Okuu Loves her Wings

Okuu loved her wings, more for what they meant then what they were or did. She did love their blackness; somewhere between the rough surface of basalt and the sharp reflections of obsidian. She loved how soft and warm they were when she wrapped them around her self. She loved how big they were; how she could by stretching them full out, brush buildings on each side of the market street. She loved how big they made her look, how she could grab the attention of a room, or stare down any of her fellow hellcrows. She loved how she could half fold them so they formed an aura around her, a black heart framing her. She loved how strong they were. stronger than her arms or legs. How they could hold her against the air, lift up her body into the air. Hows she could move each feather to subtle shift the flow of air. How they let her fly! But more than all those things she loved them for what they meant, and for that same reason she hated them.

The wings meant that she was not by nature a person, but a beast, a wild thing. The Satori and the Oni were people they could speak and think and plan and clothe themselves, but the hellcrows, Okuu's people, weren't, by nature, people. Her mother never said I love you, her siblings had mostly died, and those who hadn't were either wild beasts or failed experiments. Her people fought and rutted and died, all without telling their story, all without counting more than 5, or how to ask a stranger's name.

Okuu had, with her owner, her savior, pulled herself up, out of that pit, but it still called, sang, pulled at her. Sometime the decades of practice, the years of ritual, the iron will she had built up, the lessons she had learned, sometimes it was not enough. He mind would be overrun with boiling, thunderous, roiling, unshaped needs and fears, twisting images of pain and pleasure. Her stomach or her loins would ache with need, her wings would flap in fear, her voice would ring out in anger. Or sometimes there would be silence, her mind would shatter into pieces, some still connected to her senses, others to her body, others just lonely voices in her head speaking into a void. Other times it would be as if she, that part of her that could speak and think and plan, was only an observer, a foreign dignitary in her own body, busily writing ignored complaints.

Still over all she loved her wings. She loved what she had managed to do, what her owner, the Lady Komeiji, had let her achieve. Most of the time the practices worked. Her will held. The rituals calmed and tamed her mind. She could speak, and plan, and think of others. She could help her fellows, she could be a person and not a beast, and she felt that was worth more than what those who had it given to them by nature could ever know.

Okuu also loved eggs, but that was for a much simpler reason, they tasted good boiled.