They made an agreement with the god they called Birdmaker, trading the ability to fly for the gift of sentience. On that day, they raised their wings to heaven and watched as consuming fire turned them to ash, for ever excluding them from the air. So that they might remember their arrangement, the Birdmaker gave them useless, clawed wing-stubs—enough to remind them of what they had forsaken, and enough to enable them to begin writing down their history. Fire burned in their minds too, but this was the unquenchable fire of being. That light would always burn, the Birdmaker told them—so long as
...more
Gave up wings in return for souls, with understnding that should they ever take flight again, they would lose their souls
