skill: expert soothsayer

---

She fell screaming.

It was nothing like a normal scream, but something vast and terrible ripped from the throat of something that had not known terror in a very, very long time. The heavens split open above the forest in a wound of white light, scattering birds from the treetops in a wild panic. For one moment, she remembered everything. Gold beneath her feet. Stars around her like jewels scattered across black silk. Voices lifted up in worship until they were no longer voices at all, but music. It was prayer, it was devotion. A thousand mouths speaking a name that had once belonged to her. Her name. Sacred and beautiful and feared.

Then it was gone.

The memory snapped away from her like a thread cut clean through, and she fell. Down through the clouds. Down through the pale morning light. Down toward a world that rose up far too quickly beneath her. The forest spread out below in a wide, green hush, its trees crowded close together like they were whispering secrets between themselves. She could see the darker backs of pines, the pale limbs of birch, the heavy crowns of old oaks dusted with sun and dew. Between them all, hidden like something the world had half-forgotten, there sat a lonely ruin. A house... no, an inn perhaps. Its roof was dark with moss, its chimney choked with ivy, and its crooked bones half-swallowed by the growing forest.

She tried to stop herself. Tried to reach for a power that should have been there. Tried to lift hands she no longer had. Her body was wrong. It was too small, too light, too fragile. Her bones felt hollow, her skin buried beneath feathers of cream and brown and copper. The wind dragged through her wings as if they had always belonged to her, as if this little body knew what to do with the fall even when she, herself did not. No. No, no, no. The thought echoed inside her skull and for a moment it did not feel like one voice. It felt like a whole court of them, all crowded in some ruined place inside her head. One voice was furious. One was afraid. One was cold and quiet and reaching for something it could not find. A throne. A temple. A title. Anything.

There had been faces above her. Beautiful faces. Merciless faces. Their mouths had moved around a sentence she could no longer remember. Betrayal, something whispered. Punishment, something else hissed. Unacceptable, came the loudest thought of all. And then the trees caught her. Branches snapped around her with a crack loud enough to scatter the silence. Leaves burst into the air. Pine needles raked through her feathers. Twigs clawed against her wings and sides, and cold beads of dew shattered over her face. She hit one branch, then another, then another, each impact knocking the world into pieces. Green. Gold. Brown. Sky. Pain. The sharp smell of sap filled the air. Crushed leaves. Damp bark. Earth.

Then she crashed through a curtain of ivy and struck the roof of the old inn. The shingles gave beneath her. Moss tore loose and dust rose up in a choking little cloud. For one horrible second, she slid across the sloped roof, talons scraping uselessly over damp wood and lichen, before she dropped over the edge with all the grace of a thrown stone. She hit the ground hard. And then there was nothing. Only the forest breathing around her. Only the slow drip of dew from leaf to leaf. Only the soft, sweet smell of herbs warming somewhere nearby in the sun.

A golden eye opened.

For a long moment, she did not move. She just lay there in the weeds, staring sideways at the world as it had the nerve to continue existing. The grass was close to her face, every blade suddenly too sharp in her vision, too green, too detailed. A beetle crawled along a stem not far from her beak. Somewhere above, a bird gave a nervous little call, then wisely went quiet. The old inn stood before her as though nothing extraordinary had happened. As though the heavens had not just cast out something divine into its front yard.

Slowly, with more effort than should have been necessary, she tried to push herself upright and realized she had no hands. She froze. Her gaze dropped. Talons. Three forward and one back. Curved and dark and clenched in the grass like they belonged there. For several seconds, she only stared at them. Then she opened her beak and made a sound so offended, so raw with disbelief, that every mouse in the walls should have taken it as a personal warning. It was not a scream this time. It was worse.

She staggered back, wings flaring out at her sides without her permission. Feathers. She had feathers. Soft, layered, awful things, pale as old parchment in places and marked through with russet and brown, lovely in the way painted masks and funeral offerings could be lovely. But she did not want lovely. She wanted herself. She twisted her head too far, caught sight of one wing, and nearly toppled over again from the sheer indignity of it. No, she tried to say. What came out was a rasp. A click. A rough little owl sound meant for rafters and dark trees, not marble halls or temples or command.

Her eyes narrowed. Very well.

The owl — though she would not think of herself as that, absolutely not — drew herself upright. Moss clung to her feathers. One wing ached and wanted to hang lower than the other, but she tucked it in by force of will alone. Her body was small. Ridiculously small. Insultingly small. But she lifted her head, settled herself as best as she could, and stared at the old inn with all the grave displeasure of a queen receiving bad news. She croaked in displeasure, feathers ruffled and puffed up as she continued to stare the building down like it personally offended her.

---