The Childrens Rebellion

You are not alone.

His name was Tommy Innes, and he did not catch two of his friends as they fell towards the cold rock at the bottom of the ravine. He tried, he really did, but he grasped their hands, and he did not have it in him to catch their fall—a bit, enough for himself, but not for three children.

His name was Tommy Innes, and he heard the howl of misery from the monster that had been chasing them across the plateau, one that was mirrored in his own lips as he watched his friends fall to their deaths—decided that perhaps he should have taken his chances with that knife and that beast with glowing eyes and razor-sharp teeth.

His name was Tommy Innes, and that night he learned that he was not alone. That he was not the only Avian—besides Chroma—left; that others lived.

He lost his grip on Drista's hand first—it slipped, and he cried her name in fear, and she stared up at him with green eyes that reflected the moon and a horrible despair behind them.

Lani was second, her eyes teary and her mouth open in a wordless scream as her chocolate hair whipped around her face, and Tommy held her by the fingertips as they fell—and then they lost contact, and the rock neared him, taunting them of their deadly fate.

And then there were two figures next to them, one grabbing Drista and the other Lani, and he gasped as his arm was nearly yanked out of his socket, and he came to a floating halt to the rock, the only injury from a small pebble that flicked up as his hand smacked against the cold stone floor.

Tommy rolled to his feet, yanking his knife from where it was tucked in his belt, and held it up warningly at the male and female that stood opposingly in the glimmering starlight, not gasping for breath, not a hair out of place—not even looking like they had fallen two hundred feet—because they had; they were no longer on the opposite side of the canyon. All five of them were down here.

"Oh my God," Drista shrieked, leaping up and pinching herself. "I'm alive?"

Lani was blinking up at the fissure that gave way to starlight, her mouth slightly open, perhaps in disbelief. She was slower to get up, and also noticed what Tommy seemed to—particularly the two people that were now in the ravine with them. She shifted her feet into a defensive position slightly, as if that would have done anything.

Tommy raised his head, and he met the woman's coffee-brown eyes, and he felt the spark slip because his shields were not up—and neither was hers, because a bond slid into place so fast that he gasped and stumbled back, holding a hand to his head.

"Tommy?" Drista said, her voice raising an octave as she bent down and grasped the fallen knife. "What did—" she was addressing the man and the woman. "What did you do to him?"

"I'm—I'm sorry," the woman said, as Tommy sat blinking, feeling the curiousness and surprise that radiated across their—their Avian bond. "I had no idea that your friend was an Avian."

Drista stiffened furiously. "How do you know that?" she spat.

It was the man that answered. "Because we are too," he said, calmer than Tommy felt as he attempted to throw up shields that he had not constructed in years and years. That he hadn't had to, because he had been alone without any of his kind.

Avians traveled in flocks for a reason. While Elytrians could form bonds willingly through mind-melders, as they were called on Elytra, in order to form some sort of close-ranged telepathy and emotion-feeling, Avians were more prone to accidental bondings mind-to-mind. That was why, from a young age, baby Avians were kept between close family, as they were inclined to accidentally create bonds that—unlike Elytrians—would only be undone in death. Elytrian bonds were far more complicated in the sense that you could only have one in your life, and it was usually done between mates—as Kristin and Phil had gotten shortly after Sniff's funeral on Elytra. Avian bonds were spontaneous and done between family members, and they did not allow short-ranged telepathy—it was more like a compass.