She came back.


    I worried about it all month, with increasing intensity. I was too preoccupied by my own problems to assist Francesca at all in her search for a husband. My task, which I had volunteered for with every intention of following through—befriending the two gentlemen she had found least tedious from her party (the two I had surprised under the willow, in point of fact)—was left completely abandoned. I felt bad, but in retrospect, I think they would have been more alarmed than pleased by any overt overtures I might have made towards befriending them. Even just nodding at them as we passed in the corridor resulted in the blood draining from their face and a hasty departure. And it saved me the trouble of having to somehow navigate expressing interest in knowing them without inadvertently implying interest in knowing them.


    By the time the moon had next waxed nearly to full, I was jumping at every cloud and shadow. I stared out windows incessantly, rather than attending to my lessons. And when, sure enough, I spotted a Winged silhouette approaching from the north—I was lucky enough to have been in my Linear Algebra class at the time, which was tucked away in a remote north-east corner of the oldest building—I simply stumbled out of class with my hand on my stomach and my brow sheened with sweat. I didn’t even have to feign illness; I had worried myself sick.


    Only one course of action, desperate and risky, had yielded itself to my fevered brainstorming all month. I ran to the University’s Observatory as fast as I could.


    It was similar to my father’s, insofar as it was also at the top of a tower. It was a lot of stairs to take at maximal speed, but take them I did. By the time I reached the top, my lungs were burning, my throat was raw, and my thighs felt like they were the size of logs. But I did not stop. I burst into the dome—nobody was there during the day—rolled the ladder to the scaffolding, swarmed up it like an ape, threw open the dome’s maintenance hatch at the top, and thrust the pocket mirror I had been carrying with me out. I angled it back and forth, catching the light.


    I hoped it would be enough. I hoped that if it was enough, we wouldn’t get caught.


    It was enough.


    Sheshef saw my glinting signal and arrowed straight for the Observatory. She backwinged to a precarious perch right on the lip of the dome’s flange, where it met the stone of the tower, and folded her wings gracefully. There was no breeze to ruffle her feathers today, even this high. All was still. Golden spores glimmered in the air.


    I wanted to just gaze at her—the beads in her hair and around her neck, the muscles cording her chest and abdomen, the translucent tips of her cloud-gray primaries. Her nakedness, in all its wild, animalistic beauty. Her whiteless eyes, and how they looked at me with nothing more than eager curiosity.


    But I couldn’t. There was no time.


    “You can’t be here,” I said, my voice cracking like an adolescent’s. “It is dangerous. You need to go right now.”


    Her nictitating membranes slid across her eyes, and she tilted her head slightly. “How is it dangerous?”


    “They will drive you off. I’m afraid they''ll hurt you. Please, go.”


    “Why would they drive me off?”


    “Because you’re not allowed to be here!”


    “Why not?”


    “It’s the rules!”


    She just stared at me.


    I tried again, remembering her own words. “It is forbidden!”


    This elicited a troubled twitch of her wings. “Telescopes are not forbidden.”


    “No,” I cried softly, trying to make sure my voice wouldn’t carry further than her ears in the stillness of the warm afternoon, “you are!”


    “Me?”


    “Yes! You are forbidden in this place! And so am I!”


    This only confused the matter. “Then why are you here?”


    “Because I am breaking the rules!”Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.


    Her face cleared. “Oh. Then I will break them, too.”


    “No!”


    Sheshef seemed curiously immune to my agony. He peered down at the dome in interest, and toed with with a naked foot. She had a string of beads around her ankle, blue and red. “Is this where the telescope is?” she asked.


    “Yes, but I can’t show it to you! You can’t see through it during the day, and at night others will be using it. Please, go home. I will show you the telescopes at home. I promise.”


    “When?”


    “In May.”


    She stared uncomprehendingly.


    “At the end of spring,” I clarified. The part of my mind devoted to nothing more than inanities mused that I should probably try and find a calendar to give her at some point, so she would understand my references.


    She frowned. “That is a very long time from now.”


    “I know it is, but I have no choice. Please.” I thought I heard footsteps below. “Please—do you remember what your brothers did to you? For kissing me?”


    Her face clouded. “Yes.”


    “There are people here that will do that to me if they catch me just talking to you—people that would do it to you, too, if they got the chance. This place is different than home.” There was definitely somebody ascending the stairs. “I have to go; somebody is coming. Fly away.”


    Then I hauled myself back in and slammed the maintenance hatch shut.


    I scurried back down the ladder and raced for the exit. It opened just as I reached it. My heart leaped into my throat.


    It was Barti.


    “Oh, thank God.” I swayed with relief. “Barti, you almost killed me.”


    “I’m sorry.” Barti slipped in and shut the door behind himself. “I saw you go sprinting across the quad and figured you must have come here. She came?”


    “Yes.”


    “Did you talk to her?”


    “Yes.”


    “Is she flying back?”


    “God, I hope so.” I passed a hand over my sweaty face. It was more than sweat, I realized with shame: there were tears there too. Barti mercifully did not comment. “Did anybody else see her?”


    “If they did, I didn’t hear about it. I was the only other person coming here that I saw.”


    I wiped my face again. “Thank God,” I mumbled. This was the most religious day in my life to date.


    Barti looked around at the observatory in interest. “I’ve never been up here before. Is it always this empty?”


    “During the day, yes.”


    “Hm.” Barti wandered around, looking at things vaguely. I got the sense that he was thinking more than he was really looking at anything in particular. “Stars are part of their religion, you said?”


    “Yes.”


    “And you create the means to observe them.”


    I looked up dully, not yet fully recovered from my tribulations. “What?”


    “You make telescopes.”


    “I’ve never made a whole telescope.”


    “You’ve worked on your father’s though, have you not?”


    “Yes.”


    Barti gazed contemplatively up at the top of the dome. “Do you think she thinks of you as a god?”


    “What?”


    “Hm… no. Not a god. A prophet though. Yes.” He was warming up to his own idea. “A seer, perhaps.”


    “They have their own priest-caste for reading the stars. Astrologers.”


    “A Titan,” Barti murmured, a small smile on his face. “Prometheus, bringing the gift of fire. No wonder she likes you.”


    “She likes the telescopes, Barti.”


    “If you say so.”


    I became abruptly furious. “What are you getting at, Barti?” I yelled. “Just say it!”


    Bari looked astonished. “I’m not getting at anything. I just think she likes you.”


    Sins of the father, sins of the son.


    “This isn’t funny,” I snarled. I wiped my face again. My sleeve was growing damp. “Her own people tried to get my grandmother to kill my mother as soon as she was born. Hatched.”


    Barti looked shocked, then ashamed. “I’m sor—”


    “My other grandmother was so shocked when my mother became pregnant with me, she died.” Pervert. Abomination. Mongrel. “She died of learning of my mere existence.”


    Funny: Master Fiore had taught me what to do when others used those words against me. He had said nothing about what to do when I used them against myself.


    “I’m sorry, Leo,” Bari repeated quietly.


    It wasn’t his fault. I needed to stop. He knew what I was, and had stayed my friend, kept my secret. I needed to stop.


    I sat down, hard. “I just—I need you to stop talking. For a minute. Please.”


    Barti stood, somber and silent, and let me catch my breath.


    After a while, I wiped my face and stood again. “Thank you. I’m sorry I yelled.”


    “It’s all right,” he said quietly. “I shouldn’t have been making light of things.”


    “No.” I brushed imaginary dust off my trousers and did not meet his eyes. “It’s not your fault. You didn’t do anything. I just—I just hope nobody saw her this time.”


    But somebody had.