avian

It began with fear.

The elders stood around the door to the inside of the temple, watching closely at me, judging my every movement. The right thing to do would to have held myself tall, proud before the eyes of people and my God. But I cowered. As I stood at that precipice, talons on the edge of the weathered stone, staring at the cold, hard ground below, I was nauseous. I trembled to the edge of my crest. Every instinct, every thought was screaming at me to flee, save myself from the messy, painful death that awaited me. But that wasn't the end, was it? Death, as they'd always told me, was really the beginning of everything we were meant to be. It was an honor for me to be standing here, ready to make that plunge.

So why did it feel so wrong?

Shouts and trills of alarm cries rang from lower in the temple. Gunfire followed. I turned to look and was met with the glares of my superiors. They approached, closer and closer, trying to hurry my ascension. My leg slipped and I only barely regained my balance. Instinctual. Shameful. My eyes turned to the drop below and the nausea surged and I felt myself retch.

But when I turned back, the elders were gone. Most of them. One was slumped over, a smoking hole through his head. I met the eyes of someone new. Most of their face was covered by a dark fabric, but eyes, steely and cold, stared at me. Looked me over. I suppose they didn't see me as a threat, because they turned away, echoing down the temple until the sounds of footsteps disappeared.

I fell to my knees and the emotions rushed out, a cascade of tears and hopeless, wordless wails. Maybe Kluex heard them, but the air was empty of any sort of answer.

No one in the temple was alive to hear. Even as I navigated down, saw body after body in various states of damage, I felt... almost nothing. There was sorrow, but it was distant and hollow. I had survived... but in the process, defied everyone that once lived here. My intentional death never came to pass, but here, my brothers and sisters were wiped out in one wave of senseless violence.
More than sadness, there was a disgusting curiosity. Why would our god allow such a thing to happen? Why would he spare me at the expense of everyone else? Was I special?

There was another possibility, one that tempted me like a glittering crystal in the dark. It was so simple. So simple, and yet too hot to touch for more than a few seconds. So I didn't. There would be time to sort this out. The concept of doubt was its own void, and felt very much like staring over yet another cliff. And I wasn't ready to make that leap. Not yet.

The masked invader looted most of the supplies, but there was enough to survive for at least a few days. It was time to think and explore, and eventually made my way into areas that I had before not been allowed into. It was there that I found the missionary ship. More time passed, and eventually I learned how to control it.

What I didn't learn was how to open the gates. In such a rush to leave the planet before I was found, the ship burst through the ground, skidding heavily through rock and dirt, damaging much of the exterior and a few internal functions.

But I was free. Free and truly flying, up through the atmosphere until the only home I had ever known grew smaller and smaller, a shrinking green and blue marble that eventually became a tiny dot among hundreds, thousands, millions. I knew about space. I had heard stories of the vastness, but still I was unprepared. My world was small,and I was smaller still.

Could any one god truly rule over all this?

I snuffed the thought, those worms of doubt that still wriggled and gnawed at my core. This isn't the time to philosophize, especially on the chance that you are wrong, I thought to myself. This is the time to find a way to survive and find a new life. Just you. You alone.

And staring out into the inky blackness that filled my windows, pinpricked with flickering stars, alone was certainly what I was.