All the colours in the sky, Lucent Dreaming issue 8

Kellai watched the sun sink behind the hills of the valley. The killing day was done. Where the last sunlight fell on his feathers, he felt warmth, and a sensation of summer, slipping away with the evening chill.

In his hands, he held a long wooden stick, the dried-out branch of a gathamur tree. It had helped him wander across the uneven ground of the scrublands. He had run a long way, leaving behind the shouts and screams. The words of his father still echoed, furious and disappointed.

Today he was meant to take his first kill. The brightly feathered pterosaurs came to the cliffs near his village for a few days each year, feeding on the swallows and other little birds that roosted there. The pterasaurs only remained only a day or two, before resuming their long migration to the north.

He should have taken a knife to one of the beasts, spilled its blood and painted his own feathers. But he could not bring himself to do it.

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