could be a meteor coming right at Earth ready to wipe us all out. There was noway to know. All we could do was prepare. “Gonna buy a bigger freezer, Blue,” I told him, when everything was backin the car and he’d jumped into his place between the folded blankets and thedepleted stores of food. “And a bigger soup pot, too. We’re gonna have a lot ofcompany.” -- source link

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