Flightless

[Eionian]

She spread her wings wide. There was no room in her gilt prison to fully extend them indoors. Neither rooms nor doorways built to accommodate an Eyrien. A few of the windows were wide enough for leaping out of, but the walls were not high enough for her to catch a breeze before falling to the earth.

And they had done something. Eionian wasn't sure what, but she could feel the tethers at the base of her flight muscles. Invisible ropes that bound her. Stretching her whole body, her arms rose high above her head, weight shifting to balance in her toes, bare to the cold stone patio. Wings high and fully stretched. She filled the small spaced. And could go nowhere, the constriction tightening whenever she tried. Not even a glide down the wide steps of the temple possible.

Eionian sighed and let her body fall back to the ground. Spear taken up, she walked through the small garden and down to the practice yard. Path well learned in her time here, wherever here was. A place full of strange people and stranger ideas. It was a short walk, one they no longer set a guard on her for. Escort they called him, but Eionian wasn't stupid. She was a prisoner. A bird in a gilt cage, wings clipped to strip her freedom.

Every day she took her agony out on the eunuchs of the temple, and any other man who dared to try her.

[Evangeline Grace]

She wasn't supposed to be where she was. She was supposed to be locked up in the temple study, study, studying but what fun was that? She was head and feet farther than she should be, studious and generally very rigid when it came to her craft but even she needed a break now and again. Plus she just liked to stick it to the man. The mistake that had been made was throwing someone on her that was simply too stupid to keep up. A mistake she could only hope was made more than just this time.

Slipping that escort had been simple, easy and laughable. She really ought to tell someone how awful he was at his job. Maybe later. Twisting she snagged an apple from the cart on the way to her destination and grinned as she bit into the crisp skin, "Marks later!" she called as she laughed around her chewing and jogged away. The merchant who owned the cart could only glower angrily at her, he knew her and knew who she was. Such a brat child. Spoiled and too much her own person already. Never mind that she was seventeen and nearly grown, she was still a child in many of their eyes.

Her destination was not one a well behaved young miss should be headed but Eva couldn't care less. The only ones who could grind her beneath their heel to make her listen were the Mother Priestess and her ridiculous Raider Captain. Maybe his weird brother too but she wasn't afraid of him. Not really of the other two but she knew somewhere inside her mind that she should be. Clamoring over the wall of the training yard, Eva settled herself pertly on the edge, apple still clutched in her as she called a hunk of cheese from her cabinet.

Luck that she actually got what she wanted. Sharp teeth crunched through the apple again as she watched intently. The woman inside the yard was an anomaly. Something Eva had never seen before and it had been chance that she'd caught the show the first time. Winged and violent. Curiouser and curiouser. Eye sparkled with shrewd intelligence and Eva knew she would need to learn more about this woman. She didn't bother hiding as she watched, didn't bother shuttering her psychic scent, let her know Eva watched. What did Eva care?

[Eionian]

They were half-men. Eionian had been surprised to discover it. Eunuchs, they were called. Cut so that they could not produce children. She did not understand the practice, no matter how often or how hard they tried to explain it to her. Most had given up, but others seemed hell bent on indoctrinating her. Eionian listened, when she felt like it.

It was the half-men she sparred against. Young men with lean bodies. They had similar reach, but Eionian outweighed most of them. They had grown to expect it in the months since she’d been trapped here, but they hadn’t in the beginning. Always surprised when she bore them down by weight alone.

Sweaty work, sparring. Dangerous and attention holding. So it took her a while to realize they had an audience. Possibly longer than the boys who were trained to be attuned to such things. Priestesses revered like queens on these islands. She knocked one of the younger boys down with too much ease when she realized they were all marginally distracted. Looking up, she blinked at the girl perched on the wall.

”Did you want to learn?” She asked, gasps and hisses running through the group. Eionian stuck her foot under her partner’s ass and nudged him to his feet. ”I could teach you.” She offered, ignoring the sputtering. She ground the butt of her spear into the dirt and quirked an eyebrow. Why not, if the girl was interested? Unaware of the unspoken edicts against women being warriors.

[Evangeline Grace]

Eyes rapt as she watched, teeth crunching her snacks, Eva almost ducked and weaved when the boys did. Not boys really. Eunuchs and she knew she'd have to choose one soon as a hand. She didn't want to. Didn't fully trust their saccharine devotion to the temple and priestesses. She wanted to throw the lot in the yard below around with her gray and smash them against the walls to show them that they were weaker than she was. But she didn't. She knew using jewel strength that way was beneath her, no matter how much she wanted to, and if she was to continue to be the apprentice to the Mother Priestess than she needed to control herself.

She wiggled her fingers in greeting as the winged woman looked her way. She was magnificent and Eva wondered if she could buy her. Make her first Hand and see what everyone thought of that. Eva grinned at the thought and knew the scandal it could create. She lived for terrorizing and scandalous behavior, just enough to cause a stir and not enough to see her dead. Just the right amount. This would be entirely scandalous and Evangeline hopped down from the wall.

Her descent was slowed with a small burst of red, just enough that she landed correctly and with a puff of dirt. The action had been hard fought, practice until she was worn out but done just the same. She smirked at the gasps and hisses that run through the eunuchs the woman had unmanned even more. Stupid boys not even capable of taking down a woman. She laughed as Eionian shoved the boy and he shot to his feet, glare hot and scalding.

"I would love to learn," she nodded and shot the eunuch a glare of her own, one designed to silence him under threat of death and dismemberment. "Show me and I'll learn it," she continued, "I've only ever held a steak knife but I'll learn." She waved a hand to show her desire for her own spear, "But I'll need one of those."

[Eionian]

The girl came down from the wall with little puffs of craft. An unorthodox way of air walking, but without wings, Eionian supposed she could understand. For all their power, the women on the island she had met so far seemed uneducated in certain, to Eionian's way of thinking, standard craft practices.

Someone went sprinting off into the temple.

Proud as anything, the girl, hardly a slip of a girl at that, waltz onto the practice field and declared her intent. Ignoring the murmurs of the half-males around them, Eionian accepted the challenge. "They are not remotely the same." Brows furrowing, she ground the butt of her spear into the soft churned earth. Looking at the metal point, she shook her head, long braid swinging behind her.

"I think not." Vanishing it into her cabinet, they had no control over that, whatever tethers they strapped to her body, Eionian cast around the training yard for something more manageable. "You be very likely to hurt yourself or someone else with that. These might work."

Staves picked up from their place against the wall. Eionian hefted one in each hand, judging their weight with a critical eye on her new apprentice. "Here. She offered one to the girl, using her own to point to a place in the center of the soft earth. "There. We will start with stance."

[Evangeline Grace]

Eva liked her. This winged lady with her blunt manner and amusing treatment of the eunuchs, a woman after her own heart. "I would imagine not," she said pertly, "Steak knives are for carving not stabbing." She was assured in the knowledge that she knew what she was talking about. After all, steak knives were for carving meat and not for stabbing people. Although, she imagined that she could stab someone rather spectacularly with a steak knife if she needed. Those serrated edges would make injuries well enough.

Eva would never admit that she didn't know much about stabbing people, she could only use her very vivid imagination to supply her knowledge with what she thought it was. She scowled darkly when the woman told her she would not get a spear of her own, "I can handle one just fine," she stated with that scowl. How dare this unnatural woman assume she couldn't do something. It was on her tongue to give her a lashing, to send a eunuch for a whip to show her who was in charge when the woman gave her a reason that had her stilling.

She did not want to hurt herself. Other people? She didn't much care, but if she hurt herself it would be known that she was doing something she wasn't supposed to be doing and Eva was very good at self-preservation. "You're likely right," she said slowly as she wait for the woman to give her the stave. Taking the staff, Eva hefted it. She supposed she could use something like this for now. She knew it wouldn't be long before she graduated from this lesson able to use a spear like the lady next to her. She needed a name for her, "Winged One" simply wouldn't do. It gave the lady an air of prestige Eva was loathed to give her.

"A name for my teacher would do well," she said as she took her place where Eionian pointed her to. Stance, stance. She knew how to stand, why did she need to learn a new way to stand. Maybe this was a bad idea, but she knew her curiosity wouldn't allow for anything less. Plus she'd leveled a challenge and Eva never backed down from a challenge whether it was issued by herself or not. "You may call me Eva."

[Eionian]

"Just so." Eionian agreed with half lidded eyes. The girl was wild and a little strange. Confidence gone to arrogance. Eionian had seen it before. Usually in the young men her father had helped train. A poor trait that had been corrected with a little time and a few hard knocks. Eionian would just have to be more careful than her father.

This one had people who cared if she was bruised and battered. Plus it seemed that women fighting was not a thing done in the place she'd been kidnapped to. Though they were eager enough to spare with her. Strange people. A people she did not like at all. But this was something to do to pass the time of her captivity. And keep her skills sharp.

"You cannot." She assured the girl, not at all worried about upsetting egos. There was no way to tip the balance of power between them. Eionian knew they all to a one viewed her as something lesser. It was a thing she was used to, except that in Askavi she'd been able to prove the doubters wrong. Here, it did not matter what she was capable of. Why they had even brought her here, she could not imagine.

"I usually am. Does that fit in your hand well?" They might need to get a thinner one carved. There was no way to make the girl's hands larger, only stronger. Eionian gave direction, watching thunder cloud the girl's face at being issued orders. Was it ignorance or arrogance? Usually the two went hand in hand. Eionian sighed softly to herself, wings rustling at the unexpected question.

"My name is Eionian. You may call me that." Eva. Eionian sucked her cheeks, wondering if it would be another mark against her if she dared use the name. No worse than what she had already committed to, probably. They had yet to find a way to lash her that did not scar her wings. Which she tucked close to her body. "Stance. It is not just standing waiting for your bread. It is balance, centering your body's power so it can not be swayed. I will show you."

Hands and staff used as much as words. Eionian knocked her off balance and corrected her position repeatedly. Demonstrating how centering her mass and balancing her body made her more solid than a mountain. And more dangerous, because she could move her bulk where she willed.