'Soon?'
'Yes. It is almost ready.'
'It's still stiff.'
'Thou must stop favoring it.' He sipped at his broth. 'I will massage it again.'
The touching was very much like the motions of love. The keeper could not remember touching any person before this youth since the night his mate had died. They had been flying. She was aged, but still beautiful, and she had decided to die.
It was the way of things. He had chosen her, and made his decision by his bond to her, when she was adult and he, not yet 'he,' was youth. Half a lifetime before, she, not yet 'she,' had courted and had bonded with another male, and in time he had aged and died.
Now, she did not wish to grow helpless. She would do what their people had always done, and forever would do, when it was time to die. And he would accept her decision, and carry her veils, as the mates of aging ones always had, and always would. Their children, one youth, one newly adult, bade her farewell. There would have been three, but their second was born with a twisted wing, so they had exposed it.
They flew together for a long time. No clouds obstructed their view of the hunting plain. Had they been hungry they could have feasted on warm meat and fresh blood, but this last night together they did not hunt. They drank thick salty wine and soared higher, giddy. She brushed her wingtip against his cheek, dropped back and down and caressed his chest and belly. She laughed, and made lewd and joyous remarks about whoever would become the next member of their long marriage line. She wished him happiness, and pulled a silver veil from his ankle band. He garlanded her with others. Defying her infirmities, she flew higher. He followed her, feeling the air grow thinner, dangerous, and suddenly cried out in ecstasy.
He had never flown so high. He had heard about this from others, but no one could ever have seen, before, the colors behind his eyes. In reflex, his pupils contracted to pinpoints. He strained upward. His mate cried out to him, 'Do you see?' and he called, 'I see!' and she said, very softly, it seemed, 'Be careful, my love, for I am blind.' He looked toward her voice. Very dimly he could see her, tiny, higher than she had ever gone before, higher than he had ever seen anyone fly, wide-eyed against the radiation,
the veils seeming only to drift beside her. He saw her wings begin to stiffen, and he knew that she was dead.
As another shower of subatomic particles exploded themselves in his eyes, brighter than any spark through the shielding of their ion boat, he realized he had flown past his wings' ability to carry him, and he felt himself begin to fall.
When his struggle against the vertical wind ripped his wing, perhaps he should have allowed himself to die. Fighting, he slowed his fall, but in the end the earth had grasped and shattered him.
'Keeper-- '
The word, and a touch on his hand, brought him back. He glanced up, startled. The youth's face showed apprehension, irresolution. He drew in his wing-fingers, folding the smooth membrane. 'It's not stiff anymore.'
'I was remembering,' the keeper said. 'Thy words gave me hope, and I... I am sorry-- '
'It doesn't matter.' He let his touching fingers and half-exposed talons linger on the keeper's hand. 'Nothing should be forced to die twice,' he said. 'If we continued our people, the world would kill our children, or the children would kill the world again.'
'Thou art not fair,' the keeper said. 'Some expression of my memory has frightened thee, but I asked for nothing.'
'It's true that I'm frightened.' He touched the keeper's throat, slid his hand to his shoulder, down his arm, back along the wing-fingers, and this time he didn't wince. 'Of your kindness and your strength.'
'I do not understand thee.'
'I'd change for you, I think.'
The keeper sat back, reluctantly, away from the youth's hands. 'Then thou wilt leave?'
'I must.'
The auroras led the youth on a long, twisting, directionless path to the hills. Outside, the thorn bushes should have been flowering. The youth stood at the edge of the temple's guardians and looked out over the land, at the brown and black thickets of twisted, dying branches. The wind blew hot against his body, and nothing moved as far as he could see. He felt death, and with it an ugly triumph that had ceased to give him pleasure. He glanced back, and almost turned, but reached high instead and snapped open his wings. The wind caught the webbing. He could feel the place where his bones had broken, and hesitated.
Disgusted by his fear, he launched himself from the top of the hill, slipped sideways in a current, angled up, and flew.
* * *
After the youth left, time passed strangely; it might have been a long or a short time later that the old breaks in the keeper's bones began to ache constantly. He had begun to age, and once aging started in his people, it progressed rapidly. His sharp sight began to dim. Only cowards and weaklings lived long enough to go blind naturally. He knew he should allow himself to live no longer, but still he did nothing. He did not wish to die on the earth, and he dreamed of dying properly, radiation-blind, flying.
He felt gentle hands that roused him from a doze, or perhaps it was all a dream.
'Keeper, I am back.'
He raised his head and looked calmly into a face made ugly by its eyes. 'It is thou.'
'No more,' he said. 'Not 'thou' for a long time.'
The keeper seemed not to hear. 'Hast thou seen everything die, then?'
The other supported him, and he smelled fresh blood. 'No. You were right. There are others. Around them, the earth lives.' He held the warm body of a small animal to the keeper's lips. 'Drink it,' he said. 'Last time I was selfish.'
Blood ran hot in the keeper's throat; he had almost forgotten the hunt. 'Why art thou here?'
'For the same reason I left.'
'How long has it been?'
'A year.'
'Ah.' Dark eyelids closed over darker eyes, tired. 'It seemed longer.'
'It seemed very short, to me.'
The keeper did not speak or move for a long time. 'I am dying. Will you carry my veils?'
He saw that the old one, half-dreaming, thought he could still fly. 'I will. The stars will touch you.' He gently lowered him. 'I'll build you a glider, keeper,' he whispered. He lay down beside him to wait, and opened his wing across him. He hoped the keeper could still feel it, and know the presence of one who loved him.
Published by Alexandria Digital Literature. (http://www.alexlit.com/)
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