Excerpt: Across the Moonlit Desert

He was strong and fast, but I was faster still. Lighter, more agile and quicker on my feet, I lead a merry chase through the low scrub across the desert, barely touching the ground. I could hear him behind me, his feet crunching the dry brush beneath them and calling my name. Laughing, I glanced over my shoulder to see him losing ground but still laughing himself, his wild grin plastered across his face - this was his favorite game, and I his favorite competition. As I crested the hill our chase had sent us up, I spread my wings - all eighteen feet of them - and took off. Soaring into the clear morning Southwestern sky was exhilarating. It would never cease to be so.

I heard him call my name, listened the laughter in Chaser’s voice as he left the ground himself, taking flight to soar with me. I circled around and saw my beautiful other-half closing the distance between us, his sandy blonde hair, glowing now in the light of the rising sun, and his eyes, as blue as the desert sky, were wild in the wind. As he was about to crash into me, he laughed again and tucked his crimson, cardinal wings in tight and dove from the sky, shooting from the heights like an arrow. I laughed and followed suit, diving and feeling my own hair blow madly in the wind as I now chased my Chaser. At the same time, we came out of our respective free-falls and pulled our bodies until positions parallel with the earth below. Side by side now, we looked to each other and shared another silent laugh.

Life in the wind was free. Life on the breeze was pure bliss. I reached out my left hand to him and he in turn extended his right to meet it in the air between us. Our palms met and I felt his exhilaration match my own. For only a brief moment in time we held on to each other, just a moment before Chaser left go and spread his wings further to push himself up, up on the wind current and deeper into the wide blue skies, where the golden, burning sun blazed its first morning greeting to the earth and the pink, gold-lined clouds were just beginning to glow. It had rained the night before and the dusty, wet smell of the desert filled my nostrils and sent rays of joy racing through my blood. I was born for this, to this, of this and I was a part of it as it was of me.

Chaser as well, was like me; like the other desert faeries whose nature we belonged to, long loved and once well-known by the human peoples who had lived here for centuries, made to live here and be. Just to be. Be what? We were to be happy, together, and at peace. The balance we - the collective spirits of the earth - brought within each other spread through this land and with it, the desert blossomed in the spring. With it, the summer rains came and with it, with it each night the stars spread across the night sky and with it the magical sunsets came and went. We did not bring it on ourselves, not on consciously, but without us the balance necessary would not be. This is what we believed and so we lived for it - happiness together, as a choice.

Lost in thought as I was, I didn’t think of Chaser until he was again close enough to touch. I was not aware of him fast enough, though, and he derived an indignant but laughing shriek from me as he grabbed my ankle from behind, startling me back to reality. I pulled free and let the wind take me up, higher into the sky myself, knowing that he would follow. He would always follow, in this fact I was forever confident. Higher and higher we soared until the earth below seemed a distant dream. At last we shot down again at an angle, down to the brown and green and earthy land below. There, closer now, was the river we knew and loved. Its water was muddy with run-off from the rain we’d had overnight and the day before, but still I could see my reflection in it, just waiting to be admired. Chaser did so, and I did as well.

I certainly did admire my own wings, raven-black and shining. I admired my hair, black to match but still faintly glowing with the full moon we’d had in the night sky. I admired the pale skin of my slender, lithe, and still uncovered body, took pleasure in the rosy peaks of my small, naked breasts with my brilliant purple eyes, bright as the fruit of the cactus which we often ate, when it was I season. Night and day we were; always the balance we shared and loved within ourselves. Unable to keep my eyes from him for long, I looked to his reflection now; tanned, solid and strong and sinewy, though still he studied my own form with a hunger I was quite familiar with. After eons together, this undetermined amount of time in which we had existed, this never grew old. This game of chase, of catch me was forever our mischievous pleasure and always the prize had belonged to the both of us no matter who won the chase. Putting my feet down to skim the surface of the water below and to feel the cold water, I looked up to him with the same desire. We would let the day see our love - to cover it up always with the night was to call it shameful. Day or night, there was never a time to call wrong.

From the corner of my eye, I registered a distraction, and a rather disturbing distraction it was. Chaser was too focused on me now, on the reflection of my small, bare breasts in the river and of the unveiled space between my legs where the heat of our bodies had come together in the rain and still would come together again. He would not see it himself unless I pointed it out. I whipped my head toward the shadow lurking on the bank and pulled myself back up to use an arm to point to it; the malignant shape stalking us, ready to do what it came for. For what they always came for. Chaser looked, nearly in time.

“Up!” he yelled to me, and though he did not usually give orders, nor did I take them, I heard the panic in his voice and I knew that he was right. The assassin was much too close, and we had seen it far too late. Our best chance was up. I lifted my body higher into the sky, pulling away from our river and away from the earth, on which we would find no safety near enough to hide from our pursuer. Our only choice was to gain height so we did, rising together on the thermals into the sky. From below - not far enough below - I heard the twang of an arrow shooting from our hunter’s bow, aimed at one of us. Behind me, I heard Chaser’s breath catch sharply and turned, though I knew what I was going to see just as I knew that I risked my own life now as I dove down to him and caught him under the arms. His crimson-feathered wings were in my way, but still I managed to carry him higher. From the north I saw them coming now; more winged desert beings like us, having been drawn by the sense of Chaser’s soul slipping away. I felt as if I moved in slow motion, pulling higher hoping to stay out of the assassin’s reach as well as toward our fellow desert angels, praying to the goddess that his wound was merely a graze and that with rest, he would be fine.

At last the first among them reached us, a strong male I knew as Wind Dancer with the wings of an eagle and hair grey as the clouds of a thunderstorm, and took Chaser from my arms. I had a chance now to let myself breathe, to look at my mate and see the truth I did not want to see.

The assassin’s aim had been true. The arrow had pierced Chaser’s chest, directly into his heart. His breathing was shallow and his eyelids were raised just enough to see that his eyes were glassy and quickly emptying of life. I could hear myself crying in protest, demanding that he stay with me, begging in vain for him to hold on. His eyelids parted more, enough to see my face one more time, to recognize me and whisper my name.

“Rain,” he said. This one word he uttered, just one last word. His whisper died with him, the shape of my name still formed on his mouth and with it, my world went grey.

My grief was sharp and blood-red. For days I wept at Chaser’s side, and when we finally laid him to rest in the river he and I had loved together, my weeping stopped, though my grief never died. The rest of the flock urged me to stay with them and I did consider it. I really did. My purpose in life now was gone though, dead in the stream with Chaser and replaced with something new, a much darker meaning that had taken its place. I could not bear to rest with these souls, their spirits untainted as mine was now. The shadow assassins would pay for this theft. They would lament the loss of his heart, of the trophy his wings would have been for now, but soon their true pain would belong to me.