Scene
The night air in Terafna’s high valley was sharp, carrying the scent of smoke and tilled earth. Children laughed around the fire as the villagers prepared their evening meal, their shadows dancing along the rough stone walls. Annastara sat apart, knees hugged to her chest, watching as though she were looking at a life she was never meant to join.
Then it happened. A boy shoved her, his face twisted in the cruel grin of children who know how to wound.
“Gargoyle’s daughter,” he spat. The insult was old — a whisper borrowed from frightened parents, a curse to remind her she did not belong.
She stumbled, struck the ground, and pain surged through her chest. Her heart thudded, faster, harder — until her skin hardened, her arms greyed, and stone crept across her body like a living tide.
Her scream turned into a sound not human — a grinding of earth against earth. From her back erupted wings, jagged and luminous in the firelight, stone dust scattering like sparks.
“By the Shadowed One…” an old woman gasped, clutching a charm.
“She’s cursed — half stone, half flesh!”
“The omen! The Devouring Mind sends its spawn!”
“Not a child — never a child!”
Children shrieked and hid behind their mothers. Men reached for iron tools and farming spears. One cast a stone at her — it shattered harmlessly against her arm.
Annastara looked down at her hands, at the weight of her body made new, strange, unbreakable. The ground beneath her cracked where she had stumbled, as though her very being rejected the soil.
“I didn’t mean—” she tried to speak, but her voice grated, too deep, too wrong.
They backed away, terror in their eyes. “Monster!” someone cried.
The word cut sharper than any blade.
Heart heavy with shame, Annastara spread her new wings. Air gusted, scattering embers across the square. For the first time, she lifted from the earth — not graceful, not controlled, but rising. The villagers covered their faces against the storm of her passing.
When she was gone, silence lingered. Then a voice whispered the word that would follow her wherever she fled:
“Monster.”