The boy was waiting for her at the window.

He was waiting for many reasons. Because he was bored, for one - he was afflicted with the insatiable curiosity for life that is the illness of all boys his age, and the pursuits of home could only amuse his young soul so much. Because it was an excuse to come up to the window, to look down on the City below, the High Market and the Pillars...he did have an excellent view of from his windowsill, and he loved to sit and watch the world go by - as much sitting and watching a boy could do. And because he wanted to get away from the homework that he was supposed to do.

But mainly he was waiting because he knew she would come.

A boy's life has all sorts of things in it - games, assorted pranks and mischief, scoldings, the odious and dreaded school. Friends, enemies (easily made and destroyed, lost and found) Secrets that were dear one day and useless the next.

But it so happened that in a life so tumultuous - as all boys・lives will be - this particular boy wanted a little bit of routine. He wanted to be sure of something, to know that come what may, a certain thing would happen at a certain time. It gave him a sense of security, of comfort. He wanted, most of all, to have something he could count on. And so he went up to the window to wait.

It was a long time before she arrived, but he didn't mind. He had waited longer before, it's just that he didn't really remember doing so, and if he did he wouldn't really have minded either. So he sat on the windowsill, watching the birds fly past and the leaves tumble down, listening to the sound of the wind in trees, waiting.

And after a while, he began to hear the sound of silent wings. He wasn't sure how one could hear silence, but he did. It you were to ask him, he might tell you that it was a kind of whispery sound, a bit like rats in the attic, if the attic was your mind and the rats were the kind of voice that kept on telling you to eat the vegetables that you didn't want to. But then again he might not.

She landed on the branch right next to the window, preened slightly and looked straight at him. He smiled back.

"Evening...early aren't you?" Her voice was always different, always strange. It never sounded the same way twice.

The boy shook his head. "No, I'm not. The sun hasn't gone down yet."

She paused to shake her head, stretching her arms out ever so slightly to shake away the dust from her journey. "Why, so it hasn't. We have plenty of time, I think." There was a brief silence in which both she and the boy were bathed in stillness.

He waited expectantly for her. "So what shall we do today?"

Turning back from gazing at the setting sun, she favored him with a rare smile. "We could go down to the Pillars. I have something to do there."

"Alright then, let's go." The boy didn't really like going there in particular...actually, while he was with her, he didn't like or mind going anywhere in particular. It was enough that they were going somewhere, and she was going with him.

"Come. We don't want to be late, and it's a long flight." She beckoned to him, and since it was only a short distance to the branch and her outstretched hand, he jumped from the windowsill, confident that he wouldn't fall. He did slip a little on the surface of the wood, but she was there to steady him, and soon they were ready.

"Hold on. I'll be flying a little low today." He nodded to show that he knew, and they were off.

The spires were always a sight to see, from his window or up close. They stood so high and proud and black, silhouetted by the morning sun, that he was in awe of them no matter how many times he passed by them, whether it was on foot as he walked to school or in the air as he was now.

He clung to her back tightly as she swooped and dived between each tall tower. His short hair was whipped back by the wind and he shrieked in delight as they swung past and over the City.

They flew over more of the busy streets and scattered buildings and he peered over her shoulders excitedly. He saw people spread out below him like so many ants and watched in fascination as they began their day. He was so high above all of them, and they were so far below.

No matter how many times they did this, he never grew tired of it. He greeted each trip with the same childish enthusiasm - eyes open in wonder as he took each sight and sound and smell. Such is the innocence of children.

He bent over her shoulder to ask her where she was going, but after a second pulled back. He didn't need to ask, he knew. They were going to where they always went.

They passed by the High Market with all its hustle and bustle, the fountains in the Main Square as they bubbled and frothed, and soared on beyond the hills and the rivers that were outside the city. The works of man slowly gave way to the greens and blues of nature. Cobblestones and brick roads turning to forests and rivers. And finally they were there.

With a great backwatering of wings she came to a stop, the blast of air from her landing sending fallen leaves and pebbles flying. He slid off her feathery back carefully. Brushing a few stray feathers from his clothes, he looked around. He had been here many times already, but he never grew tired of visiting.

It was a graveyard on the outskirts of the City. Headstones dotted the grassy knoll where they found themselves, and there was a mausoleum further on inside which he had never been in.

Others avoided the place, thinking it full of ill omens, bad luck or both, but he loved it. It was quiet, and peaceful, and not one else ever came here, so he could be alone with her for as long as he wanted to be.

The dawn light painted the grey stones a pale yellow-white and the leaves and the grass glimmered with a faint radiance. They had come here at many times of the day, from bright afternoon to shadowy dusk, but it was the early morning that he always liked the best.

He left her alone for a while as he wandered through the gravestones, trying and failing to read each inscription. He touched one after the other, marveling at their smooth texture of the marble and their raised inscriptions. She didn't like to be disturbed during her first few minutes here, and he didn't ask why.

He liked how she never asked him anything, and how he didn't need to ask anything either. With the adults and the other children there were always questions, questions and more questions.

What did you do at school today? Where are you going later? What would you like to eat? He didn't see why they couldn't understand that some things were just the way they were because they were, and that no amount of talking or questioning would make it otherwise.

She understood, though, and he liked that about her as well. She just sat, and flew, and did whatever it is that she was meant to do, without talking about it or questioning anything. That was just how she was.

He looked back and she saw that she was almost ready. She had this way of raising her head and looking about that told him that. He ran back to her, small feet scattering stray leaves left and right, and he was happy to see her smile in return. It was time to do what they had come here to do.

He followed her as she went to each grave in turn. She raised her wings, her eyes would change, and then the words on the stones would flare bright red. He didn't know exactly what it was that she was doing, only that he enjoyed watching her and that it was somehow necessary.

And once again unlike the adults he knew she never minded if he stopped halfway to play with some fallen leaves or to sit beneath the shade of a nearby tree. There would be no nagging about how he was lazy, or he should help, or being chased back into the house to do his never-ending pile of homework. He could watch as she worked, and that was exactly what he did - until a stray squirrel attracted his attention and he chased after it.

The squirrel didn't hold his attention for more than a few minutes, and then after that it was a fallen branch which he swung against a nearby tree with a satisfying crack, and then after that a stone that he kicked down into a stream, delighting in the sound of its splash into water.

But then he grew suddenly tired as children are wont to do, and he slumped down in the shade of a tree. He half-dozed, half-slept beneath the swaying branches, and he let his tired mind and body slip off into the world of dreams and memories.

He remembered when he first met her.

It was a school day, but not a very good one. First of all, it had rained, and he had forgotten to bring his old shoes, instead choosing to wear his new leather ones. They had gotten all dirty from trudging through the mud and he knew that his mother would yell at him.

Then he somehow forgot his homework when he was sure that he had packed it the night before. The teacher had made him stand in the corner and the whole class had laughed at him while his cheeks blushed red. It was unfair...so unfair! He knew that he had put his books into the bag. He just knew it.

Finally, an older boy had bumped into him and took the money that he had been saving to buy a new book. He had shouted in indignation and rushed into the other youth, trying vainly to get it back, but all he had gotten was a punch in the stomach for his troubles.

The day dragged on and when school finally ended he trudged home miserably, his new shoes sinking into the brown muck that caked the streets. His mother did indeed shout at him for the state his shoes were in, and he just stood there sadly for a good ten minutes. It was a repeat of the afternoon with his homework - being scolded for something that wasn't even really his fault.

Worn out and tired and all he wanted to do was to sleep, but even his warm and comfy bed could not console him. He tossed and turned for a while and then, finding no solace in slumber, he moved to sit at the windowsill instead.

And then he saw her. One moment it was a clear and sunny day and the next a dark shape had blotted out the sun. She swooped down with a sudden motion and looked at him, not unkindly.

"What's wrong, little boy?" she asked.

If he was older he might have been afraid of her. But youth lends one a certain invincibility, and he couldn't believe this majestic creature meant him any harm. If he was older still, then he might have run shrieking to get his mother, or to the nearest temple to call a priest. But he was just a young boy and as such knew nothing of the injunctions against speaking to one such as her.

Her great black wings seemed natural because no one had ever told him they were not. Her eyes were as fierce as an eagle's but at the same time as gentle as a dove's. Her voice was unlike anything he had heard before...but then he had not heard many things in his young life. She was fierce and terrible, beautiful and silent all at once.

So instead of running away or calling for his mother, he smiled at her and reached a hand out in greeting. His small fingers curled around her claws and he found their scaly surface somehow reassuring.

He told her all about his horrible day - about the shoes, the rain, the older boy, the teacher - everything. She listened intently, nodding at key points, and never interrupted even a single time.

When he was done the boy heaved a sigh of relief. He felt so much better. He was not yet old enough to understand the easing of the soul that having someone listen without judgment can bring. He just knew that he felt good. Then, remembering his manners, he thanked her.

She smiled in return, and closed her talons gently around his hand. Then with a great sweep of her wings she was gone once more.

She came back every day after that.

Sometimes he would talk and she would listen - about his day at school, about the things they did, about the other boys and girls. And sometimes they would just spend time together, looking out onto the City below. They couldn't see much from his windowsill, but they could see enough, and he would point out each landmark excitedly and she would nod and smile at every cry and gasp he made.

After a while she began to take him with her. He was scared at first - she flew so high and so fast! - but he gradually got used to it. She was gentle with the first few flights until he found her sudden takeoffs and landings to be as natural to him as walking. They circled his house first, until he was comfortable, and then the spires, then the High Market, and then they flew to the outskirts of the City and beyond.

Every day he began to look forwards to when she would come. The time (late afternoon, usually) when he would be back from school, and how he would hurry through his homework so he could be ready when she appeared near his windowsill. When the clock struck for the fifth time in the town square his ears would prick up, because that meant only a few more turns of the sundial before it was time for them to leave.

He never asked his parents about her, or told them what they were doing. They were always busy in any case - his father at the smithy and his mother baking, cooking and generally keeping the house in order. They assumed that he was somewhere playing with the other boys or amusing himself with something else and he didn't see why he should tell them otherwise.

After weeks of flying with her the visits became the highlight of his day. There was nothing else in his life that would compare - not his schoolwork, not the running through the open fields outside the temple, not even the sweet cakes that his parents would sometimes buy back home from the stores in town. School was a boring routine that he had to endure, and all his chores were just things to get through until he could spend time with her. He looked forwards to when she would arrive and her black wings would block out the sun and then they would take off to parts unknown.

She brought him all over the City and to many other places besides. They would soar high above spires and mountains with equal ease, riding the air currents like birds. They went to the rivers and he would watch in awe at how she would deftly spear fish after fish with her claws, and then eat them in a few fast, savage bites.

They visited meadows filled with strange fruit and she had cautioned him never to pluck, and the ruins of buildings that he had never known or read about. Upon her back he saw parts of the world that had forever remained unknown to him.

But she always returned to the graveyard. She had brought him here on one of their early visits and he had loved it, asking her to bring him back again. She had smiled, nodded and complied, and though they visited many other lands, it was always there that they both would return to.

He was too young to know about duty, or purpose. He only knew that she always went there, and where she went, he followed.

She would tend to the graves in her own way, and he would play in the tall grass and in between the shade of the trees and watch her, and he was as content as only a young boy with no cares could be.

For a time, it seemed like those days would go on forever. But things change.

It was a day like another other. He had gotten up in the morning and eaten his breakfast of crusty bread, then taken his bag and gone to school. The teachers droned on and the boys played rowdily at lunchtime and after the school day was done he made his way back home.

But today something was different. People looked at him as he walked back through the cobbled roads, and then they would turn their heads away, whispering. There was sighing and pointing and much shaking of heads. He was confused. What was going on?

It was when he neared his house that he truly sensed something was wrong. There was a crowd of people near it, talking amongst themselves, though they parted when he approached. They looked at him concernedly but he paid them no mind - he wanted to know what had happened, and he was sure his parents could tell him.

But when he got into the house he saw his father sitting at the table - he never sat at the table unless he was eating dinner - with his head in his hands. The priest was there, and as he entered the holy man cast a compassionate glance his way.

"What's wrong? Where is mot..."

And for the first time the boy realized that his mother was nowhere in sight.

With the voice of one who has had to deliver bad news many times before, the holy man laid a gentle hand on the youth's shoulder.

"Your mother...your mother isn't with us anymore."

The priest's lined face and voice seemed a thousand miles away as he spoke. A cart had fallen somewhere above the High Road, filled with stones fresh from the quarry.

An accident, he said. It wasn't anyone's fault. No one could have foreseen the ropes fraying and snapping when it took a sharp turn. And no one could have known that it was just that moment when his mother had exited the bakery and walked onto the street.

The stones had fallen from the cart and crushed her in seconds.

No, no...it couldn't be true. He dashed into the kitchen, expecting to see his mother bustling around the oven, her shrill voice chastising him for something or other. He would endure being scolded a hundred times a and thousand dirty shoes, if only she would be there.

But the kitchen was empty. The spice bottles were on their racks and the rolling pin was set against the wall in the same position that she always left it. A fine coating of flour covered everything, the only evidence that she had even been there in the morning in the first place.

The boy looked around wildly, frantically, and the priest walked slowly towards him, intending to soothe his troubled spirits. But suddenly his father moved forwards towards his son and spoke sternly to him.

"That's enough of that, now. Quiet down and don't trouble the priest anymore." He reached forwards to steady his son's trembling shoulders, heedless of the effect that his words had on the young boy.

His father was a simple man, and he didn't realize that that was possibly the worst thing he could have done to console his frantic son. Quiet down...quiet down! That was the last thing in the world that he wanted to do. He wanted to scream, to shout his defiance at a cruel world that would take away his loved one from him.

So that is what he did. The boy let out a cry that shook the rafters and dashed out of the house, screaming. His father's calloused hands tried to restrain him but even the long hours at the forge were no match for the strength borne of grief and desperation.

He barreled through the crowd outside his house and ran down the streets not knowing or caring where he was going. All he could feel was the ache in his mind and his body, a dull pain that sunk deep into him. He couldn't think or feel properly...it seemed like the entire world had come askew.

But somewhere through the haze in his mind a thought came to him. Find her. She would know what to do, she would fix it. She could listen, and then and look at him in that way of hers, and then things would be ok. She would know where his mother was.

But where could she be? It was the late afternoon and so he could go to the windowsill, but there was everyone else blocking his way. His father would stop him for sure and take him back his room and lock the door and then he would never be able to find her.

The graveyard. That was it. She was always there, and after those many many flights above the City he knew the way. He started running to where he knew she would be.

It was a long way to the graveyard on foot, longer than he had ever thought possible. But even if he had known it was could never be done he would still have run on, past the spires and the High Market and the rivers and trees. His feet grew torn and blistered and his breath ragged with fatigue, but still he ran on, driven by something more than himself, a need that could never be met by words or platitudes.

She was there, as he knew she would be, looking at each gravestone with wings outstretched. She glanced at him as he approached, shoulders heaving with exhaustion, and he knew by her eyes that she understood what had happened, as he knew she would.

She came over to him and stretched out a taloned wing, and that gesture suddenly unlocked the gates that the priest's hand had been unable to.

He sank to his feet, sobbing. Where there had been screams before now there were only tears. Grief and loss surged through him, and her wings made a feathered canopy as he cried and cried and cried.

And then finally the racking sobs wound down into teary-eyed sniffles he raised his head and asked her the question that humanity itself had wondered for forever.

"Why do people have to die? Why can't you bring them back?"

As a child he didn't understand - couldn't understand - the impossibility of what he asked for. He only knew that his mother was gone and wouldn't come back and that there was only person in the whole world who could do anything about it. He couldn't have known that what he asked for was beyond blasphemy, beyond countenance, that to even do so would send the priest of the temple into a blind panic. He simply asked out of pain and the need to end it.

She reared up above him, and he backed away, terrified - for here She was revealed in all Her terrible glory. The wings had spread back, dark shapes against the night sky, the talons raked the ground and the tail lashed like a beast uncaged. Then She spoke, and it was flame and sorrow, regret and stillness at all once.

"There is nothing in this world that can forestall death. Even I do not have this power. I bring the souls to the gate, nothing more."

For an endless moment the worlds parted and for a moment he saw what she must see each time her wings spread in front of the graves - light and darkness swirling in unfathomable patterns, sounds that echoed through one's being with such force that simply listening to them changed you. The world beyond yawned before him, and both abyss and radiance shone back from it.

Then it was gone, and he looked at up her, tears still streaking his face. His young mind could not understand the words that he heard, or the images he had seen, but his soul told him otherwise. He knew the truth of what she said, and it hurt it even more than the loss of his mother had.

She reached down with one hooked hand and flicked each tear from his cheek. The points of her claws scraped ever so gently over his naked skin, and then her great wings caught him as his eyes closed and he fell into them.

She never came back after that day. When he came to he found that he had been deposited in front of his house, and she was nowhere to be found. He had dried his tears and gone inside and slept for a night and a day.

The funeral was a simple affair. His father had learned his lesson (from the priest, perhaps) and chose not to remonstrate with his son any longer. Instead he left him well alone and let the boy mourn their mutual loss in his own way. The funeral procession wound down the streets that he knew so well from the air, and they seemed so long - much longer than when he flew above the City, the wind in his hair, his hands on her feathered back.

With the reality of pain and loss in front of him those days seemed so far away and long ago. Someone had to keep house and cook the meals and make sure everything ran properly, and with his father still at work that duty fell to him. What with everything that was going on, he never even realized that she was gone until a few weeks had passed.

At first he was upset, and then indignant and then after that, furious. Where did she go? How could she just simply leave him here like that? What about all the time they had spent together? But as time passed the flames of his rage cooled and hardened like the steel on his father's forge and grew into a feeling that when he was older he would know was called resignation.

Though he never forgot her, other things began to take their place. As his grief waned he began to go out and play with the other boys - what his parents thought he was doing in all the time he spent with her. He took walks in the grassy fields outside the City, and went to the High Market to buy fruits and meat. He circled the spires that he had once passed in the air on foot, marveling at how high they really were.

And when he came of age and went to the temple to learn the prayers that each young man was expected to know, he came to understand what an honor it was that one of the Elder Ones had come to his windowsill and flew with him on her shoulders. Who had even shown him a glimpse of the other world, the twilight realm that even the highest of the high priests had not seen in more than twenty years of devout service.

His father, after the prescribed two years of mourning, took another wife, someone unlike his previous one. She was short where his mother had been tall, silent where she had been loud. The boy - now halfway to manhood - didn't hate her, nor did he love her. She was just there, another member of the house. The cakes she baked weren't as good as the ones that his mother made, but he didn't expect them to be. Her voice was never raised in anger, but then again, neither did her hands pick him up when he fell, or brush the dust of his clothes and ruffle his hair. She was someone else entirely, and he could accept that.

The years passed and the boy grew into a youth, and then into a man. He began to wonder anew if she would come to see him. They still lived in the same house, and sometimes when the evening approached he would glance at the windowsill where he used to wait for her every day, hoping to hear the sound of great wings. But that never came, and little by little his hopes died.

It soon came to the question of his chosen vocation. He thought of being a smith like his father, but somehow the thought of beating heated metal into hard shapes day after day held little appeal to him. He could perhaps become a carpenter, or shoemaker. Maybe even a scribe? In recent years he had gotten better at his lessons and his teachers had begun suggesting that that might be a good choice for him. If joined the temple he might see her again. But then again, he might not. And even if he did, she might not want to see him. Too many questions to answer, with no way to answer them.

He took to walking around the town square, unsure and uncertain. He would look at the sky and past the spires and remember the days when they would dive and spin past their tall, tall arches and - and then he would shake his head violently and try to be rid of the memories that seemed to only pull him back and away from the practical considerations of what he had to do to survive. It was too long ago, and those times had little or nothing to do with who and what he was now.

And so he thought, but suddenly one day as he was meandering aimlessly as usual through the city streets a flash of memory thundered through him, and he remembered the glimpse that he had of the other world, and what it had meant. The lightless night that lay beyond death. The vision of the lands beyond that one day everyone would go to.

Something seized him, and he began to visit the sick, and ill and the dying. He knelt by them and heard their stories, he bathed their heads in water and held their cold and clammy hands. And when the mendicants had left their beds and the priests had said their prayers, it was his words that stopped their shaking, his fingers on their faces which soothed grimaces of pain into calm and peaceful smiles.

He became someone who did not fear death, and because he did not, people came from towns around to hear him speak and to look on at this man who visited morgue and sickbed with equal impunity. When they looked into his eyes they saw no judgment or censure, but only compassion, wisdom and resolve.

He spoke to them of death, of dying and what lay after. And his voice rang with such conviction that they believed him, he who had not passed through the ranks of any temple nor wore the robes of any priest, but who as a young child had ridden on the shoulders of Death's handmaiden herself.

He himself never worried or wasted a moment in regret or recrimination, though there were sorrows and joys aplenty in his long life. He never took a wife nor had children, but spent each day in service to those who needed him. But from the day that he first spoke to the ill and the dying, he asked the same questions no longer.

Because he knew that one day, when he himself was at death's door, she would come. And her wings would spread wide and eyes grow darker than night, her talons would close over his frail and fragile hands, and together they would fly once more over the City and its black spires, the High Market and the people below, past rivers and forests and fields...fly to that dawn-lit graveyard and beyond.