"What are you doing down there, silly?"
The girl asked, leaning over the pile of feathers and limbs spread out beneath her.
"I can't move."
The boy replied. The girl didn't seem much alarmed by this. There were many such events in this area, you see. The starting flints of a war had caught flame. The people of this forest would often pass a half-disintegrated corpse on their way to work, and the injured would stop by on a diner or bar on the way of their journey. It was a common occurrence; the residents were numb. The girl settled herself by the boy's side. Slowly, carefully, she reached out to stroke the large white feathers that protruded from his two large, lightly soiled appendages. They were soft as wisps of baby hair, a silky soft of silkworm nests. The boy watched her as she did this, sunset-colored eyes bordered with timid worry at first, though she only stroked his wing as she settled, which, he found, brought him no harm.
"Where are you from?" The girl asked.
In response, the boy only looked up. The girl joined him, and the two sat staring at the newly-twinkling starts overhead in the early twilight.
"Up there?" She asked, eyes still captivated in awe.
"Hm." The boy confirmed, his eyes, too, caught by the view.
It was a while before the girl could tear her eyes away to resume the conversation. She'd lifted the other wing to the edge her lap, and now ran her hands across it like one would pet a small rabbit. It was without the boy's consent, however, and the change in altitude on one end brought him a bit of discomfort. His wings could definitely stretch that way, but it was a stretch. The boy's eyes moved from the sky and towards the girl, more in wary than in interest.
"What are you doing down here?"
She asked.
"I fell."
He replied. It was a standard response where he came, such as one on the ground might claim they ran into a pole. The girl seemed to accept this answer in full, however.
"How come?"
"I was running away."
The girl considered this, looked down at the boy, and up at the sky. The boy's eyes moved to the sky, again, too. There was something magnetic about the view from here.
"You couldn't fly?" The girl inferred, mostly from the fact that the boy was now here, immobile and injured in the ground.
"Yeah..." He paused, turning his head back to the girl. The twilight gave the illusion that his eyes were aglow. The faerie girl watched them in awe, hands pausing on the feathers tickling her dress. "I took a leap of faith...and then gravity sort of took over from there." He admitted.
This brought a small smile to the girl's face. She would have laughed, if the situation wasn't so grim. "What's your name?" She asked.
The boy stared at her in loss. You could see it in his eyes. At last he replied, "I don't have one."
The girl accepted this without suspicion. "Then I'll give you one." She declared, frowning as she racked her head. The boy watched her, entertained by her prescience. "I've got it! I'll call you William, because it would take a lot of Will to take the chance of plummeting to your death when you know you can't fly."
Somehow, this made the white-haired boy grin.
"What's your name?" He asked.
"Ella." She replied. He laughed.
"Hey!" The boy began to hear, when a harsh pain spiked up from the wing in her arms. He cried out, curling upwards in an arch, his back leaving the ground for a few before it hit the dirt again. He turned to her wide-eyed, breath coming quickly in and out as he looked to her with fear, anger, and a little betrayal.
"What was that for?"
She looked at him plainly, unapologetically, still leaned over, hand where she'd pressed down on his wing and probably broke something in the process.
"Fixing it. Your other wing was going the other way."
The boy stared, wide eyed at the wing she'd just turned. He looked to the other wing, then to that one again. The wing had always been that way. They were definitely more even, now. He brushed the tears from his eyes. "Thank you."
The girl nodded. She stood, brushing off her dress of the twigs and grass that had settled in them, and off the top of her boots. The settled by his head, so the two were more easily looking eye to eye.
"How old are you? I'm eight."
"Ten." The boy replied.
The girl raised her brows in question. "No, you're not."
"Yes, I am." The boy persisted. "I'm just...late...for my age."
The girl laughed.
The boy frowned, but bore it in silence.
"Are you hurt, Will?" She asked, when she'd gotten a hold of herself. She ran her fingers though his hair, again without an inch of hesitation.
The boy would have fought back, but there wasn't really anyone else to help if this girl left. He tried his legs again, drawing his attention to the task at hand. He couldn't feel them. "Yes."
"Should I get help?" The girl asked, standing. The boy's eyes widened. He held out his hands. "No!" He cried.
The girl stopped, half turned about, frozen in her half-standing way. "What?" She straightened back out, folding her arms over her chest. "Why not?"
"They'll come for me." He cried in a panic. "They'll find me and take me back!"
The girl stared back for a few moments, turned, and ran into the woods, the boy pleading after her over and over again.
