Sometimes it takes a pike to the buttocks.
Twenty six years, five months, four days, eight hours. Give or take a few minutes this was the length of time Roslindis had spent in the aerie of Ermenbörg. From the day of her birth to today she had never once left it, never set paw outside the confining corridors and passages of the great mountain warren her clan called home.
As griffons went she was nothing particularly special to look at, having all the necessary parts in all the necessary places and no odd bits missing. Her clan tended toward broad chests, slender, tapering wings and a striking red and white mottling of the facial feathers and in that regard she was perfectly normal. In every sense, she was the mundane ideal of a griffon female of her age and stature.
She was strong. She had the powerful limbs and mind of her race, the perfect eyesight, the poise and delicate touch. The reflexes, the skill, the strength. And yet none of this was particularly reassuring as she slowly edged toward the gaping, howling maw of her doom.
"Well you had to face it sometime, Rosi dear."
That was her mother, Gertrude. Dear, wonderful Gertrude, who had raised her for those twenty-six years, five months, four days and eight hours with the patience and understanding only a mother could have for her daughter's behaviour. She professed unending love toward Roslindis, boundless affection and a desire for her to be all that she could be. And she was currently stood behind Roslindis with a pike, urging her on toward the yawning hole into infinity that served as one of the many, many exits from Ermenbörg.
"Couldn't it be when I'm thirty?"
The pike jabbed into her thigh again, accompanied by a lilting chuckle as Gertrude ushered her another step toward death and destruction. "By rights I should have booted you out when you were two, Rosi. The only reason I didn't was because you were so very adorable clinging to my leg that day. And the next. And every day after that in fact."
"Would that work now?"
"Oh no dear, you're far too plain to be adorable now."
"Gee. Thanks."
Sighing, Roslindis gave ground to fate and edged another step closer to the exit. She itched to spread her wings, though not for any particular reason you might normally associate with the action. Flight was the last thing on her mind at the moment; in fact the foremost thing occupying her mind was the inevitable plummet followed by the sudden stop that would surely result if she tried to fly. No, what made her want to spread her wings was merely the fact that the tunnel was so narrow and confining, combined with Roslindis' almost pathological desire to do anything that she was currently prevented from doing. Stretching her wings would be the most obvious example. Turning around and going back to her room with its nice, broad, sealed window and all her paintings would be another.
A further jab of the pike reminded her why that particular outcome remained unlikely. Perhaps if she stayed still long enough Gertrude would puncture an artery and save them both the trouble. Perhaps the sun would go down and she could simply feign sleep until her mother got bored and left her alone. Perhaps she could suffer a brain aneurysm. Perhaps the tunnel would collapse.
That seemed like a good one. Roslindis stared at the brightly lit tunnel exit and waited for the first cracks to appear in the ancient stonework that would presage the sudden, catastrophic–
"Ow!"
"It really is for your own good dear."
"I think it's more for the good of your reputation," Roslindis groused. She edged another step toward the dread portal just before Gertrude could reply with the pike; the dull blade skittered across the stone where Roslindis's rump had been just moments earlier, giving her just a tiny flash of satisfaction. And yet it had taken her another step toward the end, which could hardly be considered a strategic victory.
"It's true you've been something of an embarrassment to the family the last few years. A griffon that doesn't fly?" Gertrude's beak clacked her disgust; Roslindis could feel her crest rising at the sound, the dismissal of everything she had ever done and been merely because she chose to be a little different.
In fact it wasn't much of a choice, something she let Gertrude know in no uncertain terms, but the old hen just sighed and jabbed her with the dratted pike again.
Somehow they'd come to the cusp of the tunnel, though Rosi wasn't exactly sure how that had happened. No longer blinded by the contrast between the dark warren and the bright sky, Roslindis could see the landscape beyond and below Ermenbörg. Below seemed to constitute the majority of the view. There was a very definite depth to everything within her field of vision, a very powerful and defined depth. Plunging valleys, gigantic rifts, deeply rooted trees that only obscured the myriad hidden terrors beneath their painfully spiky tops.
As much as she might want to believe it, the icy tendrils snaking through her body weren't a result of the chilly wind that ruffled her feathers, nor of the generally cold atmosphere so high in the air. Neither was the sudden rather urgent pressure on her bladder, though Roslindis was sure she'd gone just before this farce had started. Perhaps it had taken longer than she thought? But no, the sun was still quite high– don't use that word don't use that word!
She edged toward the infinite pit and craned her neck to peer over the edge. With rather greater haste she drew back from the lip and took a short breath.
"You're killing me, you know that?"
"Oh no dear, I'm saving you."
"Can't we just talk–"
The rest of the thought was drowned by a scream as Gertrude kicked Roslindis over the precipice. The bitch.
She had expected time to slow down when it finally came to it. The cliché was that everything suddenly began to move in slow motion, that she would spend subjective hours watching her life flash by as she fell to her death. It was, she realised, a comforting lie; her life had flashed by in real time as she lived it, just as the cliff face flashed by her eyes now in real time. In fact, if anything, time seemed to be going faster.
At first Roslindis fought the instinct to spread her wings. The space around her was so vast and empty that she was worried they might stretch out forever and disappear, and then where would she be? A wingless griffon falling toward a ravine. It was almost poetic.
She could already see the bottom, cracked and scattered with needle-sharp rocks that it seemed had been placed by a particularly sadistic god. Here a tree, there some bushes. Directly below she was sure she could see the huddled shape of another griffon lying on the floor, but it soon resolved into an abandoned animal skin. That would have been too morbid.
With a sound that she convinced herself wasn't a whimper, Roslindis closed her eyes. At least she could pretend she was dying in her sleep instead of in the terrifying vastness around her. It was just a dream, just another of her falling dreams, she was safe in her room, huddled in in bed and fast asleep. There wasn't a soul-sucking emptiness all around, she wasn't about to impale herself on the stone pikes of a mad deity. Everything was just fine.
A few more seconds passed. And then a few more. Shouldn't she have hit the ground by now? She could still feel the air rushing through her feathers as she fell, she was certain of that, but the impact just wasn't coming.
Carefully, trembling at what she might see, Roslindis cracked open one eye. Before her lay an odd two-toned blur, blue above, green and brown and grey below. With a surprised yelp Roslindis opened both eyes wide and stared at the horizon, before quickly turning her head left and right to look at her fully extended wings. She was gliding. She was also higher than she'd been which meant she must have used the damn things.
She was flying.
High in the sky, above the yawning pit, but flying all the same.
A whoop escaped her throat as she clawed higher into the sky, a few powerful strokes of her wings bringing her level with the aerie's midline. Somewhere in that warren her mother was probably congratulating herself for her success. And probably sharpening her pike after having realised it hadn't drawn blood, because that was the sort of thing Gertrude did.
Retribution against her mother could wait. Roslindis had found her freedom, now she didn't have to spend hours arguing with her father about never flying. She'd done it now, she could go back to her painting in peace.
In fact this opened up new opportunities. The views from Ermenbörg had started to become a little samey and stale. There were only so many ways she could paint Otto's Peak before it became just another rock. With a keen eye she began looking for new vantage points, eager to start scouting for more exciting landscapes and inspirations to work from. She might even–
A rainbow hit her square in the face. Roslindis would have noted the irony of having her flight cut short by something that she would have given her pinions for the chance to paint. Given it had also broken her left wing and cracked three of her ribs it was probably for the best that the force of its impact had knocked her unconscious. With a grace available only to those completely out of control, Roslindis span to the deep valley floor, her fall taking almost ten seconds before she crashed through the densely packed pine trees lining the vale.
It was almost a week later that Gertrude reluctantly admitted perhaps Roslindis had been right to avoid flying for so long, all things considered.
Roslindis, nursing her bound wing and staring mournfully at the sky beyond the sealed window of her room, was reluctant to disagree.