Flightless- Prologue

There was a lady walking through a storm. Her faded crimson dress billowed in the wind, eyes watering from the frigid cold. Her warm, pale brown eyes were desperate, her arms wrapped tightly around the old, ripped cape that was slung over her body.

The young lady’s hazel brown hair whipped in the frostbitten snowgale, flakes of crystals flying around her like a tornado, hand turning a dark, black blue and shivering madly. Her cheeks as bright red as strawberries, legs stumbling knee-deep in the frost, pine trees blown so roughly that they stuck in a position to the right, sugared with powdery snowflakes.

It was night, but the stars and the moon were barely seen. All you saw when you looked up was thick snow, and felt the frigid-cold frost.

The blizzard was growing, more violent and more violent until it was too bright to see a hand in front of your eyes.

It was a whiteout.

The lady also had something else unusual about her: A sling wrung around her neck, bumping gently against her knees as the walked in the howling, deafening storm. It was letting out a sound, a wailing, muffled by the swirling brightness and the sound of the furious snow-tempest.

It was crying, wailing softly, two voices, quiet, almost unheard. One of them was still, eyes opened wide, squished in the middle by the other two babies. She didn’t cry, she looked up at the storm, with eyes wider than the full moons, clear and blue as the sky, with bright red lips and a shine in her skin.

She wasn’t afraid.

But she was only comforted by a faint light in the sky, bright red and blurred, coming towards them with some sort of silent fire.

It whispered, quietly, a chill that crept slowly up your skin as the eerie, breathed sound reached your ears.

A red light, fiery, glowing, changing from yellow, to orange, to a dark, reddish pink like a rose. A small, floating creature in the shape of a candle flame, with blank eyes of yellow and sparks that drifted up into the air and disappeared at it stared at the woman, at the blizzard.

‘Wthhhhhppp,’ The baby spat excitedly, holding out her arms to it and smiling broadly. The creature continued staring. ‘Weeet oooo wthhhhhpp.’

The will o’ wisp set a glance on the baby for a split second, stare blistering-fire and spine-creeping, its soft wail that whispered letting coming out of it again, despite the fact it didn’t seem to have a mouth.

It let out a faint jerk, then suddenly disappeared. The baby gave the snowy white blank space a confused, disappointed look and began to cry with her other siblings, her wail echoing around the empty tundra space, where on the right was the forest.

‘Hush,’ The woman reassured them. ‘We’re almost there.’

But wherever they were going, all of them somehow knew they were going to leave the most important thing in the world at that time: Mother.

The lady with exhausted feet stumbling through the deep snow, forcing herself not to collapse before her beloved triplets were safe, in another’s hands.

She could not take care of them any longer, not after her cottage was burnt down in her oak forest, killing their father and leaving only her and her triplets. The only way to keep them safe was to find them warmth and shelter in the winter.

She could not keep them, it was for the best.

But soon there was a loud wail, a louder, less soft and chilling voice of the will o’ wisp, but this time there were thousands, all bobbing up and down steadily while the storm raged, setting the mist aside to make a clear path of will o’ wisps, eager to lead them to safety. The fog swirled on the left and right of them, but not in front of them, neither behind.

So there was an option to flee in terror, or use the path the wisps had kindly made for you.

Of course the woman stood there in awe, then dipped a weak thanks to them, slowly continuing her way up the slope. Anything for her babies.

The first girl triplet, the one who had spotted the first will o’ wisp, was as mute as a blackbird, and so was the other two, looking up at the sky with frightened eyes, knowing exactly what was happening to them.

The fog still swirled satisfyingly, but didn’t touch any of them. A strange warmth spread up their body from the everlasting fire of the immortal fire wisps, their fiery stares as they watched the lady with her triplets step desperately on, trying her best to reach the end, find the shelter.

Most of all she hoped there was a shelter at the end, a good shelter, with parents who’d take care of the siblings and nurse them and love them, just as she did.

After many minutes of walking, the tire had gripped the triplet’s mother like a rope tightening around her neck. Her steps were sluggish, and she barely noticed the brightening light as she came closer and closer to ‘home’. A faint, golden light, glowing in the dark, and as they came closer, the mist began to close in on them faster and faster, as one by one the will o’ wisps started to leave.

A large cottage came into view, and the last will o’ wisp left, whitening the night air again.

The golden light had come from a bright lamp, hanging from a wooden, upside down ‘v’ shaped canopy that covered a wooden deck by the front door, stairs climbing down to the snow.

A tall, thick and dark pine forest covered the backside of the house completely, and the stone and wood house looked peaceful and welcoming already.

Smoke rolled swiftly out of the sturdy, stone chimney, flying out in all directions as the gale blew it to and fro, and the gray-tiled roof was only thinly stacked with powder-snow.

Light spilled out of the window on the left side, illuminating the glittering falling snow that touched the beams. There was a small, high window on the front of the roof, and more on the sides of the deck below, which the lady guessed was an attic, or perhaps a bedroom to sleep in.

There was a large, wide lake right next to the cottage, frozen solid and sparkling with snowflakes, sticks, half buried in snow, littered here and there, with a dock dipping into the clear-iced lake, where the cottage itself mirrored.

Behind the cottage were sets of snowy, towering mountains and hills, dappled with distant pine trees that cloaked its body and rocks that were spotted near the tip, while the mountaintop was hidden entirely.

Back to the lake, at the left side, where the cottage was closest to, was where the lake broke into a river, where a wooden bridge scuttled across to the other side, by a path that climbed into another pine wood and vanished.

The cottage was a house that came onto an islandish piece of land that was quickly dipped into the water by a miniature peninsula, joined to the forest. The peninsula looked man-made, however, with the stones that stuck up the sides, probably set there to adjust the height of the land, and prevent most floods.

At the back of the cottage a small, wooden platform was glimpsed, with stairs coming up to it and a gate, probably built to separate most dangerous forest animals from the peaceful, quiet aura of the great hutt.

Hope lit up the lady’s eyes as she saw it, but then stopped dead as a howl filled their ears, deep and chilling, though not nearly as curious as the will o’ wisps.

It was bloodthirsty, and fierce, a thing that seemed to have called only because it had found its prey.

Them.

The woman’s eyes sparked with fear as another howl joined them, and a long, slender, well-muscled, misty silhouette was seen in the darkness of the night, the glow of the lamplight, and the whiteness of the blizzard, that had begun to slowly ease.

A wolf. More wolves- *eight* wolves.

That’s when they began to run, too close, not in the forest, so there was nothing to keep them out. Snarling, running, feet kicking up snow in clouds.

They were coming.

All three triplets began to wail as their mother ran for her life, she was tired, exhausted, starving… but she had to. Safety. Safety for her younger ones. Not for her- but for them. A normal life, where they thought they had their own perfect parents, and a normal, happy life, growing up to build a cottage of their own, and find beautiful maidens or gentlemens to marry, and have beautiful children in peace.

So close… howling… teeth like daggers bared… panicking, gently dropping the triplets on the deck and closing the gate with hands not just shaking from the cold, shaking violently, and the storm closed in thickly again, the babies howling pitifully, then the first wolf came, the leader of the pack, that wanted the prize his. Leaping for her.

Too close, too close.

‘Goodbye my loves,’ Was all she said, then the fog closed in on her, hiding her view from her children, snarling and fighting, a silent attack, then the woman was gone.

A door opened, revealing an old man in bare feet, holding a candle. The light illuminated their tear-trained, petrified faces, then held out two hands to scoop up the bundle… and take them in.