Wings. Four of them. It – no, she, has four wings.
Ivory white and faintly dappled with greyish brown, threaded with flashes of molten gold. Huge. She stands a head above most men, those wings making her taller still, yet the longest feathers still brush the ground. She must have the wingspan of a bus!
Then her back, a scar the size of a human head, framed by striking gold markings swirling around the complex musculature those wings are attached to. She looks human, if you ignore the wings of course, but something is just… wrong. Her shoulders are broad and sloping, the trapezius enlarged and attaching high to an abnormally long neck. The lower arms are thick, with wide wrists and large, calloused hands, those markings flowing down the length of the limbs. Again, human with something distinctly off.
She turns around. That scar again, dead centre, perfectly aligned with the one on her back. Was she stabbed? Shot? couldn’t have been, it would have destroyed her heart. What is she?
A glimpse of her face. A mostly straight nose with a slight hump, probably from being broken, a square jaw, low brow and a blank expression tinged with mild discomfort. She looks young. Too young to match up with the long list of accomplishments she’s racked up. And those eyes, pure liquid gold. Piercing, almost luminous. It must hurt to look her in the eye. On closer inspection everything about her is just slightly uncanny. She seems completely androgenous. Strange.
More scars visible, most notable being on the left side of her face. A long, jagged slash, starting at the forehead, cutting through the eyebrow and narrowly missing the eye, curving across the cheek and just catching the corner of the lip before finishing at the chin. Her hair, pulled back into a rough bun, shares the same colouring as the wings, with bright gold sparsely woven throughout.
She stands today, Iris Luxin of her own GoldWing division of the Arbor home guards, hero of the city and local celebrity, addressing the mayor, press, citizens and visitors who have packed the circular central plaza in hopes of a glimpse of the elusive legend.
More to come on tomorrows blog.
Josh Jenkins – Journalism student at Arbor college, writing for “The Narrative” podcast and blog.
“How’s that for an article?” A calm, monotone voice asks sarcastically, amusement in his words as he casually drops a newspaper onto the desk, smirking as it falls through a transparent projection, causing it to dissipate for a second.
“A bit long winded.” Another voice responds from behind the projections, deep and smooth and completely uninterested.
“Hey Floor, where’s- oh is that the article?” A second man enters the office and strides over to the others, his arm disrupting the screen like projection again as he plucks the newspaper from the desk and begins scanning through, chuckling every so often as he reads.
“Well his writing is improving. Luxin, topic of the day, what are your thoughts?” He grins as he asks, dark grey eyes fixed on the figure with their head buried in papers and screens.
“Longwinded.” That deep voice once again responds curtly. “A description of my appearance was unnecessary, it was a press conference not a pageant.”
“Pageants? Are we getting Feathers in a dress?” An energetic voice shouts over the others as another grey eyed man, identical to the first, powers his way into the office, brushing mousey brown hair out of his face and beaming at his own comedy.
“Good morning brother. Vice. Commander.” He addresses the others in the room, still grinning.
“Is that the article? How’s our favourite young writer doing?” He snatches the newspaper from his twin, his cocky grin becoming even wider as he reads, shaking as he attempts to hold himself together.
The newspaper gets thrown back through the projection as he breaks into fits of laughter.
“Have you read this Iris?” He gets out through wheezy giggles “I mean ‘a blank expression tinged with mild discomfort’ if someone’s got you down it’s him!” He begins to compose himself, sighing before speaking again.
“His writing is improving though, right guys?”
Nods and words of approval come from the two other men in the room.
“Three articles about Bonfire in one month is a bit excessive though, don’t you think?” The monotone voiced man, Floor, asks the others. His words are met with childish giggling from the two brothers.
“Maybe the young journalist just has a crush!” Hey Tank, wanna help me set them up?” The grinning man looks to his twin, Tank, that daring smile being cloned from one to the other.
“Watch it.” Luxin snaps, those fiery eyes finally lifting from her papers to fix the two with a paralysing glare.
“Don’t worry Feathers, we all know you’ve got that cute little medic.” Tank teases as he leans on the desk, his shoulder once again causing a disruption in one of the many clear floating screens.
Iris sighs deeply and stands, picking up the stack of papers she had been working through and beginning to file them away. “Do I pay you three to break into my office to gossip?” She asks, annoyance clear in her tone.
“It’s the morning ritual. And you’ve completed it, you know you say that sentence everyday right?” The mischievous grin spreads from the twins to Floor as he makes his statement.
Iris looks over to them, her hard expression softening slightly as she looks across each of the three people she grew up with.
“Tank, Truck, you’re about to be late. You two are running a game for the newbies. Floor, I have a meeting with M-Tech today. As vice I need you to do… Vice things.” She steps over to Floor and forces and even bigger stack of papers into his arms, her lip twitching with the hint of an evil smirk as she strides out of the office. “Get to it twins!” She shouts behind her, already halfway across the wide hallway to the facilities front door.
“Fuck you, Bonfire…” Floor mutters as he commandeers the desk, flipping off the brothers as Tank returns his gesture smugly and Truck bounces out of the door backwards, once again in fits of laughter.
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