Entry
A small spark and the whole forest is ablaze.
At no time in my life have I ever been alone.
Not in my sleep, not in the quiet of the bathroom.
Even inside the cocoon — that fragile prison of silk and breath — a lady would wait by my side for months.
We could not move, we could not speak. We could only sleep and dream until our wings healed.
Yet despite the people around me, my life was nothing but loneliness.
My family, the ones who should have loved me most, were the first to abandon me.
When I was a child, my brothers and sisters used to laugh with me. But after the king called them into his room one night, they stopped speaking to me entirely.
From then on, I became someone to avoid — as if my touch carried a disease.
The Mistress was forbidden to speak with me unless it was her duty.
Even when she brought me food, she would not look into my eyes.
And so I learned to read and to dream, to live through the books that described a world I had never seen.
People who shared stories, who spent time together... I could only imagine what that felt like.
Still, I believed such things would never belong to me. Never.
Until Mistress Seli cried.
That day, when she hugged me and wept, something in her eyes told me she had always loved me — silently, secretly.
I had mistaken her harsh words for cruelty when she had only wanted me to stand tall.
Perhaps I had misunderstood everything. Perhaps I was still too young, still ruled by the foolish storms of youth.
“Come on, get up quickly!” Mistress Seli said suddenly, wiping her tears.
She helped me to my feet; my legs trembled. I had just come out of the cocoon, still weak, still half asleep.
“The prince will be here soon. We must hurry!” she said, rushing to the basket beside the branch where I had cocooned.
From it she pulled out clothes I had never seen before — thick fabric, dull colors. Not royal at all.
“The prince?” I asked, my voice unsteady.
The Council always came to inspect me after the cocoon, not the prince. They wanted to see if I still had only one wing.
“What’s wrong, Mother?” I whispered.
We all knew I would wake with one wing. Cocoons do not create what was never there. They only strengthen what remains.
Mistress Seli said nothing. She dressed me quickly, hiding my single wing under a black sweater. It pressed against the wound and burned, but I didn’t dare complain.
The sunlight filtered through the leaves, a thin golden blade falling across her yellow eyes.
“I haven’t told them you’ve woken yet,” she whispered.
“Your sister is keeping the other Mistresses busy. Your brother is on his way. We don’t have much time.”
I blinked, dizzy, watching her drape a long cloak over my shoulders.
“What do you mean?” I asked. My heart raced. Were they trying to hide me?
“We can’t,” I whispered. “The Council will—”
“We will,” Mistress Seli interrupted. She took my hands, eyes steady, full of defiance.
Her grip trembled, but her resolve did not.
Before I could answer, a voice came from behind us.
“Are you ready?”
I turned — and there he was. My brother. His wide wings lowered as he stepped toward me.
“Brother!” I gasped. Everything happened too quickly for me to think.
He embraced me, and for a heartbeat, I forgot everything — the pain, the fear, the curse.
“I promised you, didn’t I?” he said softly. “I’ll never leave you to them.”
Then Mistress Seli handed me a small bag. “Go. Quickly.”
I hesitated. “But… the Council—”
“They can’t harm us,” my brother said firmly. “Not this time.”
He lifted me into his arms, and as he took flight, I turned to see Mistress Seli one last time.
She smiled through her tears — the first and last smile I ever saw on her face.
Perhaps I was still dreaming inside the cocoon.
But if this was a dream, it was the most beautiful and terrifying dream of my life.
And I feared what would happen when I woke.
They said my destiny was chosen before I was born.
That my single wing was a sign — a promise that I would be given back to God.
I remember the smell of the hall that morning: incense, blood, and flowers already dying.
The white curtains moved like ghosts, and I felt them whisper as I passed.
Mistress Seli’s hands were cold when she tied the red silk around my wrist.
“Don’t look at them,” she said quietly. “Look only ahead.”
But the sound of the priests chanting filled the air, heavy and deep, and I couldn’t stop trembling.
The crown on my head was too heavy for a girl with only one wing.
Each golden feather pressed into my skull as if trying to remind me of what I was missing.
When the blade rose, sunlight caught on its edge — a cruel flash that felt almost holy.
And in that moment, I thought of the cocoon again, of how warm it had been, how silent.
I wanted to crawl back inside and sleep forever.
But instead, there was shouting.
Seli’s voice. My brother’s wings.
The silk around my wrist snapped as he pulled me away from the altar.
“Run,” he said. “Don’t look back.”
I did as he said. I ran barefoot through the hall, past the marble columns, past the eyes that watched in disbelief.
The sound of the ritual shattered behind me — screams, the clang of steel, and then a silence so sharp it hurt.
Outside, the wind hit me like water.
The world tilted. My brother’s arms were around me again, his breath uneven.
“We did it,” he whispered, as if daring to believe it.
But before I could answer, the sky broke open.
Light poured down — not sunlight, but something alive, burning, pulling.
Mistress Seli’s voice reached me through the roar:
“Forgive me, Princess.”
Then everything turned white.
The air vanished. The ground vanished.
And I was falling through silence once more.
