By Laurel Hanson
I am a prisoner. My cage is larger than my body, but not large enough for me to spread my wings. It is an indescribable pain that I cannot set myself free into the skies of Endar-hain.
There are others here. Two by two, the larger species of my home world were brought into this alien vessel. Mating pairs, I assume, though both the andimars and the variegated byrmyns would need three for a mating pod. Our captors do not know this.
They are frustrated because they could not find a mate for me. I could have told them carriandis do not mate. We give birth alone in the high atmospheric currents of Endar-hain where our young float weightless in their casings until they can take wing. Such is the first life of the carriandis on Endar-hain.
But here in this cage, unable to soar through air that tastes newly washed with rain or to plummet in whistling spirals until I kiss the ground with my wingtips, I languish. Deprived of the static energies ever arcing between the sea and sky of my home world, I starve.
By scanning the garbled chambers of my captors’ minds, I learn this vessel is bound through the cold vastness of space for a planet they call Matalon-3. There, living beings from across the known worlds are collected to be studied. That is why my wingless captors have harvested mating pairs. And though I am but one, they are still pleased to have taken me, for I am rare and beautiful. They believe I will bring their voyage good luck.
I will not.
This vessel will never arrive on Matalon-3.
I have seen what they are, these creatures who tore Endar-hain’s children from the earth and sky. I have read in the darkness of their minds that this will not satisfy them. More will come. They are legion, scattered across the worlds like the seeds of the malifrym tree on Endar-hain, borne aloft by energies of their own devising.
And like those malifrym seeds, these invaders will take root in the ground of Endar-hain, but they will usurp those who are its children. Their growth will be malignant, their harvest of resources limitless. This is the outcome I envision for my home world should this vessel complete its mission.
I grow gaunt. My feathers have begun to fall away, soft golden pieces of myself scattering on the unyielding floor of my cage.
The captor who tends me has noticed. If I interpret its expression correctly, my state distresses it. It fears I will die, and the loss for it will be great. Forming my thoughts in its mind, I speak beyond language. It is as easy as molding clouds.
“It is too bright here,” I share with it. “Could my cage be moved to the dark end of this enclosure? There along the wall.”
Its mind is a murky place, and my sharing bursts like a bubble in the sluggish stew of its consciousness. No creature of air and sky would prefer the dark, yet my captor does not follow the ways of logic. It is not curious. Obedient to the strange new compulsion to move me, it departs, returning with a small vehicle that slides rods beneath my cage and bears it farther into the cargo hold, closer to the throbbing heart of the engines.
Here, the energy powering this vessel seeps through the floor of my cage. I draw upon it to fuel the change that will end this first life of mine and give birth to that which is rare beyond all knowing—my second life. But I must sip slowly lest the engine’s alarms signal the power drain.
In the following days, my growing body begins to press against the cold bars of my cage. My captor notices. It touches my side, then pulls away with a hiss, shaking its fingers at the heat. Placing its hand against me again, it feels the razor edges of my newly-formed scales.
It jerks back, eyes wide, which I understand shows surprise. In those widened eyes, I see only the brilliance of my own body, shining. I am beautiful and beyond rare. I sense my captor’s unease. Knowing the truth will only cause it pain, I spill calm into its mind, soothing it with my assurances.
It will not be long now. My feathers lay in drifting heaps, singed from my heat. The scent of char bites my throat. My scales are a hardened casing around me. I have become what my suffering has made me, and I will survive.
Nothing else aboard this vessel will.
My fellow captives know this will happen. They have accepted their fate because they know what it will accomplish. A carriandis in its second life is the living seed of Endar-hain. Those seeds will be borne upon the wind of our destruction across the great fields of space. In countless worlds, Endar-hain will live again.
The creatures who hold us in captivity would call me a thermobaric weapon, but I am no weapon. I am a carriandis in my second life. Birthed when the threat is great, I am a gift from Endar-hain.
I expect I will detonate soon.
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