"There is one spectacle grander than the sea, that is the sky; there is one spectacle grander than the sky, that is the interior of the soul."-Victor Hugo

—

The Eyrie is especially cold today. Blaine steps outside of his nest-house and stretches his wings, letting the wind ruffle the feathers and letting himself absorb the world around him.

His village is high up in a grouping of pillar cliffs, jutting out from a high shore. Below, waves from the sea crash around the base, the noise faint, the smell of salt strong even so high up. The sun is bright off the water, yellow over the hills behind him and the beach just barely in sight to his left, around the edge of some more cliffs.

The other nest-houses around him are still quiet—it's early, yet, but Blaine wants to groom his feathers without Cooper interrupting him and maybe convince Brittany to come with him inland to trade with some of the land people. He wants a new wrap, and maybe some jewelry—he's old enough to find a mate, now, and he has to make a good impression if he's going to be visiting other Eyries or hosting other visitors that come through periodically on Flights—tours of the world, visits to family and friends in other Eyries, exploratory trips simply for experience, anything really, usually before one finds a mate, whether another of the Winged or, occasionally, one of the land folk.

He bounds up and flaps his wings, soaring up just enough to glide over to the center of the village—a common gathering place on the widest of the pillars, mostly taken up by a the Dome—a huge dome of woven, molded wood, hardened into a great web that arcs and winds up and down into the ground, providing perches all around the empty space at the center where they hold plays or meetings. He finds a perch toward the center, where the wind is weaker and the air a little warmer, and he sits down.

He brushes through the feathers on his lower legs, first. Long on his calves, to help guide and steer himself, tapering down to contour feathers around his shin and onto the tops of his feet. He combs these out with his fingers, straightening any that got shifted during sleep, stroking the barbs until they're even and smooth.

He does the same on the feathers of his forearms and the backs of his hands before he starts combing through what he can reach of his wings and the feathers growing over his shoulders onto his clavicle and down the backs of his ribs. Any feathers that fall out, he carefully places in a pouch on the belt holding his wrap around his hips, for trading or, when he gets a few pretty ones, to bind into jewelry for his future mate. It's a customary gift, and he wants to be sure that his mate gets the best of him.

He finishes what he can reach just in time for Brittany to come out from the nest-house that she shares with Sam and fly over to him.

"Are your feathers crooked on purpose?" she'd asked him, the first morning he'd moved out of his family's nest and made his own, thus leaving him without his mother to help groom him. "Because they're kind of pretty like that, but I like them better when the stripes match up." After that, it had become ritual for her to help Blaine out every morning after she and Sam had woken and Sam had gone to scout around the Eyrie for changes or news.

"Are you planning on going on a Flight today?" she asks this morning, settling behind Blaine and carefully combing his feather, much gentler than he does himself, more meticulous, making sure the gold, brown, cream, and black stripings all match up. "You haven't gone out yet."

"I don't know if I'm ready for a mate yet, Brittany," Blaine admits. "I mean...I just finished my nest a few months ago. And the Eyries nearby only have a few boys of age that are available. We didn't connect when they visited here, so..."

"Well, you can't just wait here forever," Brittany says. "There might be a pretty boy out there right now waiting for you to visit him, while you're waiting for him to visit you. You should go find him before he decides to come find you, and then you'll both be out and miss each other and fly right by."

Blaine thinks for a moment, making sure he understood what she was saying, before he brushes it off.

"But what if I'm not meant to mate with another Winged?" Blaine asks softly, mind drifting. "You know there are stories about land mates."

"Well, they can't fly to see you," Brittany says. "So youhaveto go on a Flight to find them. Either way, you're only staying here because you're scared. And you shouldn't be scared of love—it feels really good, trust me."

Blaine smiles and takes her hand when she finishes up and sits next to him, her pretty blue-feathered feet swinging below where she sits.

"I'll think about it," Blaine says. "I should probably figure out what direction I want to go in."

"I just went toward something shiny," Brittany notes with a shrug. "I saw a flash over the cliffs, and I went toward it, and Sam was on the other side near that lake. Worked for me."

Blaine smiles softly.

"I'll keep an eye out for something shiny, then."

—

The problem, later that day, is thateverythingis shiny.

He, Brittany, Sam, Cooper, and Joe, a youngling just about to reach his mating age, are on the beach, searching out shells to bring to trade when they visit the inland villages, or maybe fish if the water clears up—there was a storm, out to sea, Sam had said earlier, discovered on his scouting trip, and the water is still more turbulent than usual. It washed up a ton of shells, though, and some sea glass, so the early afternoon sun is glinting in every angle, and if Blaine tried to fly toward anything shiny now, he'd just spin in circles.

"I think we should go further down the beach," Sam suggests at one point. "Who knows what else washed up. We're not going to get much for some glass and shells."

"What's different about further down the beach?" Cooper protested. "If you want something different, get closer to the storm. We should look in the caves—"

"We don't go in the caves, Cooper," Sam interrupts. "The waves are too unpredictable—you never know if one could fill up—"

"I'm a fast enough flier, I could go in and out before you missed me—"

"Maybe we could find—"

"What's that?"

Brittany is the one who asks. She often sees things of interest to her, things that aren't as interesting to the rest of the world, so Cooper ignores her completely. Joe looks to Sam, who just shrugs, looking at Brittany instead of following her gaze.

But Blaine does follow her gaze, and his ears seem to fill with the roar of the sea, drowning out the voices of the others as the light flashes off of something and into his eyes, silver and shimmering.

"—wearing a dress?" Cooper's voice filters back in as Blaine stares.

"It's a merman," Brittany breathes in his ear. "I knew they were real."

Blaine's brow furrows. They live above the sea—if anyone would have seen one of the mythical sea people, it would've been them. They often fished and flew over the water, daring each other to get closer despite how the salt of the water could destroy their feathers and make them ill if they got too saturated. Blaine's been doing it for years, and he's good at it—but he's never seen any fish people below the surface, not even on the calmest, clearest days, when the water shimmers almost crystalline down to the rocky, sandy floors before the dropoff to deeper waters.

But there he is.

Before he knows what he's doing, before he can think twice, Blaine takes off, flying over quickly, landing on a grouping of rocks partially hiding the form from view.

There he is.

He's so pale that the sun reflects enough to make Blaine squint. He's gorgeous and lithe from the waist up—broad-shouldered, trim-waisted, veins running down his shoulders and shapely arms blue and thick. His hair is reddish brown in the light, swept up off his angled, graceful face, framed by a braid at each temple that's about as thick as Blaine's pinky. He's wearing several strands of beads and shells and other decorations around his neck, and otherwise bare.

And below his hips, scales form from the skin, pale and nacreous like the smooth insides of some of the most precious shells Blaine collects. He doesn't have legs—just this one long tail, sinuous and limp on the sand. It tapers and ends with long, gossamer fins.

Blaine looks over at the water—the sun is just past its zenith, and the tide is at its lowest. The edge of the surf is many yards away, so Blaine feels safe enough hopping down onto the sand to get a closer look.

The fish-man is unconscious. His eyes are shut, flickering restlessly and scrunched tight—in pain, or because of the light in his eyes, Blaine's not sure. Gills behind his strong jaw flutter weakly, though he breathes through his chapped lips, shallow and unsteady. His skin is flushed and starting to burn, and—

Blaine sniffs. He smells blood.

He looks the man over, suddenly much more nervous. And there, on his far side, a stain of red on the sand, below a deep wound in the scales over what Blaine estimates would be his outer thigh, if he had legs. The scales around it are torn, and Blaine almost gags—it's a large wound, and he's no longer surprised that the fishman is laying here passed out.

"Blaine! Come back here!"

Blaine shakes his head at Cooper's call, shouting back, "He's hurt!" He kneels and leans over him, hands hovering uncertainly before they land on the merman's shoulders, shaking gently.

"Hello?" he asks, feeling stupid. "Can you—can you wake up?"

He's not surprised when it doesn't work. The fishman doesn't even stir. Blaine sits back on his haunches, looking at him helplessly, at a loss. He can't carry the fishman back to the water—for one thing, he doesn't know if he'll wake up or just sink, and secondly, if his feathers get in the seawater, he'll be kept to the Eyrie for days while he washes the salt out, and some of his feathers will never be the same again. He can't risk it, carrying this creature's weight.

But maybe he can do something. The poor man's lips are chapped, and he's probably overheated without cool water around him. Blaine can at least get him a drink.

He jumps up and casts around for something to carry it in. Then, rolling his eyes at himself, he reaches into his pouch for an abalone shell he'd found earlier. Just about the size of his palm, it's not very good quality—the ripples of color on the inside are cracked and stained dark, and it's not very deep. But it'll do for getting a drink of water for a merman.

Blaine rushes down to the water, ignoring the cries of his friends behind him, still at a distance, probably afraid to approach. Blaine doesn't think about why—about the danger that could be present in this situation. But Blaine is one of the Winged, not a canary—he doesn't fly away at the first sign of something new, not when someone is in need of help.

He cautiously leans forward to lay the shell on the sand, allowing the waves to slip up and fill it. When it's done, he jogs back, careful to keep it level, only spilling a few drops. When he reaches the merman, he kneels down and gingerly lays the edge of the shell on his lips.

He tips it. The water pours messily over his lips, but some goes into his mouth, and before the water is gone, the merman stirs.

"Hello?" Blaine asks, pulling back the shell, with a shallow pool of water at the bottom. The man needs totalk— "Are you awake?"

The man groans, his head tossing faintly, and Blaine feels his hand twitching against his own calf, unsettling a few feathers. He pulls back, and the hand rises weakly.

"Wa—"

"Water?" Blaine asks. He tips the shell back without waiting for an answer, but the trickle of water that heads to the fish man's mouth is not nearly enough. "Oh! I—I can get more. Stay here."

Blaine runs back to the water, hoping the merman doesn't remember that when he wakes—stay here, honestly—and gets more into the shell, hurrying back and feeding it to him again.

By the fourth shell, the merman is assisting Blaine in tipping in the water, dry, pale hands joining Blaine's on the shell to drink faster, more, his head tilted up to sip greedily. When he finishes that, he coughs weakly.

"Thank you," he says, opening eyes that almost match his scales—mostly blue, but flashing with slivers of silver and green and gold.

"You're welcome," Blaine replies, excited that they speak the same language. "Do you—do you want more?"

"In a moment," is the response, gritty and suspicious. "Where am I?"

"Um...you're on a beach," Blaine says, and is impressed with the way the merman can glare at him, in his state.

"Yes, thank you." He clears his throat, and his voice comes back a little stronger, a little clearer. "Who are you?"

Blaine shifts, out of his element and nervous with the urge to fly. But he'd promised himself he'd stay here and not flee like his smaller, weaker cousins.

"I'm Blaine," he says.

The merman looks him over for a minute, his jaw twitching, tense, before he replies.

"Kurt."