𝐇𝐚𝐥𝐟-𝐁𝐫𝐞𝐞𝐝

Dogs And Dragons

Rewritten

There was something Aurora learned from Golden Boy, and that was that there was power in grace. The way you walked, the way you talked, you had a hold over those surrounding you if you had power over yourself. Golden Boy had this skill mastered as a teenager, and Aurora picked up on it.

She never really cared for it, she never had to. But the time had come to put it to good use.

When Aurora the Creature walked out people stared at her. Her back was straight and stiff, her shoulders pushed back, she looked down at those around her and moved with the aristocracy that was supposedly in her veins. Every Harpy turned to glance at her, and Aurora hated it. Attention, attention, it couldn't leave her recently. She raised her wings intimidatingly to make up for the marks adorning her body, the hand-shaped bruises and the scratches and cuts. She couldn't appear weak in front of them, she wanted to inspire a degree of fear.

Immediately what Aurora noticed was how obvious it was to everybody that she was a Hawkins. She didn't know much about her lineage, but she knew enough to recognize attributes of Hawkins', such as black wings. Harpies tended to have all kinds of colours for wings, but no one had dark wings like the Hawkins did. It was one of the things they were known for, a dominant gene in their bloodline.

Aurora was watched by four men who stood outside the tent, weapons strapped to their belts, they turned to look at her and stiffened when her eyes settled on them. The tension was palpable in the air, they were afraid she was gonna attack.

But she wasn't, not unless they gave her a reason, and certainly not with the stitches in her torso.

Tabitha rushed over from a nearby tent but Aurora barely noticed her, or the Harpies who were becoming more and more tense with every passing minute. She was searching for the Chief who was nowhere to be seen. The sooner she told him the true reason for her arrival, the sooner she could leave clan lands. She wasn't safe here, and the longer she stayed, the closer they came to knowing.

Aurora's eyes searched endlessly, and when it caught no glimpse of Chief Demyan, she turned to the man who was standing next to Tabitha, a near-identical lookalike. He had pale blond hair and ocean blue eyes; his only colouring was the taints of pink in his cheeks. He was tall and wide in measurement, with murky brown wings that were long and narrow, and with a glance to the sword strapped to his back, Aurora was sure that he was a soldier, and one of Tabitha's sons.

"You, you're Alyosha, right?" Russian rolled off her tongue. He was the one who brought in the food earlier, Aurora remembered the Chief calling him Alyosha.

"Yes, my Lady," He replied in his rough accent, sparing a glance at Tabitha who stood by his side, looking concerned. Aurora expected that she was afraid that Aurora would hurt her son or something.

"Take me to your Chief." She commanded him and he nodded like he'd been waiting for her to ask. She eyed his wings as he brushed past her and walked in a certain direction, a path being cleared for him by the Harpies who were lingering around and watching. She followed him, observing the community the clan had built for themselves.

There was something quite fascinating in the idea of a community isolated from society, living on their own terms and rules, customs they've followed for centuries without the interference of modernized technology or rules and regulations set by men in tight suits and high positions. Harpies have lived in mountains and rainforests and the wilderness from their beginnings, they upheld their traditions and stuck to their roots.