In the early light, when sun and moon shone side by side, a child was born. The midwife gasped, for as the child stretched out her limbs for the first time, so too she stretched out glistening wings behind her.

The people said ‘this cannot be. how shall we raise a child who might be an angel? who might be a faerie? who might at any time fly away?’

So the midwife called for her sister, whose arts were both light and dark, and to whom faeries were no strangers. And the child smiled when she saw her, curling small fingers around those gnarled ones ringed with formless amethyst and topaz.

The ringed fingers gently folded the wings and anointed them with precious oils. And to a soft and sacred chant, they faded away.

‘Winged one’ whispered the sister of lightness and darkness, ‘I have not taken your wings, only hidden them for you. dream them back into being any time you wish. And never, ever forget that you were born a creature unlike any other’.