"Over the Edge" by OneWingedSparrow; Prologue: Is There Anyone? Oh, it Has Begun....
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@inklings-challenge
This was written for the Inklings Challenge 2023! This is but the prologue; more is to come. (I hope it was okay to tag all the themes in my story, though this prologue only touches on a few.)
Main Tags: Telteas (OC) & Léloh (OC), Original Work, Original Characters, Angst with a Happy Ending, Fairytale Style, Dark Fairytale Elements, Secondary World Fantasy
DEAD DOVE DO NOT EAT: Angst, Blood, Broken Bones, Loss of Limbs (in a sense), Pain, Hurt...there's a lot of hurt.
Summary: This is the tale of an illustrious creature residing in a high tower—and the secret of the broken, bloodied bones scattered about the dungeon floor.
Read on AO3
Reblogs are appreciated!
~
Most people in Thereal had two wings; Prince Telteas had eight, until the day befell that he should have seven, and he dropped to the courtyard writhing and wailing amidst a pool of feathers and blood.
Alarmed, his brother called the guards, who alerted the king and queen, who summoned the physicians, who ran their instruments over temple and neck, over shoulder and alula, over coverts and tertials, and still could find no damning evidence that would explain the sudden snap of the bone from his back.
“What happened?” fretted his mother, tearing at her own down.
“It is true I threw a snowball,” confessed his brother, biting his nails, “but the snow was soft, and scattered before it even hit his back. I do not understand how it could have damaged the wing.”
“Indeed,” griped his father, wings pinned together, “why was it so fragile, that it loosed like a leaf?"
Upon his bed, seven lonesome wings outspread wearily around him, the prince avoided all their worried eyes, and set his face instead towards the great bay window. The snowfall outside was slow but steady, each flake growing in diameter by the second. “I do not know,” said the prince, with a distant frown. “I scarcely felt the cold from the snowball. I remember, I was only singing. And then…I felt the pain.”
His mother shook her head, and his brother nodded; and his father sighed, and drew the drapes so that the room fell dark. “Let us pray it does not happen again.”
Such a request was in vain, for again did Prince Telteas lose a wing. This time, the dreaded event occurred in the ballroom, before a crowd of screaming guests and beside the startled musicians whose fingers froze to their instruments. From the platform Telteas toppled, choking on a chorus forever unfinished.
On prickling hands and aching knees, the prince quavered alone. The red and black carpet swirled before his vision like a devilish whirlpool, craving to suck him into oblivion. He bit his lip, and drew blood. Again came the fright. Again struck the pain. A stab bit his shoulder. A lurch gripped his side. A scream without sound, deafeningly silent, lapped against the vomit refusing to escape his throat.
In this endless insanity, even while kind souls came rushing to aid, Telteas’ ears were open only to the echoing voices of bitterest disdain.
“What is wrong with him?”
“We always knew there was something wrong with him. No one was meant to have eight wings.”
“It’s unnatural. Uncanny."
“He was always odd, wasn’t he?”
“The only one with such a quirk.”
“Perhaps now he’ll fit in with the rest of us."
He staggered then, and fell on his face, unawares.
Beside his prone form collapsed a great, white wing, barbs now bright red and askew—and the noise that it made when it hit the floor sounded not unalike to a heart’s frightened beat.
When Telteas awakened, his fate was sealed—though the wax had yet to harden from the weight of the signet. Once was unlucky, but twice was unforgivable. His family feared that he had fallen ill, and knew not what to do. Seeking the best for the kingdom, and thereby assuming the worst of his dire condition, in the end, they judged that he should recover in a secluded location, removed from the populace, until the oddities ceased and he should feel well again. After all, they knew not whether his wing dropping was contagious.
Thus, so it was that Telteas found himself watching the snowfall from a far different window, the height of which would have dwarfed the stately wintergreens, had any been left standing near enough to stretch longing branches towards his outstretched fingers. The ancient tower of Queen Ellay, rooftop dark and slanted to melt and drop any wayward drifts, speared the ground like a stern scepter thrusting its will over the quiet valley. Long ago, the tower had been a private sanctuary; now, Telteas wondered if the bygone queen would approve of his criminal trespass of her peaceful estate.
He was not alone in this place; a plucky entourage of servants, physicians, guards and others willingly subjected themselves to his temporary banishment, braving the possibility that they too might catch his unknown illness. Though the somberest part of him wished himself to be abandoned in true solitude, forgotten to the ages, the prince searched the debris of his crumbling heart and saw that he indeed was grateful for their company. In the good times, when laughter twirled around the spiraling stairwells and traipsed under the kitchen chairs, when steaming mugs of tea and cider were passed around in good cheer, when stories were dealt like cards round the fire and banter was traded for sly smirks and rolling eyes, Telteas could even muster the faintest of smiles, and pretend that everything was only as it seemed.
Yet, in the bad times, when his screams rent the air with a terrible force—when the servants leapt into flight and scrambled for rags and dustpans to mop the lost blood and sweep the stray feathers, and the physicians clapped their wings and clicked their tongues and scratched their notebooks till the pencil lead snapped for lack of answers, and the guards tensed their pinions and stood at attention for want of clearer orders and by their very presence made the locked, barred, bolted doors of the tower seem all the more impregnable, all the more eternal—
Then, in his heart torn asunder, the fantasy shattered, and Telteas wept all the harder for sight of the truth.
Despite all around him, he was alone.
~
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