First Place - Fly

Wisps of fire flickered in the air as she stood frozen, the fire creeping closer and closer, threatening to swallow her. She knew it was the end of her chapter as she bid goodbye to the world… one life, one home, one family was all about to be stripped from her. 

A Few Hours Earlier…

An eerie silence swept across the canyon as the sun and moon aligned, spreading a radiating blood light. 4 eagles spread their wings, lifting off into the midnight sky, leaving an egg laid in an aerie, ready to fall in the void by a single gust of wind, the place of never ending darkness for those unwanted…

Her eyes fluttered open to a blinding pain coursing through her, suffocating her, tightening her chest until she managed a single choked breath. She felt like the world itself had split into pieces, with nothing except burning agony, and the feeling to belong left. Her feathers stilled, her azure eyes glossing over as if someone had painted over them with a clear layer of nail polish. A lone tear crawled down her face, her soul aching yet again. She enveloped the torture of feelings haunting her, gradually drifting back to sleep. 

Golden fingers glided through the sky tailed by a rosy stroke. A pair of umber eyes smirked,  before gasping… that’s when she felt it, a bleached blindness enclosing her heart, pillaging her strength before she was drawn from her trance. 

Everly then remembered the flashback, a blazing blood inferno, the eagles taking off into the sky, the feathers fluttering down, her wing gone, erasing the hope of flying again. Ivy, her sister, the only one which was faithful and stayed by her side throughout it all. The feeling to belong rushed back into her, the icy chill seeping through her bones. Her own family had pushed her around, treating her like a puppet despite her pleas for mercy, pulling her strings until she was no use and then thrown away, left to rot in dust. 

She flapped her wing desperately to get out of this living nightmare, things seeming to be hitting rock bottom, before getting worse yet. Flocks of birds took off into the air shrieking with terror. Everly’s eyes darted to the right, when she saw the thick grey smoke engulfing the sky spreading like a disease with no intention to back down. But it couldn’t be… smoke can’t be here without- that’s when Everly realised flickering tongues of orange were headed straight into her. Her biggest foe was back to haunt her yet again. Ivy, her sister, all that Everly had left decided that moment to abandon her. Everly’s limbs turned into jelly. The one split second that she needed Ivy, it was gone, plundered from her. 

All Everly could think of was “This is it, history happens again…” But she couldn’t back down again, her eyes locked into the sky, she hadn’t come this far to be set back…

Head held back, chin lifted, Everly took off into the sky narrowly dodging the fire below. She could do anything if she put her mind to it because no one was going to stop her. After all, she was an eagle, a symbol of courage itself.