elidyce: deepwaterwritingprompts: Text: I found the wings in the attic, covered in dust, untouc
elidyce: deepwaterwritingprompts: Text: I found the wings in the attic, covered in dust, untouched for a century. The wings lay in a case, but the wooden lid had warped a little, and a thick coating of dust had crept in. It wasn’t enough to disguise them, though - at every angle I saw the gleaming of steel feathers and brilliant blue and red enamel. They weren’t shaped like the wings that the Empress’s Guard wear now - those are long, angled things like a swift’s wings. These were broader, fanned, like a pigeon’s wings. According to great-grandmother, no-one had opened the locked room in the attic for a full century. Her father had made her swear, on her own life and on the lives of her children, not to open that door, nor to let anyone else open it, until the date he named. She, in turn, had made her son promise, and Father had made me. Now the day had come, and all there was, inside this little locked room at one end of the long attic, was a jumble of old boxes and tools, a battered old table, and on the table… the wings. I was a little surprised that the table was still intact, given the weight of the wings, until I rubbed the dust away and saw that it was solid oak, that might last another century, hardening with age until it would turn a steel blade. The case had clearly been made for the wings, but it wasn’t a solid thing like the table. Examining it, with the eye of one whose family have ever been fine woodcrafters, I could see it had been hastily made. Not badly - whoever had shaped it had had skill - but hurriedly, incautiously. He’d wanted these wings enclosed. Hidden. Keep reading -- source link