Kirei

“If one day I lost these feathered limbs, would I then be beautiful?”

The mountain peak looks down at the mortal hamlet. It whispers promises of riches and divinity, the heavens of a feathered folk proud to forsake the earth and the flightless.

Nikko looks out the window at the falling snow and sighs. She wraps herself in wool and covers her whole head. The humans never let her forget that removing them means her death.

Thus is the fate of a half blood: a beast to the flightless, a disgrace to the winged.