Four Wings

Prologue

Thunder rolled and lightning cracked across a rapidly darkening sky.

Ten-year-old Dakan sprinted between the trees behind his home, trying to get safely inside before the torrent of rain came. He'd been practising flying for a while after dinner, but now it was starting to get dark and there was a storm overhead.

As he dashed around a particularly large pine, though, the sky opened up and sheets of rain came crashing down.

Great, just great. Now his feathers'll get drenched, and they take so long to dry completely...

He was nearly sprinting towards his house through the twilight-darkened woods, when, in the corner of his peripheral vision, something flashed - not like lightning, but something else, something not human. 

Stopping short, he hesitantly crept around the tree, stepping as lightly as possible to make sure if it was a monster of some sort, it wouldn't hear him. As he got closer, he could see a glint of white on the ground.

Huh, that's odd.

He finally reached the spot where he'd seen the flash of light, and gasped.

It wasn't a monster at all.

It was a girl.

A little girl, probably about his age, with long black hair and wearing a filmy white dress, like a nightgown of some sort. She was sprawled on the ground, rapidly getting soaked from the rain.

Why and how had she gotten here? Was that flash why? Who and what is she?

Dakan had no idea, but even though he was only ten, he knew he had to take this little girl somewhere safe and dry, out of this storm. His mom would help. She would take care of her.

He concentrated hard on making his wings fold up and magically disappear, so they wouldn't scare her, then approached the prone form of the girl, who was lying with her face away from him, looking like she was sleeping. He tapped her shoulder, but she didn't stir, so he shook her shoulder lightly, and finally she moved her head a little to the side, enough so he could see her face. Her eyelids flickered open, revealing eyes like an ocean - green and blue and shimmering.

She sat up, wiping the rain from her eyes, and breathed, "Where am I? Who are you?"

He smiled, trying to look friendly. "You're okay, I won't hurt you. My name is Dakan. "

He helped her get up, and walked with her, her arm slung over his shoulder for support, through the rain the rest of the way to his house. He knocked, and his mother flung the door open with a worried expression.

"Dakan! You shouldn't have been out in the rain so long, your wing- who's this?"

She'd had her own gray-feathered wings folded behind her when she opened the door, but as soon as she registered another person, they vanished.

He explained that he'd found the girl in the woods, and his mom's expression softened and became less guarded. "Hurry, come inside, both of you," she insisted, holding the door wider.

Once everyone was seated at the kitchen table, wrapped in towels and blankets, she asked the girl, "What is your name? How old are you?"

The girl straightened inside her cocoon. "My name is Syrena, and I am nine years old."

Dakan's mother smiled at her and "Well, Syrena, you can stay with us for as long as you like. Do you have a family?"

"Thank you very much, Mrs-"

"You can call me Ailani, dear."

"Thank you, A-Ailani, and thank you for finding me, Dakan. I... don't know if I have a family," she lowered her gaze to the table in front of her. "I don't remember anything before I woke up."