A night crow shrieked out his call to the other black birds of the dark from his perch high up in the treetops of the thick forest. He was answered by other flying creatures that were up there.

   The bugs pretty much kept to their silence.

   They were the prey. They didn’t want to be located.

   A light breeze rustled the leaves and branches of treetops Bub could not see under the cover of night.

   Bub sat cross legged on the ground in front of his camp fire and turned the spitted rabbit that he was roasting.

   He liked the quiet peacefulness of the forest. The wind sounded like the Earth was whispering secrets to him that if he listened hard enough he would be able to hear and understand.

   Bub did listen hard.

   He heard the crackling of his fire and the sizzling of the rabbit juices as it cooked, and he heard something else.

   Just off to the right of the front of him was a rustling, shuffling noise.

   Bub transferred the stick with his skewered rabbit to his left hand. He felt down beside his knee with his right hand and located a good sized rock.

   The shuffling came again from behind a row of bushes next to a huge pine tree.

   Bub stood up and with all the strength of his muscular arm behind it, he hurled the rock directly at the location where the sound came from. The rock flew through the bush and struck something hard with a thud.

   "Ow! …Damb-it!" A cry came from the other side of the bush. "What are you trying to do, you idiot? If you would have asked who was there, I would have told you."

   Slickman stepped out from behind the bush leading his horse and rubbing a growing knot on the top of his head.

   "You should have announced yourself," Bub told him.

   "You should have asked."

   Slickman tied his horse beside Bub’s, then came over and laid his carrying bag on the ground between them, then sat down on the ground himself.

   He looked at the rabbit sizzling over the fire. "That looks good," He said.

   "It will be," Bub answered.

   "I’ll travel to the East with you," Slickman announced. "You’ll need someone like me who knows his way around to keep your bumbling barbarian ass out of trouble."

   "Really?" Bub asked.

   "Oh yeah," Slickman said. "I’ll show you the ropes real fast."

   "So you have been to the lands to the East?" Bub asked.

   "No," Slickman said. "But I’ve been so many places that nothing surprises me anymore. You going to share some of that rabbit?"

   "There’s not much," Bub said.

   Slickman went into his bag and produced a bottle of wine.

   "This will make it go down easier," Slickman said. "If you share." Slickman uncorked the bottle and took a long drink from it. He went, "Ahhhhh," when he was done.

   "Pass the wine," Bub said.

   "Going to share?"

   Bub pointed to the tree on the other side of the fire. Another spitted rabbit was leaning against it. "Yours," He said

   "There’s more than enough to go around," Slickman said. "You’re a greedy bastard aren’t you."

   Bub laughed and took the bottle from Slickman’s hands.

   Rabbits were roasted. Rabbits were eaten.

   Wine was drank.

   And in the dark of the night beside a glowing campfire, Slickman and Bub began telling each other tales from their lives.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Love On The Wing

(A Bub Tale)

   So, you want to hear a story about a woman. You want to hear a tale of lust and beastly breeding aplenty.

   I’ll not give you one of those tonight.

   How about, I tell you a story about love and loss and how I found out about the ultimate fate of man. You’ve noticed I don’t smile overmuch.

   There are reasons why.

* * *

   You’ve taken it for granted that I am one of the barbarians from the foot of The Mountains Of The Olde Gods.

   I do wear the same style of dress as they and I talk in a similar fashion as to what they do. It is by design. It has served my purposes to present myself as one of those murderers of women and children. Looking as they do, when I speak, people listen.

   But, I am not one of them.

   I am a man without a clan, without a family.

   My father was a farmer, a hard man.

   I was a disobedient son. So he sold me and my sister to a roaming band of barbarians from the foot of The Mountains Of the Olde Gods.

   I understand why my father got rid of me. I never wanted to do my chores and was more trouble than I was worth, but he sold Beth, my sister, purely because the foul smelling chieftain offered a good amount of gold for her.

   Beth was always obedient and cheerful, a good daughter. Her reward was being thrown to a group of ugly mean spirited pigs as their plaything when she was twelve. They used her for about a month then, sold her to another band of cut throats that passed by. The last time I saw her face was through the bars of a cage mounted on the back of a wagon as they drove away.

   But this story is not about her. I just have to let you know how I got to where this story actually begins.

   I was made into a pit fighter.

   It was the most profitable was they could use a strong, fast, rough, youth, who had seen but seventeen summers. I was born for the pit fighting arenas.

   My owners couldn’t have forced me to work if they had wanted to and making me into one of their boy sex toys, well, if someone shoved a dick at me, I would have bit it off and beat them with it.

   I wanted to fight anything that moved as it was and this way, they made money off of my bad temper.

   My owners carefully taught me how to use their weapons. I say carefully, because they knew I would turn on them the first chance I got. There were no illusions of friendship here. I was property. To be used until I was no longer useful.

   Chained up, they took me from camp to camp, from village to village, I was matched against the meanest, toughest guys there.

   People paid to watch.

   The winner received the pot. I should say, the winners owners, received the pot.

   I got nothing.

   I never lost. If I had, I wouldn’t be alive. The fights were always to the death. I made my four owners a lot of money.

But, the story of my pit fights, are another tale in itself. Like my sister, that’s not what this story is about.

   Now, we come to the beginning.

* * *

   When moving between villages, between fights, I was always chained to the bed of a horse drawn wagon. There was enough chain so I could stretch out and lie down or stand up and stretch.

   My four owners, the ugly stinking bastards, had to have me ready whenever we showed up at a village. If I went into battle stiff or slow from not being able to move around at least a little bit, my life as a pit fighter would be over and their golden goose would be dead.

   The end of my chain was fastened to the bed of the wagon by a large bolt. For the past few months I would lay in the center of the wagon occasionally as we bounced along and pretending to take a nap, I would work at the bolt with one hand trying to wiggle it back and forth.

   On this day, I got it to move.

   At first, it moved so little, I thought I was imagining it. But as I lay there, curled up in a ball in the middle of the wagon to hide my straining right hand, I was able to force the bolt sideways, just a tiny bit.

   Then I forced it back the other way. It gave a little each way I strained against it.

   It seemed like I went on like that for hours. Faking sleep and forcing the bolt back and forth, when the wagon stopped.

   I thought for a moment one of them had seen what I was doing, but when I opened my eyes, the one who was the acknowledged leader, a grim faced guy named Carn, had his hand in the air in a halt gesture as he peered intently upward into the trees a little to the right of us.

   The wagon road we were on was shrouded by tall pine trees and silence hung heavy in the air. Nothing seemed to move. It was as though with the stopping of the wagon, time stopped.

   All four of my owners were frozen looking up at the same spot. Three of them road horses, one of them was guiding the reins of the wagon I was in.

   I followed their gaze to the spot that they looked at. For one long moment I saw nothing. Then, I saw it.

   Standing against the trunk high in the branches of an enormous ancient oak was a huge beautiful graceful bird. Its feathers were grayish, almost the same color as the bark of the tree and it was trying to blend itself in with its surroundings.

   Carn reached over his shoulder and unloosened his bow and pulled an arrow that was hanging in the pouch on his horse’s side. Like a signal, the tree others did the same and notched arrows in their bows.

   The huge bird, that was easily the size of a grown woman, leaped away from the tree and took to the air. With the spreading of her wings we all saw that this was a woman. A beautiful woman who had wings that grew from her back, a woman who could fly.

   A collective gasp of awe came from all of us. But that didn’t stop the four from releasing their arrows at this flying beauty.

   Two arrows missed completely, being lost somewhere in the branches and leaves.

   One struck her in her well formed right thigh. The other sank deep into the woman’s right wing.

   She screamed a heart rending cry and with one useless wing beating the air in vain, she plunged through the branches to the Earth.

   My four owners shouted in triumph and leaped to the ground. Jumping and slapping each other on the back, drunk with their victory, arguing as to whose arrows had struck home they ran to where the woman with wings crashed down.

   This was the first time since I was bought that I was unguarded. I wasn’t going to waste a second.

   I stood up in the wagon and grabbed my chain in both hands. I bent at the knees and straining with every bit of strength I had, I stood straight up and ripped backward.

   The metal the bolt was screwed into creaked, then squeaked and for one awful moment, I thought my back was going to break. Then the bolt came loose.

   With the sudden release of pressure, I staggered and fell backward out of the wagon. I only lay on the ground for a moment before regaining my feet.

   Looking in the direction that my four owners had run, I knew I could take one of their horses and ride away. I also knew that they would track me and I would have to be looking over my shoulder the rest of my life. So I saved them the trouble of coming after me.

   I went after them.

   Using the tree trunks as cover I crept up on the four being as quiet as I could. As it turned out, it wouldn’t have mattered if I would have came stomping up to them. They were too interested in what they were doing to be thinking about me.

   The woman with wings was on her back. Her good wing was folded underneath her. Her injured wing was splayed out to the side. She was badly hurt. Blood was pumping out of her wounds.

   That didn’t matter to my four owners.

   One, a cruel haggle toothed guy named Brock, was holding her arms down to the ground from over her head. Carn was cutting her cloth garments from her with his knife.

   Her eyes reeled back and forth wildly. She was muttering, "No! No! No!" Tears streamed down her cheeks.

   The other two were standing back loosening their own belts to rape the winged woman.

   It was the perfect time for me to attack.

   I leaped from behind a tree just as one of the two loosening his trousers let them fall to the ground.

   The length of heavy chain that was manacled around my wrists was around four feet long. I crushed the skull of the guy with his trousers around his ankles with the first swing of my chain. The other guy turned his head just in time for me to bash his face in with a back swing.

   The two working on the woman saw me now. A punch from Carn knocked her unconscious. Carn got to his feet.

   The man holding the woman’s arms let go and leaped to his feet. He ripped out his sword and charged me.

   Maybe Brock hadn’t been watching my pit fights or he was extremely stupid, either way, I wanted him to charge.

   Brock slashed straight down in an overhand stroke. I sidestepped his blade and whipped my chain around his neck. Jerking him to me, I turned my back and using his own weight for momentum, I tossed Brock over my shoulder into the air. As he was flying I jerked backward with the chain.

   All I was hoping for was to break his neck. The maneuver worked better than planned. His head popped clean off. Blood flew.

   Brock’s headless body thumped to the ground then jumped to its feet. It turned and with blood spewing straight up from its stump, it took off at a run and tackled Carn. Then Brock’s headless body took off into the woods bouncing off of tree trunks as it went.

   Carn was getting to his knees as I stood in front of him. He held out his hand for me to halt.

   "Listen boy," He said. "I’ll split all the money with you. And hell, we can both fuck this big bird here. Look at those titties boy. Bet you never had nothing like them in your mouth, have you. I’ll share. We can be friends, boy." He had this big grin on his face.

   "Sure we can," I told Carn and smiled back. Then I swung my chain around my head and bashed his brains in. I hated that son of a bitch so much I kept slamming him with the chain until his face looked like stew meat.

* * *

   After I was done with Carn, I fell to the ground in exhausted relief. I was a free man for the first time in my life. First, I was owned by my father. And all us kids were just farm animals to him. Then, these four bastards owned me.

   For the first time in my life, I owned myself. What brought me back to where I was and out of my daydreaming about the wonders of freedom, was when the woman with wings moaned.

* * *

   She was still breathing and blood oozed from her wounds. I looked down at her and thought, there was not much I could do for her even if I wanted to and actually, I didn’t really have a reason to want to help her.

   Yeah, she was good looking. But I wasn’t like those other guys. I couldn’t just stick my dick in something because it was a warm piece of meat. A woman I fucked had to at least be able to do something back to me or it just wasn’t any fun. This woman looked to be past doing anything other than just bleeding and dying.

   So, I started gathering up the weapons from the four that I figured I could use. They didn’t need them anymore. There were a few hunting knives, four swords, four bows and a bunch of arrows. I loaded it all in the back of the wagon.

   I was going to head south with everything. At the first town with a blacksmith, I’d use the money I got from the pouches of the four and get these manacles taken off of my wrists. Then I’d sell the extra weapons and head for parts unknown. Life was going to be my adventure. And I wasn’t going to be taking no dying woman with wings with me. I didn’t have the time to take care of her. I didn’t want to be weighted down with no burdens of any kind.

   Then, came the whispers.

   "Don’t leave her," Came from the left of me. It sounded almost like the breeze.

   "Help her. Help her." Came from my right, as soft as the rustling of leaves.

   "Save your soul," A voice from overhead chanted to me. "Save your soul. Change yourself." The singing whispers continued.

   I looked around in confusion. I saw no one, just trees and bushes and leaves and I realized all of it was speaking to me.

   "Help her," The forest spoke to me. "Mother earth calls on your kindness. Learn kindness."

   All things in the woods seemed to have focused its attention on me.

   I looked again at the broken winged woman lying at my feet. Beauty is fragile. Magic is fragile. On this day I had been touched by the magic of the Earth.

   I could not refuse.

* * *

   After bandaging her wounds as well as I could, I gave the winged woman water from one of the flasks that the four had been carrying. She coughed and grimaced from the pain she was in. Then she smiled and when she looked in my eyes I saw that her eyes were like a cat’s, with its slitted pupils. Her eyes also had a cat’s glowing night-shine. It was in the middle of the day, but her eyes, glowed a soft pale blue.

   The winged woman was too weak to be able to talk, which was alright with me. What was I going to say to her anyway.

   After I managed to stop her bleeding, I picked the winged woman up and loaded her into the back of the wagon along with all the weapons and supplies that I took from my former owners.

   She lay back and instantly fell into an exhausted sleep. I was afraid she had died on me so I leaned close to her to see if she were still breathing and the scent of her filled my mind with a feeling of being pleasantly drunk from a sweet wine.

   Yes, she was still breathing, I told myself as I watched her breasts gently rise and fall. That sight was intoxicating in itself. I covered her with one of the blankets I took from one of my owners.

   I looked at her and voiced the question, "Now, what am I going to do with you?"

   As if in answer, a buzzing came to my ears and something flew past my head so close I moved to the side without thinking.

   A high pitched voice spoke to me from in front. ""We will guide you," It told me.

   "Yes, we will be your guide." Another voice agreed. High pitched, but different from the first.

   The second voice came from my right. I looked and hovering in the air a few feet away from my head was a firefly about the size of my fist. As my eyes refocused, I realized it wasn’t a firefly I was looking at, but a small man with firefly wings hovered beside me. He darted away from me, out of my reach.

   "We will be your guide," He repeated. "Until, she is well enough to guide you to her home."

   "Follow us," The other said and hovered in front of me also staying out of reach.

  I’d never seen any creatures like these before. I’d never heard of anything like these small winged people, or come to think of it, the winged woman either.

   "What are you?" I asked them.

   The two firefly people hovered, side by side in front of me. I saw that one was a man, the other was a woman. They looked at each other and smiled.

   "We have no name for what we are," The man said.

   "We need no name for what we are," The woman said.

   "Your people have called us Sprites," The man said.

   "And Fairies," the woman added.

   "Follow us," The man said and because I had no better destination that called to me, I drove the wagon, with the horses tied behind it and the winged woman lying in the back, down a narrow trail deep into the forest toward the Mountains of The Olde Gods, to a place where it is said, no man is allowed to go.

* * *

   The trail I guided the wagon over was just big enough for the wagon to pass between some of the trees on both sides. Sometimes I had to drive the wagon directly over the top of bushes and brush. The going was slow. The terrain was harsh.

   Suddenly, all of that changed.

   It was like we crossed over a border from one world to another.

   Where I came from, was dark and cold and misty. Living in that forest was hard. Where we passed into, the sun was shining, the breeze was warm and pleasant upon my skin.

   The animals, birds and insects in the forest where I came from, ran away at my approach. Here, they walked and flew beside the wagon unafraid. This forest was alive with sound as all the creatures spoke among themselves with no fear of man.

   At first when I entered this realm, I thought the trail came to an abrupt end. But as I approached the trees that blocked the way, they glided to the side and made way for our passage.

   This was an enchanting place. Everything was wonderfully alive. I followed the Sprites, if that’s what they were, forward into the realm of The Olde Gods.

   I cannot measure the amount of time I drove into that living forest. In that place, time does not exist. It may have been one hour. It may have been one year. I do not know.

   I only know that a hand was laid upon my shoulder and when I looked, the winged woman was climbing forward to sit beside me.

   The Sprites vanished into the trees.

   The winged woman’s injuries were not completely healed, but they looked like they caused her no great pain.

   She looked into my face and her softly glowing blue eyes seemed to see into the deepest part of my mind and heart. She smiled and something inside of me melted. The wall of ice I had built around my heart cracked and fell away.

   It was as simple as that.

   Before I met her, I was a heartless killer. I enjoyed the kill, the domination just before the taking of life. It was all that made me feel I was truly strong. But after looking in her eyes, I did not need to feel strong anymore. I realized true strength is gained with the control of the power we have. Not just the blind wielding of that power.

   Power needs to be used to build, create and protect to truly be strength.

   The winged woman and I spoke that day without words. She spoke to me inside my mind and heard me when I answered back the same way.

   Her kind never ages. Her race was old when man’s first civilizations were being built. In the most ancient of times, her kind were named as Pegasis or winged horses, in myths, because one of them carried a starving man to a city and swore that man to silence about the winged race’s existence.

   Before the more recent fall of man’s civilization of two millennia past, they were seen as angels.

   During the time of man’s flourish, they hid in caves in the mountains and in the most remote spots they could find. Mankind was a destroyer. They knew if their existence became known, they would have been exterminated.

   When night came I made us a fire and we sat and stared into each others eyes. She allowed me to hold her in my arms. She was warm and soft and I could do nothing but be gentle with her.

   That first night in her forest, in front of our small camp fire, she gave herself to me and as I penetrated into her, our minds merged into one.

   Visions leaped out of her memory into my mind. Although I did not understand a great deal of what I saw, I did understand, that the visions I was seeing were of the past of mankind.

   In times past, the race of man spread over all the lands of the Earth like a disease. He took all the green fields and plowed them under. He burned and cut down great forests and replaced them with jungles of stone. Where man went, he made the waters undrinkable and the air unhealthy to breath. Man placed himself above all other creatures and became the worst of all.

   But the greatest evil that man committed, he committed against himself.

   Enormous groups of men, things he called armies, any single one of these armies numbered more than all the people that exist upon the Earth today, were sent against each other to kill and take what the others have. In the end it was that, that destroyed their world.

   Mankind fought a battle against his own kind with weapons unimaginably terrible and nearly ended the life of Mother Earth herself.

* * *

   The next day, I did not speak to my nameless winged woman about the visions that went through my mind as we made love the night before. I was in love with her on a level that no other man could ever understand.

   Her kind were pure, were faultless.

   We rode on through the peaceful forest and I knew a happiness that knew no reasons or wants. She was with me. She was happy with me. I could see that in her eyes. Her happiness filled me with warmth.

   Many days we traveled.

   Many nights we made love and each night I learned more about the past of man until the night came when in the darkening twilight we caught sight of the spires of her city.

   As we sat beside our campfire that night, for the first time, I asked my nameless lady what the meaning of my visions had been.

   Her eyes grew sad and when she reached into my mind and told me her answer I felt the pain that she felt. Tears ran down her face.

   "Your kind, are at an end," She told me. The words echoed inside my mind. "Mother Earth has turned her eyes away from man. Man caused Mother Earth too much pain. Each creature is given a special gift at the time of its beginning. Man was given the gift of seeing what is not, but can be. Mother Earth has taken this gift back. Some of what man created in the past still exists, but nothing new will be seen. Man will never again build stone monuments to himself. "

   "Because of this, your kind will dwindle and die."

   When we made love that night, with the lights of her crystal city shining down from the cliffs that seemed so close now, I had no visions of man’s past. I knew, he had no future, the past held no meaning.

   Instead, a vision came to me that was a certainty, a feeling, something I knew.

   My winged woman loved me and so loving me, she was dooming herself to a life of loneliness. I saw knowledge of her people that she had kept from me. If she took me to her people, she would be branded as a traitor and exiled.

   Men were the destroyers. We were not allowed here. Our kind had lost the chance to ever live in the peaceful garden.

   When she lay in a deep sleep, like a thief who had stolen something precious, and I had stolen her love, I took a horse and snuck away into the night.

   As badly as it pained me, I would not sentence my winged lady to an eternal life separated from her own kind. And if I had taken her with me, where could we have gone? We would have had to have lived alone, where she would see me grow old and die, while she stayed young.

   No! I would not put her through that.