The slow turn of the days melded into each other, and Najma lived for the brief moments that he was allowed to grow up. He knew inside of him that he was supposed to be out there by now, but he was only allowed a measly five minutes here, a quick sniff into the forest there. Not enough, ever enough. His dreams were restless swirls, mixing experience with excitement until he could have convinced himself that he'd really visited the distant, ancient city in real life instead of just in his mind.
His wings ached to be stretched in real flight. He'd only dreamed it, but it felt so close. He wanted to fly, and he could already feel the way his muscles were thickening out right around his shoulders and the joints of his wings. So close.
He wanted to run and leap and to break away to travel to the city, but his mother forbade it. And it was a strong order, something not to be trifled with. He knew when he went into the tunnels he wasn't allowed to venture through that his mother wouldn't be too mad for too long, but he could sense that if he disobeyed her in this, he would not be so easily forgiven. For some reason, this was a wall that he wouldn't be able to knock down with any amount of wheedling and pleading and sad eyes.
These frustrations floated around in his mind along with daydreams and aspirations as he lounged in the entrance to their tunnel, his head resting on his front legs, which had grown out quite a bit since his first venture outside. He longed to leave the cramped little space. He felt he had long since outgrown the nursery, though he was not nearly as big as some who still hadn't left. Couldn't they see that he was different?
They told him so much, but compared to the questions he really had, it all seemed so superficial. Trees and grass and the sky. Numbers, biology, astronomy. They were introducing him to some of everything, but none of the things that they thought he wasn't ready for. But he was! his throat itched to growl it out at them as loud as he could manage.
He wondered how his mother felt. Surely it was quite similar to the restless stirring of adventure and claustrophobia that he now felt, himself. She was at least three times as big as he was, even with his recent growth spurts. She must feel awful, never able to stretch to her full height, and never able to use her wings as they were meant to be used. So if she knew why he yearned so hard to get out, why wouldn't she just let him?
His ribcage felt pressed around his heart, and he was hardly able to muster enough interest in the small space to keep his eyes open. It was all something he'd seen before, and his soul sang for the unknown: For the sky.
He'd never properly flown before in his life, but he still tried to hover around the small space as much as his size would allow. He sometimes even got several feet off the ground when he practiced in the tunnel convergence room, but he would never really fly until he grew more, therefore growing into the size of the awkward appendages. As it was, his wings were far too large, and they dragged on the ground when he walked because the rest of him hadn't quite caught up. They were awkward and heavy, making it impossible to really fly until his body grew to fit them. Recently, his legs had been somewhat the same. They felt too long to walk on with any reliability, and he constantly tripped around wherever he went.
But he could feel it, just at the edge of his grasp. It was right there, and he had a feeling that if he tried hard enough, he could do it.
He was just about to head into the convergence room to practice his flying when his muscles froze. There was a breathless moment of confusion, like the peaceful moment that a drip of water clung to the bottom of a stalactite, its hold thinning but not yet broken.
Then he was falling, like that tiny drop of water. Did he hit something? Where had the crash of pain come from? There was no way he'd been high enough up to cause—cause—this. It was blinding and white, loud and sudden.
Why, why why?
He only managed a tiny squeak that simply died away in the fading echoes of the tunnel when he tried to cry out for help.
For a second, then another, he couldn't understand what was happening, couldn't understand the white-hot wave of agony, then he heard them. Thousands upon thousands of voices, all of them streaming through his head at the same time, overlapping and crashing against his consciousness like waves. He heard conversations about food, sleeping, children, things he didn't understand, things he did... some were loud, some were distant, still others seemed almost like they didn't exist at all, and he could still hear them anyway.
It was everything. It was all at once.
His mother had warned him, but her warning seemed pitifully trivial. She should have told him it would be so awfully, horridly painful.
His lungs burned with an unreleased screech, but no sound came out.
Yet another voice was added to the cacophony, but this one felt familiar. It had a comfortable, known feeling, like when he settled down in his nest, or when he smelled the familiar stone and moss of his den, but he felt a deeper connection to this voice, this wisp of a feeling among the millions.
Through the deafening mental slur, he finally figured out why it was familiar. It was his mother's silent voice. He could hear her clearly, but at the same time, no sound was coming to his ear. It was the same for all of the voices. There was no physical noise at all, but at the same time, it was the most deafening thing that he'd ever heard.
He tried to focus on what his mother was trying to tell him, but the voices were too loud. He couldn't pick one conversation out of the thousands that coursed through his head. Somewhere distant, he could feel his mouth opening in a silent scream of agony, but he had become more than just him. So much more to think about, so much to consider, so much to be.
He forced himself to stop, to gain control of himself. He wasn't weak. He was strong. The strongest there had ever been... he knew that, didn't he? He'd known for a long time.
He took a deep, shuddering breath. He focused on her voice, and only hers, trying to block out everything else, and eventually, the din faded away, replaced by the soothing music of his mother's sweet voice. She was his tether. She could keep him tied down in a sea of voices.
"Just concentrate on me. You'll be fine. Just ignore everything else...." Her calming stream of silent speech was cut short as he drifted into sleep. He was too worn out to concentrate any more.
After that point, the voices didn't come back all at once. He could still feel the interconnected web of the silent conversations going on above his head, but the pain was gone. He blocked them all out, except for his mother's.
**********************
It was two days after he'd first experienced silent web of speech when his mother shook him roughly awake. She never shook him.
He grunted and settled deeper into the warm moss that he was sleeping in, but his mother's scaly nose prodded his shoulder time after time, and when he couldn't take it anymore, he cracked open an eye.
"What?" he tried to project annoyance into his single word, but he hadn't perfected the technique of talking using only his mind, and his question went out to her, rather dull. Even he could tell how pitiful the effort had been.
"We're moving out of the nursery today." She replied, now able to speak as she was no-doubt used to speaking: silently. "I thought you'd be excited." She added a moment later, mischief not only shining in her eyes, but through her words as well.
He would have absolutely no trouble listening to her smooth mental language all day. It was almost soothing, a calmness threaded through everything she said. At least, everything she said to him. He'd heard real venom in her thoughts as she conversed with an elder about some distant danger. Something had lain, veiled beneath the words that he didn't quite catch. That was before he'd been able to fully understand.
"Really?" his own silent speaking had to sound like claws screeching against stone, but he'd get there eventually. He'd become just as graceful as his mother, and he'd do it flawlessly.
It had only been two days, after all. He had plenty of time to catch up.
She nodded in reply, and he jumped immediately to his feet. An amused huff escaped his mother's nose.
She turned and wordlessly left the den, and he followed. He couldn't see the light at the end of the tunnel, which was momentarily shocking. Where had it gone? It had been there every other time he'd left.
It took him a second to realize that it was nighttime, and there was light coming into the tunnel, just not the bright blue of daylight. He stepped out of the tunnel for what would hopefully be the last time for a long, long while, and into the gentle violet of the moonlight.
It was so strange, not having the bright star of daylight up in the sky, warming his back. He'd never fully realized that nighttime meant the light disappeared, but as with every other revelation about the outside world, it fit perfectly with the snatches of conversation he'd heard via the nursery-bound mothers and the speech-web, as well as what they'd started to teach him.
The pieces of it all fit together with a satisfying smoothness in his mind.
The grass underfoot was wet with nighttime dew. His mother didn't stop walking even though he'd paused in his wonder, and she plunged straight into the forest, following the barely noticeable path that he'd seen on his first day outside.
"So soon, so soon..." he heard the words from his mother, though they were not meant for him. What was she going on about? This wasn't soon enough!
Then he focused again on what she was doing, leaving the clearing, and leaving him behind if he didn't start following.
It almost shocked him, though he knew perfectly well why they were leaving the cave this time. He'd always been forbidden from leaving the little crescent of grassy soil that bordered the tunnel entrance, but not tonight.
He felt a thrill go through him as he stepped into the forest for the first time.
His mother had stopped a few feet ahead.
"I was surprised that you heard the silent speech so soon." She told him, her noiseless words sounding through his head, as soothing as a trickling stream of water.
Once again, he wished that his clumsy speech was more like hers. It was still the strangest thing to hear something even in the absence of any sound.
All his life, the voices had been present. But they had been far away, something buzzing at the very edge of his awareness. Now, however, they were right there. He could reach out and touch them if he wanted to.
"Usually, most don't learn to hear it until they're quite a bit older than you." She continued slowly. "But even though you're still rather small, it is our way to move from the nursery as soon as you learn."
He puffed out his chest in indignation upon hearing her words. He was not small and he was not young! He knew from what he'd heard in the mutterings of nighttime in the nursery that he was strong, fast-growing, fast-learning, quite certainly superior. And he always had been. He always would be.
His mother said no more, and continued her walking; deeper and deeper into the almost-tangible shadows of the forest.