Blue sits in the walls. In the seams of the swirling ceiling. In the glowing mushrooms rooted through the wood. The ash from my blood has dried darker than it did yesterday. Raine's lower wing rests in my lap, and this is the last time I'll have to worry about how it dries. I wear white because she will always look at the sleeves before she looks at my face. Sleeves tell first.
My fingers graze the curves in her back, tapping to the sapbeat in her veins. I trace around the blue nerves. "How do you wipe your wings without the tingles? They're so clean." I lean in, sniffing them. As always, she carries no smell. No Ainm to catch under my tongue, no little betrayal of who she is before she chooses to speak. I used to envy it until I saw aunties breathe near her and pause.
She huffs. "You wouldn't follow my routine, Lyra, even if I..."
My eyes drop before she finishes speaking. "Right."
She pauses and holds out two fingers, palm-down. I hook mine around them before she has to ask.
Her mouth twitches at my obedience, then she turns my wrist over. Her thumb fits into the notch beneath my left thumb. I try not to sigh. She repeats the words she's said yesterday, and the day before, and the many days before that. "Stop that, Lyra. You're clean."
"Right." But I turn my palms up anyway. Clean hands do not hide their lines.
She stares at my scars before she turns away, leaving her back to me. As she sighs, my mouth opens and closes without a sound. I glance at the floor. Beneath my wall-cocoon, the wood has a shallow dent where my knee always goes. I settle into it without looking, but there is something that wasn't there before. Small. Thin as a reed and perfectly straight, with a blue tip too clean to have grown.
I pick it up with two fingers. Nothing here smells so silent. Even dead wood has an aftertaste. This has only absence. I set it by the spirals and return to her. I should cover it with a hollow triangle. I do not. "May I?"
I ask even though I have not needed to ask in years.
"You may."
My ash-stained fingers return to the first vein in her upper wing and I follow it from the base of her spine to the outer edge, where the wing is thin enough for the sap in her to bleed faintly through the scales. Then I come down to where the wing forks. I let the higher wing rest its full weight in my palm as I trace down the lower one. I don't use my nails; I've learned to use my tips. The scales near the root are the densest. I paint between them, not across. Across is faster. Across is for people who do not plan to be forgiven. Raine slapped my wrist the first time.
She giggles. "You're gentle. Whose wings have you been courting?"
I have learned most rules from the half-breath before someone corrects me. "No one's. I'm guessing, and hoping you don't notice."
She snorts and brings a finger to my palm, swiping ash off of it. "I'm guessing this tastes good, and hoping you notice."
"Please don't," I say, after her finger is already halfway to her mouth.
She gives it a lick. Then she spits it out. "Oh, this tastes very different—"
"Okay." I stare at her shoulders, but she expects me to meet her eyes. "Sorry," we both say, and Raine's wing gives the same small tuck mine does. I scratch at the scars in my palm and she glances at the rest of the ash on her finger. She points it at me. "I'll be more gentle with you. I'm serious."
I nod softly. "Just let me finish your wings."
"It didn't taste all that bad, you know."
My wings shoot up for a moment. She looks me in the eyes. "I could have you for lunch."
"Maybe I'm gone by breakfast." I smile so she will hear teeth and not the fall under it.
"Should I try some more then?"
I turn her around and raise the hair at her nape. She winces as my fingers catch on a tangle. I draw two circles on her bare skin. One faint, one dark. Neither closes; closed circles are for the forgotten and the dead. The faint circle frays at the edges, but it never cuts the dark one. A single thread joins them, thin enough to deny and too stubborn to break.
"What are you making?"
"Yours takes up more room," I say. "That is a compliment. Try not to make me explain kindness."
She snorts, and for this last time, I don't tuck my chin in. "Raine, do you ever want something your body is smart enough to refuse?"
"I just eat it."
"What if it tastes like a dreamcake?"
"I like dreamcakes. I'll eat it." She strokes my cheek as she licks her lips. Then she pats me on the head, smiles like she's won, and stands up. "Now I want a dreamcake. Food hall?"
"Thought you'd eat me."
"This is an appetizer. Don't be jealous of a dreamcake."
"Just let me wash up first."
She studies me for a breath too long. I look away first.
⟡
The air on my terrace does not carry the weight of the ash in my home. Out here, the tree breathes wet and sweet against my face, and my lungs stop making everything about them. Past the lip of the wood, the inner walls of gray bark and aqua fungi stretch into the steam of the lower homes. The communal lights of the food hall blink like sprinkled sapdrops through the blue mist rising from the sap pools in low terraces.
The draft pulls at our hair, a warm, wet finger dragging along our napes. I bring the edge of my wing to touch hers. Faded orange over green. Her scales are glossy, still vibrant with the memory of my touch, while mine are scorched at the tips. Yet, where they overlap, the burnt orange and green make one clean edge—if only for a moment. "Ready?"
"I always was."
Our feet leave the edge and we fall. The wind is just right. Our wings bell out against the draft and we glide down to the food hall. When we arrive, we walk past the grand wooden archway and into a crowd of Poneyas. The Poneyas, old and young alike, dance and cook to beating drums and wingbeats. At the center, we spot Ina Quinn making dreamcakes. She wears black robes to her ankles, as does everyone else. All that black makes our dresses louder than drums. Raine's green, and my white.
Quinn notices us, runs off to grab two cakes off a table, and crosses to us with both cakes held out. The Ayro cakes sit in their dark rings burned into the table, spirals turned outward so everyone can see who was named a today too late. "A special cake for the Big Pip. Happy Ayro, Lyra." She hands me a cake with dark shavings on its surface. They form a black spiral atop the gray mossdough.
Open-mouthed, I glance at Raine. She avoids my gaze with a playful smile on her face. Her wings fold in a little late after mine, the lower pair still carrying the glide for half a breath, as if some part of her had not realized we were done falling. "I was just hungry," she says.
I press my thumb into the spiral, not enough to ruin it, only enough to leave one gray fleck of mossdough under my nail. "Thank you."
They both come over and give me the Ayro taps: left shoulder, right shoulder, crown. Carry, answer, rise. Everyone says it without saying it. They smile, but I try not to. Quinn hands Raine her own cake before rushing off to make more. Raine looks at me. "Where do you want to eat, Ayro Girl?"
"You know where." She knows which ledges I pretend to find by wandering.
⟡
We take the cakes back to my terrace and sit on the rim with our legs dangling above the hollow. The chair by my curtain has rooted around all four legs. I do not look at it. The tree's heartwood groans from somewhere deep above, intruding on my special day. Raine kicks her feet in rhythm with the sound. Traitor.
"Can I have a bite of yours?" she asks with a mouth full of cake.
"No."
"But it looks so mossy... just a nibble?"
I stare at the cake for a moment before stuffing the entire thing into my mouth. She stares at me with a wide smile. "Were you gonna hang it up if I didn't ask?"
"Maybe." The spiral had my thumbprint in it now.
She giggles. "How does it taste?"
"Like breakfast."
"Did you expect that?"
"Not at all." I lean my head against her shoulder and watch the mushrooms pulse with the tree's groans. She rests her head on mine, pressing the flat of her cheek against my temple. My hair does not bother her.
"Sometimes, I feel like the older one." The sentence sits exactly between our shoulders, and neither of us reaches to claim it. Her wing edge touches mine and goes still. Mine does not pull away.
"You don't have to do all of this for me. It's your Ayro."
"It is my Ayro, so that means I'm the older one now. I have to watch over the little ones." I flick her arm.
"Just wait until my Ayro. Besides, you're just a Big Pip."
"You're the one who likes to lick ash. You're a Little Pip."
"Your ash."
"And then you spit it out." I flick her wing this time.
She jolts. "Ow... I didn't expect that taste, but it's not bad."
Before I can respond, she pulls me closer. She exhales near my ear, a slow and steady breath. Like worn wood. "You've had breakfast, so when do you want to wake up, Ayro Girl?"
"Since when did you know?"
She only smiled, which was answer enough.
"I can't stay?"
"Time's up. After all, you're ready. You're wearing white."
The breath I had saved for arguing slips out through my nose. "You could've worn it with me."
"Sorry, Lyra. I'm not waking with you."
My lips curl despite me. She pats my head. "I told you that you wouldn't follow my routine."
"But will you be there in the morning, at least?"
She lets her wings flare out. "No. You'll be gone by then."
I see. Right. He waits for nobody, not even girls who made their wings pretty first.
She raises the hair at my nape, her fingers slide through all of it. "But you made me pretty. Now it's my turn." She guides my blue-sapped hands. "The Spirits are watching. All their little mouths in the bark. All their eyes in the blue. They came to cheer you on, so you have to make the circles." I guide the blue with my fingertip, scraping against the scars. I want to carve at the nerves, make one honest line for once. She tells me to trace them.
I draw one circle on my bare skin. The dark one. I leave the place for the thread untouched. She notices. Of course she does. She brings her fingertips to the back of my nails. She does not push me forward. She's learned not to push. She bends her smallest finger under mine and holds it there, crooked and warm, until my hand stops trying to leave itself.
"Ready?" she whispers.
"I am now."
My body leaves the edge and I fall. The air is just right. My wings twitch once against my back. I keep them tucked. They will not embarrass me by wanting to live. This is the last time I'll have to worry about how the wind blows.