Impaired: (Part 1 - Rising Shadows)

Although having much to learn, Rysha could be quite stubborn.
She still found ways to explore without fear of discovery,
either by the flocks or worse in her naive mind, her parents.
In between Ashenwing and Sawbeak territory was a vast expanse of unclaimed land,
where a particularly large river snaked in from the east.
In the center of the river were small islands, little places where Rysha could be herself.
Having explored them all, she found one in particular that she took a liking to.
It was the largest island along the river, jutting out into the eastern bay.
On it were plenty of bushes to hide from the sun,
and towering pine trees which thrived in the salty coastal air.
She named it ‘Rysha Key’.

It wasn’t a particularly interesting day,
Rysha went off on her solitary ‘excursions’ much like she always did.
Her mother told her to watch herself, and her father thought the same.
She also reassured them in a scripted response that she would be watchful and not get herself killed,
or be seen by a member of the flocks.
Without a care in the world, young Rysha flew off from her home at the pine flats.
The sun was shining, the skies were blue, and the waters were calm, a picturesque summer day.

Arriving at her island, Rysha spent hours leaping through the water and then drying off.
Lost in her fantasies, she failed to notice the black clouds rolling in from the west.
It was only when she jumped a mile from a deafening thunderclap did she notice the storm.
Heavy raindrops slapped into her body and wings, as though they were stones.
Taking shelter underneath the collapsed trunk of a fallen pine, she waited for the storm to pass.
Sheets of rain blocked everything outside from view, and blinding lightning bolts danced in the air.
Great bursts of wind threatened to blow her only shelter away and leave her exposed.
All Rysha could do was shut her eyes, cover her ears, and wait.
When the rain did die down, the storm had moved on to the northeast.
Inspecting her island, some of the thick limbs of the great pines had snapped off,
others had blown down and were on their sides.
Rysha was unharmed, but she was soaked to the marrow and shaking miserably,
she wanted nothing more than to find her parents.

About to take off, she noticed a gryphon standing a short distance away,
awing at the colors of her wings.
Folding her wings and backing away, she had never seen such a gryphon before.
The one she saw was bright white, like wispy clouds in the sky.
Most bizarre were the amethyst eyes staring at her, taking everything they saw in.
For some reason she didn’t fly away, it was like a wish had been granted.
She always wanted to see another gryphon up close and perhaps speak to one.
Introductions were less than formal and certainly less than perfect,
little more than stuttering and pausing for lack of a better term.
The stranger’s name was Merrick, he was her age.
He explained that he was alone, he only had himself to rely on and needed a place to call his own.
In his words, his parents were too busy pleasuring themselves,
too caught up in their own fantasies to even acknowledge he existed.
For these reasons he wished to be on his own,
although he was only a juvenile and not old enough to be independent.
Rysha took pity on him, she admitted she had never seen anyone like him before.
Merrick told her that he belonged to a flock which was taking up residence along the river,
they were going to be named the Rivercrest flock.
To her parents and the flocks it would certainly be news.
For Rysha, she felt privileged to have spoken and seen someone aside from her parents.
Knowing it was against her better judgment, she and Merrick made plans to meet again.

Keeping the knowledge of her meeting secret, Cirrus and Coal were simply happy to see her return.
The storm had been short but intense, and they worried about her.
What Rysha did mention was that there was going to be a fifth flock in the bays,
stretching the truth and lying by saying she had seen a multitude of white gryphons fly in.
Her parents were concerned, but didn’t care.
In their minds, it was one more thing to stay away from.

For the next two weeks, Rysha and Merrick met and spoke to one another on Rysha’s Key.
They laughed and played on the island, safe from discovery which would certainly separate them.
Rysha always wanted a friend and someone to talk to,
Merrick wanted someone who would understand and not abandon him.
They were both happy to do what the other wanted, setting the foundation for a friendship.

After their most recent meet, Merrick didn’t come.
She waited all day for him to come, wondering where he was.
For four days she flew out to the island on the river and waited before giving up and going home.
On the fifth day, Merrick was already waiting for her.
She was overjoyed, but her joy was cut short by him saying they couldn’t see one another,
but offered her a warning before he left.
Merrick feared terrible things were going to happen in the bays and soon,
he claimed his flock’s leader was up to something, something sinister.
Rysha returned home, overhearing her mother speaking to her father.
Much to her surprise her father was talking, something he rarely did due to his throat injury.
Cirrus and Coal talked about how eggs in different flocks were vanishing and being found smashed.
For someone else to smash an egg was a heinous offense,
to destroy a life before it ever began was unspeakable.
What sent a chill through Rysha was when her parents mentioned Rivercrest,
how members of the new flock were at hunting grounds killing and taking everything they could.
Rysha heard her father say that he believed Rivercrest was somehow responsible for the smashed eggs.
Her mother said that all they could do was keep an eye on themselves.
After all, Cirrus figured, what did they owe the flocks?
All the flocks had done for them was drive them away from the safest lands,
demonize and brand them as impaired in the first place.
Both Cirrus and Coal believed what happened in unfriendly lands were none of their concern.

For another two weeks, Rysha stayed close to home in the pine flats.
Overhead she frequently saw white gryphons fly in pairs, going from north to south.
It was as though they were searching for something, or someone.
It was cause for Rysha to hide whenever they drew near,
she would duck under whatever scrap of cover she could find and wait for them to pass.
Once, a pair of them landed in a clear patch of land where the pines grew far apart.
Rysha hid in a palmetto thicket and watched them look around in every direction.
They didn’t stay for long before flying away, but it left her wondering what they were looking for.

The following week, Coal returned home to Cirrus and Rysha empty-clawed.
He couldn’t find any prey and he said Rivercrest hunters everywhere at their favored hunting grounds.
Coal saw them attack an Ashenwing gryphon and steal the armadillo it had captured,
before flying away at a very fast pace.
Within Rysha’s mind, she remembered what Merrick had told her.
He once said terrible things were going to happen, and it seemed he was right.
For the next month, Rysha couldn’t get her mind off of him.
She wanted to speak to him, but had no way to.

Her parents didn’t speak about the flocks, whatever they did hear from eavesdropping wasn’t good.
Rivercrest members were overthrowing the strongest members or leaders of each flock,
either replacing them or simply killing them, according to what they overheard
Another rumor was that the leader of Rivercrest was supposedly this psychotic and mad male,
whose only alias was ‘The Chieftain’.
Yet another was that Rivercrest was claiming territory from the four flocks in its name,
supposedly after the flocks gave in to their demands.
Because they were only rumors, they were likely unreliable and couldn’t be trusted.
Instead, Coal and Cirrus did what they could to be together with their daughter and be a family,
to share some laughs and happy times amid the uncertainty around them.
For another two weeks, things in the bays were quiet.
Rysha had even gone flying and left the peninsula to go to her Key on the eastern river.
She saw it was inhabited by at least a dozen white Rivercrest gryphons and wisely stayed away.
However, nothing could prepare her for what troubles were ahead.

After two weeks of quiet, a rumor spread that made both Cirrus and Coal’s hearts skip a beat.
Rumor said that there was an ongoing boom in the number of hatchlings in the four flocks,
but they were all hybrids and their fathers weren’t from any of the other four flocks,
the fathers supposedly all came from Rivercrest.
It was a great cause of concern for both Coal and Cirrus,
they knew what the boom of hybrid hatchlings implied.
It would mean that if Rysha were found, in short, bad things could happen to her.
Her parents doubted if their home on the smaller peninsula was safe anymore.
They opted not to tell Rysha, she was still young and didn’t need to know.
What they did tell her was not to leave home or fly under any circumstance,
to hide whenever she saw anything white in the sky that wasn’t a cloud.
She was all they had and they loved her more than anything,
they would die before they let anyone from Rivercrest or any of the other flocks near her.
Doing as she was told, Rysha remained on the ground and in cover,
whenever her parents were away on increasingly risky hunts.

Fall had come around and temperatures had dropped.
It had been over four months since Rysha last saw Merrick,
but his face was still fresh on her mind.
Her parents were more cautious than ever, they had seen the gryphons of Rivercrest for themselves.
They had rounded up the members of all four flocks and crowded them into small wooded areas,
places where they could be watched and places far too small for an entire flock to reside.
The Rivercrest members were indifferent to the ones they watched over,
it was as though they believed they were somehow better than those around them.
Both Coal and Cirrus had stolen glances at the flocks,
they saw parents and families struggling to feed themselves and their children,
sometimes there were fights over scraps.
Coal and Cirrus both knew it wasn’t right,
but they still didn’t have a great deal of sympathy for the flocks.
They weren’t being bothered by Rivercrest,
they were being left alone and were living their lives to their best of their ability,
and they certainly were not the ones being labeled and branded simply due to their heritage.
Nevertheless, neither of them thought what Rivercrest was doing was right.
They didn’t support Rivercrest, but did not hinder because they feared to do so.

Rysha had reached the age where she could be independent at over a year old,
but it wasn’t like she could go anywhere alone.
She opted to remain with her parents for safety and live in a place she knew for certain was safe.
She knew the peninsula and the pine flats like the back of her claw,
there were plenty of hiding places if trouble ever did arise.
Like her parents, they felt that the peninsula dividing the bays and the pine flats was their home,
and they were not about to abandon it.

One evening after they had just finished eating, Rysha and her parents gasped.
A white gryphon had landed just beyond the palmetto thicket where they lived.
Seeing the Rivercrest gryphon was alone, Coal and Cirrus made a decision.
They had to silence the intruder in order to keep themselves hidden, and Coal was the strongest.
Bursting through the bushes, Coal tackled the intruder to the ground and pinned him beneath his claws.
Rysha saw what her father was doing, he was going to kill the gryphon before he could give them away.
Before he could, she recognized the gryphon as Merrick who pleaded to be spared.
Putting herself between her father and Merrick, she explained to her parents who Merrick was.
At first they were outraged, furious beyond words that she spoke to and regularly saw him,
although said meetings had taken place months before.
Talking her parents down, Merrick was given the chance to speak.
He had come to warn them, a group of Rivercrest attackers were on their way.
Coal and Cirrus didn’t understand,
they hadn’t interfered or done anything to Rivercrest to provoke them in any way.
Without anything else to go on, they reluctantly believed Merrick.
He led Rysha and her parents out of the thicket and a short distance away to a fallen pine trunk,
to hide and be close enough to watch what happened next.
A group of at least eight Rivercrest gryphons arrived, one of them carried a burning tree branch.
Merrick spoke to them while Rysha and her parents watched,
they all quivered in fear and their hearts pounded like jackhammers.
They watched in stupefied silence as the Rivercrest gryphon with the burning branch let it fall,
setting the palmetto thicket ablaze.
All three gryphons were equally stunned and horrified.
The place where Cirrus and Coal had lived for years and where Rysha was raised was consumed by fire.
Nevertheless, they were all still alive and unharmed thanks to Merrick’s warning.
When the Rivercrest attackers left, Merrick returned and told them that he lied to the attackers.
He told Rysha’s family that the attackers believed they were heading south,
He explained that he’d seen enough of Rivercrest and their misdeeds.
Merrick’s reasoning was that he only wished to do good and make peace with others,
while everyone else in his flock had been twisted by their disturbed leader.
He knew Rysha and her parents would no longer be safe in the bays.
They needed a new place to live, preferably one far away from Rivercrest.
Merrick knew a place, and Rysha’s parents were in no position to argue or disagree.
They followed him cautiously, looking back to see their blazing home fade away into the distance.