• Everyone except for one sixteen year old girl had become terribly ill, and the girl had to take care of everyone else’s job without getting any extra pay or anything. Demons and half-demons have always been hated by most humans, but unfortunately she was the only half-demon that was living inside of the village. She was running in and out of buildings all day in the searing hot sun, and then she was forced to run around all night in chilly night air because the mayor wouldn’t let her rest at all. It was three days before all the villagers were healthy again, but now the girl had fallen terribly ill. Everyone left her passed out in an alleyway, and later that night the mayor and some volunteers gathered around her. Two of the volunteers bound her arms behind her back with chains, and the other two volunteers violently pulled her up to her feet. They followed the Mayor while pulling the girl along with them and came to a drainage system, where the water from the river that flowed through the town poured out like a waterfall. “Toss her down the drain. If the current doesn’t kill her then she’ll drown to death in the lake,” the Mayor said. All four of the volunteers threw the girl into the rapidly flowing water and she was gone within seconds. The water carried her through the pipes and over the waterfall into a lake. She had hit her head off a pipe and lost consciousness as soon as she fell over the waterfall and into the lake.

    The water was suddenly disturbed and all that was seen was a small splash in the middle of the lake. The girl appeared laying on dry land after a large splash began to settle. Strong black wings flapped slightly as they vanished from view, and the sound of faint footsteps on the soft ground could be heard. A pair of gentle hands lifted the girl’s head up slightly and bandaged the wound before laying her head back down. The black wings appeared once more, and the girl was lifted up from the ground, and high into the sky. When the girl awoke she was laying in a hospital bed with an IV hooked up to her arm, and wires that were attached to a heart monitor. A young woman with red wings walked in wearing a white nurse’s uniform, and looked at the chart at the end of the bed before looking at the girl. “Ah…Glad to see you’re awake. It’s not very often we get non-wings around here,” the woman said before tending to the girl’s head injury. The girl winced when the woman dabbed a cotton ball covered in peroxide on the wound. “Sorry. I should’ve warned you that it was going to sting. That was my mistake,” the woman said, “I’ll make sure the cook adds something extra to your breakfast to make up for it.” Then the woman readied the girl’s head with a smile and walked out of the room. When the girl came back she gave the girl her breakfast and the girl looked over the food. There was a carton of milk, mandarin oranges, pancakes, and a small piece of cake. The woman smiled and said, “That should make up for the pain you had earlier.” The girl nodded and barely managed to form the words, “Thank you.” Then the girl started eating her breakfast, and fell asleep a few minutes after she had finished. She woke up the next morning, and was released from the hospital since her wound had mostly healed. She wondered around the city for awhile, but stopped when she came to the edge of the city. It was suspended hundreds, if not thousands of miles in the air. One of the neighborhood kids thought she was like everyone else and pushed her over the edge of the city. The girl began to glow a fiery red then screamed in pain as a pair of phoenix wings came out of her back. When she began to loose consciousness from the immense pain, she managed to catch a small glimpse of a black wing right before everything went black.

    She awoke several hours later, and quickly realized that she was back in the hospital. The same woman walked in and said, “Well, I never expected that you’d turn out to be a Blaze Wing.” “Blaze Wing?” the girl asked in confusion. “Yes, a Blaze Wing. They’re said to be the descendants of the phoenixes. They’re extremely rare…Even rarer than the Wing Wings,” the woman replied looking over the chart again. It was a few days before the girl learned how to fly, and was allowed to leave the hospital again. There was a festival going on at the time, so she had decided to go and check it out for awhile. She came to a stage and saw some people dancing on the stage. She thought it was funny how when the final song ended they all collapsed and a few of them fell off the stage. All of the dancers went backstage, and the girl walked over to a food stand and bought about 12 bottles then snuck past the guards and backstage to the dancers. She handed all of them a water bottle, and each of them gulped the entire thing down within seconds. She laughed when one of them got the hiccups. “Tha…nk you for the wa…ter,” the dancer said hiccupping in the middle of his words. The girl giggled a bit and said, “You’re welcome.” Then she snuck off before the guards caught her. She wondered around before she decided to lay down on one of the roofs and watch the sun set. She fell asleep on the roof later that night, unaware of how cold the nights cold get. When the night started to get cold the light flapping of wings could be heard only a few feet away from her. The footsteps that followed were almost completely silent. The girl was covered with a blanket before the sound of flapping wings could be heard again.

    The girl awoke the next morning completely confused. She didn’t know who had laid a blanket on top of her. She got up after a few minutes and wondered around the village again. The man she had bought the water from the day before had accepted her money even though it wasn’t Sky Money, but no one else around here would accept the kind of money she had. She saw a “Help Wanted” sign hanging in the doorway to a diner, and walked inside politely asking to see the manager. A man walked out and walked her to a back room and said, “So you’re looking for a job here. Correct?” The girl nodded and said, “Yes sir.” “Do you have any experience cooking, waiting tables, or working the cash register?” the man asked in a kind and gentle tone. “Yes sir. I use to work in a restaurant as a cook, waiter, and cashier. My old boss use to make me pull double shifts if someone was sick or they called off so I ended up doing everything with no reward like everyone else. Including the cleaning,” the girl replied with a hint of sadness in her voice. The man gave her a kind smile and said, “Well, you certainly have a lot of experience. Tell you what. I’ll give you the job, but you can choose what station you want to work in.” The girl looked down a bit and playing with a piece of string she had wrapped around her fingers and shyly said, “W…Waitress.” The smiled and walked over to a dresser opening a drawer and pulling out a beautiful fiery red waitress outfit. It wasn’t a frilly dress like most places made their waitresses wear. It was a shirt and a pair of pants. The girl took the outfit and walked into the bathroom to try in on. The pants were a little baggy to allow free movement. The shirt showed the entire stomach, and the sleeves hung down on the sides, instead of sitting on the shoulders and draping down a little ways. Instead they were wrapped around the upper part of her arm. She walked back out and blushed with embarrassment when the man began clapping and said, “That suits you.”

    The girl’s blush became more noticeable when her stomach growled. The man laughed, and walked into the kitchen with her. He made her something to eat, and sat her down at a table then sat the plate down in front of her. “Dig in,” he said sitting down across from her. She hesitated for a minute then began eating the meal. Her ears twitched slightly when she took the first bite and some of the cooks whispered to each other about how cute it looked. The girl finished and got up washing the dirty dishes herself then went back over to the man. She began work later that evening, and as a bonus she was fed and given a warm place to sleep. After a few weeks a group of Metal Wings/Sky Hunters showed up demanding that everyone turn over the youngest people with the rarest color of wings. One of the hunters took a baby with rainbow colored wings from its mother, and the girl stormed out of the restaurant with her wings fully revealed and ruffled. She took the baby back handed it back to its mother and turned back to the men giving them a look that would even make the strongest of men wet their pants. She spread her wings and they instantly turned to fire. She didn’t even give the men time to breath before she had given all of them two black eyes. One of the men tried to hit her, but quickly found himself bent over with an arm behind his back and her hand on his neck ready to snap it. The other men went to attack her but when she increased the pressure on his neck he screamed, “Retreat!” All the men took off running and she let the leader go then chased the men off with her wings leaving a fiery trail behind her.

    She lost the men somewhere above a forest and her wings turned back into feathers. She didn’t even have time to look where she was before she felt a sharp pain in her left side. She had just enough time to look and see an arrow stuck in her left side, before several more arrows were shot into her back. She began plummeting to the ground smacking off several branches and hitting her head off of a tree branch. She barely managed to stand up after a few seconds, and started trying to get away from where she was. Her vision was fading when she collapsed and caught a small glimpse of a black wing once again.