'We've finished our meeting,' Jay said.
'Oh. Is that what you call it?'
Dark expected a smile or a joke, but Jay spoke quite seriously.
'That's how we confer, here.'
'Confer-- !' She dropped back to the ground, her claws digging in. 'You met without letting me speak? You told me to wait for you at sunset!'
'I spoke for you,' Jay said softly.
'I came here to speak for myself. And I came here to speak for my kind. I trusted you-- '
'It was the only way,' he said. 'We only gather in the sky.'
Dark held down an angry retort. 'And what is the answer?'
Jay sat abruptly on the hard earth, as if he could no longer support the weight of his wings on his delicate legs. He drew his knees to his chest and wrapped his arms around them.
'I'm sorry.' The words burst out in a sigh, a moan.
'Call them,' Dark said. 'Fly after them, find them, make them come and speak to me. I will not be refused by people who won't even face me.'
'It won't help,' Jay said miserably. 'I spoke for you as well as I could, but when I saw I would fail I tried to bring them here. I begged them. They wouldn't come.'
'They wouldn't come...' She had risked her life only to have her life dismissed as nothing. 'I don't understand,' she whispered.
Jay reached out and touched her hand: it still could function as a hand, despite her armor and her claws. Jay's hand, too, was clawed, but it was delicate and fine-boned, and veins showed blue through the translucent skin. Dark pulled back the all too solid mass of her arm.
'Don't you, little one?' Jay said, sadly. 'I was so different, before I was a flyer-- '
'So was I,' Dark said.
'But you're strong, and you're ready. You could go tomorrow with no more changes and no more pain. I have another stage to go through. If I did it, and then they decided not to send us after all-- Dark, I would never be able to fly again. Not in this gravity. There are too many changes. They'd thicken my skin, and regress me again so my wings weren't feathered but scaled-- they'd shield my eyes and reconstruct my face for the filters.'
'It isn't the flying that troubles you,' Dark said.
'It is. The risk's too great.'
'No. What troubles you is that when you were finished, you wouldn't be beautiful anymore. You'd be ugly, like me.'
'That's unfair.'
'Is it? Is that why all your people flock around me so willingly to hear what I have to say?'
Jay stood slowly and his wings unfolded above him: Dark thought he was going to sail away off the side of the mountain, leaving her to speak her insults to the clouds and the stones. But, instead, he spread his beautiful black-tipped blue wings, stretched them in the air, and curved them around over Dark so they brushed the ridge of her spine. She shivered.
'I'm sorry,' he said. 'We have grown used to being beautiful. Even I have. They shouldn't have decided to make us in stages, they should have done it all at once. But they didn't, and now it's hard for us, being reminded of how we were.'
Dark stared at Jay, searching for the remnants of how he had been until he became a flyer, understanding, finally, the reasons he had decided to become something other than human. Before, she had only perceived his brilliant plumage, his luminous eyes, and the artificial delicacy of his bones. Now she saw his original proportions, the disguised coarseness of his features, and she saw what he must have looked like.
Perhaps he had not actually been deformed, as Dark had been. But he had never been handsome, or even so much as plain. She gazed at him closely. Neither of them blinked: that must be harder for him, Dark thought. Her eyes were shielded, his were only fringed with long, thick, dark eyelashes.
His eyes were too close together. That was something the virus-forming would not have been able to cure.
'I see,' she said. 'You can't help us, because we might succeed.'
'Don't hate us,' he said.
She turned away, her armor scraping on rock. 'What do you care, if a creature as repellent as I hates you?'
'I care,' Jay said very quietly.
Dark knew she was being unfair, to him if not to his kind, but she had no sympathy left. She wanted to hide herself somewhere and cry.
'When are the humans coming for me?'
'They come when they please,' he said. 'But I made the others promise one thing. They won't ask you to leave till morning. And if we can't find you, then-- there's time for you to get away, if you hurry.'
Dark spun around, more quickly than she thought herself able to. Her armor struck sparks, but they glowed only briefly and died.
'Where should I go? Somewhere no one at all will ever see me? Underground, all alone, forever?' She thought of the mountain and its perils, but it meant nothing now. 'No,' she said. 'I'll wait for them.'
'But you don't know what they might do! I told you what they've done to us-- '
'I hardly think they'll shoot me out of the sky.'
'Don't joke about it! They'll destroy anything, the things they love and the things they fear...'
'I don't care anymore,' Dark said. 'Go away, flyer. Go away to your games, and to your illusions of beauty.'
He glared at her, turned, and sprang into the air. She did not watch him go, but pulled herself completely inside the shadows of her armor to wait.
Sometime during the night she drifted off to sleep. She dreamed of the fireflood: she could feel its heat and hear its roar.
When she awoke, the rising sun blazed directly into her eyes, and the steel blades of a helicopter cut the dawn. She tried and failed to blot out the sound of the humans' machine. She began to shiver, with uncertainty or with fear.
Dark crept slowly down the side of the mountain, toward the border where the humans would land. The flyers would not have to tell her to leave. She wondered if she were protecting herself, or them, from humiliation.
Something touched her and she started, drawing herself tightly into her armor.
'Dark, it's only me.'
She peered out. Jay stood over her with his wings curved around them both.
'You can't hide me,' she said.
'I know. We should have, but it's too late.' He looked gaunt and exhausted. 'I tried, Dark, I did try.'
On the humans' side of the lava flow, the machine landed and sent up a fine spray of dust and rock particles. People climbed out, carrying weapons and nets. Dark did not hesitate.
'I have to go.' She raised her armor up off the ground and started away.
'You're stronger than we are,' Jay said. 'The humans can't come and get you and we can't force you to leave.'
'I know.' The invisible boundary was almost at her feet; she moved reluctantly but steadily toward it.
'Why are you doing this?' Jay cried.
Dark did not answer.
She felt Jay's wingtip brush the edge of her armor as he walked alongside her. She stopped and glanced up at him.
'I'm coming with you,' he said. 'Till you get home. Till you're safe.'
'It's no more safe for you. You can't leave your preserve.'
'Nor could you.'
'Jay, go back.'
'I'll not lose another friend to the humans.'
