“You’ll like it there.”
The shackles bit and stung with the binding edge of wrought iron and I teased their limit. Three inches, maybe four.
“...work as little or so much as your heart desires.”
Smoke—my feathers saturated and dirty. The smell forever instilled into my very being. A thin covering that clung stubbornly to down and would not leave summoned a cloud to accompany every movement that was not gradual or sufficiently prepared. I literally rained ash and smatterings of dust and I heaved over, coughing out the breath I had held since the stagecoach kicked off toward no known direction. My wings twitched from the motion.
My head rose upright. My body followed. My eyes grew damp from the strain and I forced my gaze outward to survey the bleak landscape. Dead. Desolate. Trees curled and blackened as if some great fire thought fit to strip their greenery. Emerging rocks stood like enormous, jagged spires. And far behind, moving in the backdrop, away and slowly leaving sight: the steel mill. Such a mournful vision of never-ending blackness pouring into the sky.
I thought it a place from which there would be no escape—gods know I tried—and yet, here I was.
“You see, I needed a husband, and those few within the avian social circle of mine were already taken and whisked away to their respective estates. My choices were little, and this opportunity presented itself to me.” She paused, “There have been... disappearances as well to account for the other absent nobles.”
Wordless, I tore my gaze downward and then looked up at her. She was beaming, proud at the sight of me.
Or at least trying to smile.
We sat as the only two souls occupying the stagecoach cabin, perched on the edges of our respective seats. A noblewoman that was a peahen and what would be an average griffon laborer who hammered steel for war machines, like some twisted mirror of contrast presenting the complete reversal of your being in plain color. Though hers were drab: greys and murky browns. A dazzling array of hues peeked out amidst the overcast skies of the area corralling her refined breast—colors I could not quite describe. A comose protrusion like that of a crown emerged from her head, and she wore a simple but tight dress where the hems engulfed and roiled over half the floor like some maroon sea. Purple markings framed her eyes.
The peahen noblewoman sat pretty and with the curiosity of a vulture, leaning forward, leering. Statements fired off without relent. You’re my husband now. You’re free now. I’ll have to refine you before introduction to the others. I said nothing.
I wished to take her. Right here and now in this booth. Break her wings. But these damned shackles! I was property, forever. Nothing more.
“So, faced with choices few and far from what would be preferred, I opted for the path of least resistance: coin for a handsome, Olympian figure which I could refine into a gentleman... given time.” She had been around few others outside of her social circles to view me as the cremé of the crop. A mill worker, dirty, disfigured, and of poor posture. Had she beheld these scars of mine? Is she privy to the slightest of the others that are not as such: nonmaterial?
“Please say something.”
“No.”
“And why not? I have freed you from your torment.”
There was a pause.
“A peahen with a slave fetish, is that why you chose me? What displays of grandeur that are available, I have none. You peacocks chase a show of extravagance when seeking companionship. Why then, is it I your sight fell upon?” Her deeds warranted explanation.
She was silent. I sighed and returned to window-gazing. We crossed from paved road out into the countryside, and I beheld for the first time since my late teen years what was a sun and sky free of affliction. The fires of brilliant twilight and stars behind them. Silent, beautiful, and forever able to guide serenity into my heart.
“You did put on a show. You made yourself stand out to me especially, all the others, and your foreman.”
And so here it comes.
“No.”
“Do you say that often?”
“What you looked upon then was the aftermath of another failed escape. They brought me in to beat me; the other workers circled, armed with pipes, and forced, unwillingly, to break one of their own.” My talons clenched into pale grey fists. Blood dripped from my inner palms. I rocked slowly and breathed as the stagecoach rolled along, jerking down in divots, stuttering as the wheels sprayed gravel. I was in a slave wagon again. There were other griffons crowded around me, all packed and shuddering and crying with hopelessness and the sorrow that pecked at and ate us whole. Captivity. Asphyxiation. The wing-clips and restraints of my life.
“Will you try and escape me, then?” More silence. Finally she came upon my name as a subject ripe for discussion. “Shackled is such a dreary name. Don’t you wish for a title such as-” she listed off many and I cared for none. Goldthunder. Jarden. Sickle Song. I just shook my head.
“Damned harpy, if you even care so much as to let me keep one thing about myself, gods let it be my name.” She pressed no longer. It was firm and decided.
“My name is Preena. I have an uncle somewhere with a grim label such as yours. I suppose, if it fits...”
We passed by a long series of country and cloud homes. Acres of forest and fields. Each of them silhouettes in the dark.
Mansions sprouted from the crest of every hill. Gilded skybound roosts and perches; nest homes of the wealthy. Parked auto wagons slumbered under their shiny coats and the stars above which lit them. Prized gardens littered with cast iron lamps, illuminated like fire-tipped spears or alluring coastal lighthouses, surrounded each quiet domicile. Paved stones were embedded and arranged carefully by some bygone mason into immaculate paths for the purchaser.
Meters pattered off into miles as night truly fell. The resonating sound of hooves pounded into the sightless dark, the road a great and bellowing drum of packed earth, stretched wide ten meters that fell off into ditches on either side. Estate manors expanded their distance in separation and trees grew thicker and into more skeletal figures standing draped in moss.
I am Shackled. Wherever I am, it is always who I will be.
We dipped with some turbulence and power and changed direction. The stagecoach heaved and I found all my left side thrown viciously to the wall for a time until the world stilled. Windowed, carved oaken plates swung and soon after I fell out to my new life, face-first, entrenched in mud. She loomed over me, her small figure now ominous, and offered a claw which I ignored and forced myself to stand, swaying and filthy.
I couldn’t make out the estate but from the light within knew where to stumble towards. She insisted on holding my claw and walked to match my limp with a quiet stride, our paws leaving impressions to soon be drowned in water. Two ponies in blinders nickered as we departed from the stagecoach and they trotted toward a large building on the edge of the land, hauling the vehicle.
I surveyed it all, silently and subconsciously repeating the line from before. You will like it here.
Lights flared in the interior. Ornate furniture sat derelict and lonesome. Fancy carpets lay moth eaten with oil lamps accompanying every desk and end table, the two appearing so often together and nearly inseparable. A few bookshelves loomed overhead and scraped the ceiling with only a meager half-dozen books falling upon the other in each hungering and vacant row. We entered the foyer and the first words spoken in hours were hers.
“We’ll have to get you a tailor and replace those hideous rags.” A new... outfit? Small things to look forward to.
She sighed and looked around, ignorant to my presence. “I suppose this is our honeymoon.” Bitch. Whore. Wicked witch. What the gods rejected in the early times of all creation is what you embody. So scrawny with your miserable frame and small body. Thin beak. So... weak. And so the shackles descended down to the floor and I stared where they clattered loudly on lacquered wood. I felt for the marks of red, absently so, grasped one wrist as tightly as I could hold and constricted, trembling with an open claw. Hate, hate, hate. They had cleaved into me. I felt again the pains of my life looking at that open cut. There was blood, and above all, a tide of anger to sweep away. A lunge forward. One swipe, and then another. Alone and free to do so. But would I? Could I?
She dashed forward and with a single, wet peck blanked my mind. For a moment her eyes shimmered and they caught me.
So beautifully pink.