I stand at the mouth of the cave, staring at the floating translucent foal as it stares back at me with sickly glowing eyes. I can feel its curiosity, but it doesn’t move from where it is, which is a good thing, because my mind is experiencing a logic error.
There are some things that any sane being - and some insane beings - takes for granted. Death was absolute in my previous reality as spirits could not walk in the land of the living. Individuals live their lives and then they die. For a spirit to be in the realm of the living they must have a living body, it’s just common knowledge… a fact…
‘The foal is dead, so why is it still here? Even if no other god would take it Anubis would at least… but Anubis... ‘
‘…’
‘Anubis… doesn’t exist anymore…’
‘By the gods!’
My mind just sort of sputters out as the full ramifications of what I have done hits me. I had of course realized what I had done a while ago, but I didn’t truly understand what I had done until just now looking at the spirit foal…
In my long existence I have learned that there was only one universal constant, one fact that would never change no matter what happened... “Death is inevitable...” Even gods and beings like me eventually fade away!
But this foal… This foal has existed as a spirit for years! I don’t know how I know it but its…
I collapse on my blue scaled ass as everything I know is put on trial. Every law of magic, every rule of energy facing what could possibly be the death penalty in this new world.
‘Are there limits to what magic can do in this world? Is anything constant or sacred? If death can’t hold the dead…’
I turn my head to the right feeling something brush up against my shoulder. The foal is just floating there beside me with a curiosity so overwhelming I can literally taste it.
I chuckle at how absurd the situation is and reach out with a claw and somehow ruffle the foal’s ethereal mane. “Don’t worry little one, I’m fine,” I tell the spirit as it gives me an annoyed frown and batters at its mane to try and fix it.
I grin, remembering another individual who hated when I messed with his head. “You remind me of someone that I know little one.” The foal grumbles… somehow, before turning and folding its hooves across its barrel. “Oh come on, don’t be like that,” I whisper to the spirit before crossing my legs and placing my scaled head on my knees. “Could I make it up to you with a story?” I see the foal’s right ear twitch.
I doubt that the spirit would actually understand what I am speaking, but… Sometimes it’s just better to talk.
“I have so many stories I could tell you, little one. Stories so dreadfully painful I can still feel their cutting edge and stories so sad that they could tear at your very soul… This… is not one of those stories,” I pause and place a claw on the foal’s back. The spirit tenses but doesn’t move away as I start to stroke its back with a blue claw. “This is the story of how I met my first friend… My… foolish, foolish friend, and his brilliant father.” I look into the sickly glowing eyes of the foal beside me.
“This, is the story of how I met Icarus.”
…
I had been in my mistress’s employ for a while already, I don’t really know how long as time was difficult after the incident.
(The incident? That young one, is not a tale meant for foals, now hush.)
I do not know how much time had passed, but my mistress finally deemed me ready enough to further her goals without her supervision. My mission was simple: save a father and his son from a prison that their king forced the father to make. I could influence anyone as I saw fit to complete my mission as long as I never left any sign that I was there.
I will be honest, I wasn’t cautious, I was paranoid, and it is a good thing that I was. The king regularly visited the father and his son in their prison and being the son of Zeus the king was very sensitive to the magic surrounding him. The prison was a specially designed tower with air currents that whispered in the king’s ear if magic ever tried to enter.
My mistress told me to not leave anything that could imply that I was ever there so I took an… indirect route. Circling the king’s castle I came across a bird eating from his garden. It was a small bird, nothing very special about it really except that the bird had the whitest plumage I had ever seen. Thinking about my mistress’s words I had the idea of… scouting out the situation by standing in for this white bird.
It was quick, and I don’t believe it actually realized what was happening. One moment I was watching it eat berries off a bush and the next I was looking through its eyes and flapping its wings. Flying towards a tower in the middle of a maze.
I couldn’t begin to describe how amazing it felt, flying for the first time in my existence. I could feel every breeze through our primaries as we soared over the stone hedges of the king’s maze. It was only when we approached the tower in the middle that my new instincts started giving us trouble. Oh there was the occasional insect that our mind told us to swoop down and eat, but those urges were easily suppressed. No, it was only when we closed in on the tower that an overwhelming sense of dread and wrongness forced us to turn around. It was like the air itself had turned against us, and feeling that from a bird’s perspective is absolutely terrifying.
We turned around that day, but I did not return to my mistress. I was terrified of what she would do if I told her that I had failed. I… slept as the bird, and if I am honest it was extremely disorienting. Nothing is more surreal than not eating for an unknown amount of time and suddenly waking up and wondering if I should go hunting for insects or eating berries off of the bushes. It was only for a moment but… Well there are some things that simply can’t be explained except through experience.
Regardless, I spent another day as the white bird and after eating more berries off the bushes we went back to the tower to see if we had better luck than the day before. We didn’t make it to the tower, but we did come closer before turning away.
This cycle repeated for what seemed like months before… Well another white bird distracted me with his nest. It was a big nest, and his feathers were so full, and oh the way he danced through the sky!
I blink and look over at the foal. I can feel the confusion coming off of it as my cheeks heat up.
“Uhhhh… Where was I? Ahh, right. After a break of sorts and saying goodbye to the other bird I resumed my mission.”
…
If I remember correctly it took another week before we could circle around the tower without fleeing, but afterwards it became much easier, as my curiosity about the shadowed figures I could see through the sole window was enough to overpower our instincts.
Landing on the window ledge, I saw a man with a scraggly beard wearing worn and… soiled clothes drawing something on a piece of parchment with a quill on a stone bench. A boy, not really a young man quite yet, was leaning against a wooden door and looking at us.
The moment that we made eye contact I knew the boy was special. He had the look, not the look many boys have when thinking of mischief. This was a look that spoke of intelligence, of a cleverness that would brand him as either a genius or a madman when he grew up.
The boy’s eyes lit up as he rushed over to the man and tugged at his ripped sleeves, “Father, I’ve got it! I’ve figured it out!” The man looked over the boy with a confused look on his face before the boy pointed at me with a grin. “Wings, what if we made a pair of wings? We could fly out!”
The man’s face went through a series of emotions from confused, to skeptical, to slack jawed wonder before clamping a hand on the boy’s shoulder and smiling as if the boy had just given him the best gift he had ever received. “Icarus,” the man started waving a finger at the boy, “I believe you might be onto something.”
I tilted our head in confusion before flittering over to the stone bench the man was drawing on just in time to see him start a new drawing. A frown marred his face as he looked at me briefly, “This dove doesn’t have a lick of sense approaching hunters this way.”
“No Father, don’t you see?” The boy replies looking at me with a grin. “It’s a message from the gods, we’re going to be free!”
Turning back to the drawing the man was hunched over, I could see the idea emerge. Turning around, we flew out the window and back to the garden, a plan forming in our head.
My mistress told me to not leave any trace of what I did, so I wouldn’t. Their idea was brilliant, but it would fail without my intervention. I wouldn’t leave any trace of magic, after all if they escaped who would ever be able to verify if the wings they used to escape were magic?
I had my plan, I simply needed to see it through.
I blink again and turn to the spirit beside me, only to see it lying on the ground with its glowing eyes half closed. I chuckle, “Even spirits get tired little one, I’ll finish the story tomorrow… Now let’s get some rest.”
Straightening my scaled legs out, I lie down on my side with my arm under my head and slowly drift off to an uneasy sleep.