When Calum opened his eyes Deadwing was standing over him, expression flat and staring. This would mean one of two things. Calum had eaten one of their lettuce snacks again or he'd slept in (again).

"We need to go to the market," he said, "get dressed quick."

Reasoning still unclear.

How does he always managed to get up earlier than me? Calum scowled and dragged his feet through overcoating. It was only when he was bent over the wash bin, face damp and cold, was his brain awake enough to start processing what had been said.

"Wait, what market?" More deadwings? More welves?

Deadwing read his mind, holding up what looked like a scarf and a coat with no noticeable holes. "Welven community markets, much bigger than anything in Colliste, I promise you."

"Welven..." Calum squinted.

"We'll need disguises," Deadwing affirmed, "we'll fly until we're at the border, then we have to hide our wings.

Fly. "What about me? Won't I still look...too human?"

Deadwing paused, gave Calum a good look up and down, and shrugged. "Your ears have gotten pointier, have you noticed?"

His hand flew up to his head. Indeed, the entire shape of his ears had shifted slightly. It was a strange sensation and not one Calum was awfully fond of yet. Then Deadwing was at the door and beckoning for him to follow. Here we go.

"It's a two-hour flight, we'll stop every thirty minutes for a short rest."

"Uh, Dee. I don't how to fly." Calum pointed out as Deadwing slid a plank in front of door.

"Yeah, I know." Deadwing rolled his eyes. "I'm fully intending to carry you up and drop you."

Calum's face must've been hilarious because Deadwing actually laughed. "I'm only partially joking, don't worry. Look at yourself Calum, we don't have enough time to learn take offs and landings, but you're no spring chick."

The amount of faith Dee had in him was comforting. He glanced at his rusty-colored wings; they were big now. Almost as big as Deadwing's. Spread out, each was almost as tall as he was. He might be missing some covert feathers, but all his primary ones were still intact. His secondary feathers were wider than his palms, and formed a solid line. Calum realized he trusted them. He trusted his body to do what it was made for.

"Okay." He said, before he could change his mind. "Okay."

"Excellent."

Dee's wings stretched out from his body and blocked out the sky. His feathers were sharper and clawed for air with their jagged paws. He looped his arms under Calum's shoulders. Before Calum could protest, those big dark wings beat down and yanked him up into the air.

The deck rocketed away from him; he left his breath on the ground. The air cleaved into his chest and the first breath he sucked in was bigger than all the others before. Dee had only taken him down the tree, never up. That experience was exhilarating on its own. Now, Calum wondered if he would pass out underneath the onslaught of adrenaline. They cleared the trees' crown, Deadwing was breathing hard from the strain.

"I'm going to let you go soon," he said through gritted teeth. "By the gods, I think you've put on weight."

"The price to pay for my dashing physique." Calum said through the lack of oxygen going to his brain.

Dee let out an exasperated gasp, still gaining distance between them and the ground, and finally leveled out. Calum's mind went blank, instinct wanted his wings to spread. He slapped Deadwing in the face.

"I'm going as fast as I can," Deadwing protested.

"Sorry!"

Calum could imagine his companion's eyes rolling. "Just keep your wings parallel with the ground, deviating from that will send you in another direction."

Deadwing let go. Calum was surprised by how fast he fell, how he immediate his reaction was. The air hit his wings harder, and left wobbling more than he could have ever imagines. Then he wasn't falling anymore, not fast, anyway. This was just like the gentle glide down from tree, but he was moving faster then he'd ever before, even on horseback. His heart was pound so loudly in his ear he didn't hear deadwing calling out for him for a second.

"Hey, Calum. How you doing?" Deadwing way flying slow circles around him.

"G-good!"

"Don't forget to come back up so you don't crash. You can angle your body but it's best to use your wings to do the most work. You don't have welfling instincts, but you can swim right? It's like that."

Calum briefly looked down at the tree tops that passed under him in a blur. His breaths came in and out, fast, steady, full of that sharp cold winter air. His lungs were so full and his chest was so light. It made him feel alive. He could feel every feather and the way he could scoop air like it was water. For once that wasn't an uncomfortable experience.

He laughed, trying out one small wingbeat and enjoying the pull in his gut when he shot upward, back at Deadwing's level. The welf glanced at him with wide, curious eyes. Warms blossomed over every inch of his body with bubbly sizzling tendrils and lemon-flavored leaves. Calum smiled at him, I like it when he looks at me like that. Dee's gaze snapped away, and rubbed the back of his neck.

"You've caught on quick." He said, after a while.

"I've made some notes watching you before." Calum admitted.

Deadwing's face turned pink, but his flat expression didn't change. "Good." He coughed. "We need dried meat, an onion, flour, pinkroot seeds, we can get some pastry for breakfast if you want."

"I'm so hungry. It's been like, years since I've had pastry."

"Holly and I always get one when we go to market." Dee remarked.

Calum, daring to take his eyes off the horizon, glanced up at him. "What's it like?"

"Big. It's like Colliste's market but held year-round, the contents change depending on the season. Vendors usually rent a stall for three months. Anything you can imagine you can find here at some point. We—they're very proud of it. It's a large source of renown and that's what welves love."

Calum could see the glazed look in his eyes when he talked, and decided not to mention it. Calum knew what is was like to have attention drawn to his body when he couldn't control it. He would keep an eye on his friend, and if needed, do whatever it took to get them out of here. He didn't have a sword anymore, but he had wings.

Deadwing has already planned their decent. He knew the area well enough and dropped into a secluded clearing ahead of Calum. It might have been more terrifying if Calum hadn't gotten to watch Deadwing's massive, muscled black wings shoot him through the sky. He is so cool.

The only instructions Calum had been left with was tilt your wings back when you're close to the ground, I'll try and catch you. Needless to say, it was not a confidence booster, but by now Calum's spring-chicken wings ached and begged for rest. He dropped lower and lower, trying to picture an actual chicken in his mind. He'd watched one particularly feisty hen hop on and off a roof several times. She made it look easy. If only he had her confidence.

"Here!" Deadwing held his arms out, keeping pace with Calum's decent.

Calum panicked in the last few yards, his muscles froze up, and he dropped right on top of Deadwing. The two of them rolled through the all grass, wings beating frantically. Calum tasted grass and Deadwing's feathers before his palms slammed down in vegetation and he was staring into the hand-woven fabric of Deadwing's shirt.

His head was still spinning when he sat up, then he looked down at Deadwing lying flat on their back. His hair had blown away from his face and splattered around his head like a dark halo. His wings were still flexed, coincidently blocking the sun from Calum's face. He peered up at Calum with wide, pretty blue eyes, mouth open, before he started laughing.

Calum's breath hitched in his throat.

Deadwing's high pitched laugh rolled around playfully with the subtle breeze rustling the grass. Calum heard it brush past his ears, and felt his entire face flush with scarlet heat. The two of them were covered in dirt, grass, and leaves. They smelled like a couple of boys smeared in mud and lacking a few baths. For some reason Calum couldn't tear his gaze away from Dee's grinning, grimy face.

"That's the stupidest thing we've ever done." Deadwing gasped, sitting up and running a hair through his hair to get the leaves out.

"Y-yeah," Calum's heart was skipping beats, maybe he had a concussion?

Deadwing rummaged through his bag, pulling out several pieces of cloth. "You want me to tie your wings in for you?"

"My what?"

"We've got to disguise ourselves now."

"Oh."

He nodded hesitantly, and turned around. Deadwing wrapped the wide piece of cloth around Calum's torso. Calum was painfully aware of every time Deadwing's slender fingers brushed against his skin. Until his wings were sudden pushed into his back. They finished tying a knot around Calum's waist and a sobering uncomfortable chill ran through him.

"Yeah I know, but it's only for a little bit." Deadwing assured with a grimace.

"Why don't we just use a magic disguise like Holly had?" Calum picked at the wrappings.

"Oh, we can't use magic. It sends off a signal that can very easily be tracked. Holly's disguise was a big deal, she was specially chosen for that job and the council worked for months to do it without alerting the reapers." Deadwings ears flicked back, his happy glow burned itself out. "I don't know how to use it anyway."

Calum desperately wanted to ask more, but he could sense the ground he walked was paper thin already. He blinked several times, yelling internally to get a hold of himself. His body was off balance without the comfortable weight of his wings lazily drifting behind him. This was the closest he'd been to normal—to human—in a long time, but Calum couldn't get the taste of the sky out of his mouth. He left a different boy on the ground back the Crow's Nest.

"You mind?" Deadwing turned around and gestured to his own wings.

Calum's mind went blank. "Oh yeah, sure."

Not a single thought passed between Calum's ears as he tied Dee's wings to his body. Not one. He was still recovering as they threw long robes on top of what they were wearing to cover their dragging wingtips. With the packs on, Calum had to admit it was a convincing disguise.

"Calum." Dee smiled in a gentle sort of way, like wind rustling through grain field. Calum had never seen his face like this before, and wanted to see every day from then on after. "You've still got leaves in your hair."

They started pulling them out one by one. Calum normally would have detested this, but once again he found himself immobile under Dee's careful pruning. Calum realized, with punch to his gut, how good it felt when Dee was running his hands through his hair. It was so much unlike Calum's persecuting crawl across his scalp, looking for imperfections to pull out. They had Holly's loving lingering in their palms and something, so much more. It's the tree's branch that catches in his curls but the river's current that gently tugged for him to follow. Dee pulled away Calum found himself leaning towards him.

"Alright. Let's get going."

Calum had heard tales of the Colliste Colony, it was a merged civilization of what used to be several welfling tribes before the treaty. It adopted the human city's name and a lot of its culture and architecture. There was supposedly a beautiful tower in the center where the High Welf lived, separate from the council. He'd heard of the welven market a few times as well. Stories of how it took three days to get from one side to the other, being able to buy up a whole house and furnishings, an entire dragon's skeleton. Calum never paid them mind. His job was to serve the King and there wasn't much room for gossip outside that.

Calum glanced over at Deadwing, he liked the way their ears twitched and swiveled with every crunch, tweet, and scuffle. Calum touched the point in his ears absentmindedly and wondered if he looked like that.

This was fun.

"Are those pipes?" Calum asked.

Deadwing glanced down at the panpipes hanging from a cord to the strap of his bag. "Oh, yes. They're Holly's, this is her bag. I must have brought them by mistake."

"May I?"

An unidentifiable expression quivered across his lips for a moment. "Alright."

He started up a quick, sloppy, sea shanty he'd learned from the Patrons one alcohol-induced night. It was not the happiest memory, usual for those amber evenings. It was turned sweeter when Deadwing smiled.

"You've been holding out on me."

Calum grinned, "when I was younger one of the maids caring for me gave me a set of pipes."

"Ah, a lavish upbringing I see."

He shrugged, "I suppose. I, uh, was told I was found on Black Hunt grounds, I was lucky to be spared. One of patrons had the maids there raise me until...until..." His voice trailed off, remembering their pact. The bitter past came flooding back, it was a fish spotting a worm, only to be gored by the hook. "He actually smashed my pipes when he found them."

Calum winced, Deadwing was no longer smiling. He was the one who caused that. He was afraid telling Dee these things would scare him, but it brought him only a little relief when he saw that wasn't the case. Deadwing stared at him, not like he was a specimen, but like he was...worried?

"What a horrible little man." Dee's voice was cold, but unwavering. "Adults who justify hurting children are evil."

Calum blinked, realizing with a chill, Deadwing wasn't just talking about Patron Tarif. He stared at the pipes, letting the notion wash over him. Sure, maybe Tarif had gotten a little intense sometimes, but surely it was out of love? He was constantly making sacrifices for the sake of Calum's education, sacrifices Calum was never grateful for.

He played another little tune on Holly's panpipes, something the maids sang him when he had trouble sleeping. They said it was a magic song. They'd stolen it from the welves.

"Calum?" Deadwing was still staring. "Did that man ever hit you?"

Calum flinched.

"It's okay to say it hurt you. It's okay to admit he lied when he said it was for your own good."

"No, I..." He didn't want to play the panpipes anymore. "I was a bad kid. Holly said almost the exact same thing to me. H-how do you know all this?"

Deadwing stopped, and put his hands on Calum's shoulders, forcing calum to come face to face with their crystalline blue eyes, the same gleam of sparrow's whistle. Calum was shivering slightly, his hair slipped out from between his bandaged fingers. His wings struggled against the bandage. The path was too small. The trees were too tall. He noticed Deadwings hands also shook against Calum's sleeves. He could imagine a slender red handprint across Dee's cheek.

"How do you think?" Deadwing's eyes were dilated, he released Calum's shoulders. "We have to keep going, but I mean what I said. They're liars and did not have your safety in mind, only their own personal gain. We leave them behind."

Calum nodded, and that on its own brought him waves of relief. The world stopped spinning in and out of focus. This time, Deadwing did not walk away. He waited for Calum to catch his breath, then when he was ready, they walked on, together.

The Colony Gates spanned before them, clean cut and dark red. Two archways were carved into it, one big, and one small. Calum saw more than three welves for the first time in his life. Tens of them trickles in and out of the Colony border, mostly with horse-drawn carts. They weren't the only ones on foot, which made Calum less nervous as they stood in the fast-moving line to check in.

"Most welves can speak English, but if anyone talks to you in welvish, pretend you're deaf." Deadwing leaned down and whispered.

Calum nodded, that wouldn't be hard. He found himself especially speechless when they approached the guard and Calum realized the insignia across their chest plate was an eagle with a sword through its breast. He touched his chest and swallowed dryly.

"Salke! Te idenia." The guard said.

Deadwing ruffled through his bag and brought forth two old, heavily wrinkled pieces of paper. "Hik ire te."

The guard scanned them for a few moments, and gestured to Calum, spitting out words faster than Calum could keep up. He couldn't even figure their tone. Deadwing tapped his shoulder. Oh right.

Calum tapped his ears and shrugged.

The guard paused, then handed the papers back. "Hok ast, ruinae hominua. Woss adekto nowuss."

They were waved through. Calum visibly saw Deadwing's shoulders relax.

"What was that about?"

"Our forged papers are becoming less convincing. We should be able to make it out okay. I was afraid we'd be patted down there for a second."

Calum was sure there was a story there, but he was admittedly distracted by how beautiful everything was. Colliste's royal ground was impressive, but it was nothing like this. Beautiful archways spiraled above them, all a deep, rusting red color with welven figures leaves and flowers carved into their bases. The welves themselves, Calum noticed, wore a what seemed like a uniform dress, similar to the clothes Deadwing had supplied the two of them. Men in long black pants with choices of a few types of shirt. Women in long flowing skirts, also black. Calum wondered if was supposed to be a testament to their power and wealth. Black dye was hard to obtain, and even more expensive. The working class in Colliste rarely had such a wardrobe. What surprised him was, one of Dee's favorite outfits was skirt of similar fashion, not the male uniform.

"Where's the market?" Calum asked.

"We're in it." Deadwing explained, taking his arm to pull him out of the way of an oncoming cart.

Now that Calum was paying attention, he realized there were indeed, stalls cut into the massive stone walls, and they ran all the way down the road and disappeared behind a curve. It was a lot less colorful than Calum expected. Deadwing stopped at one of the stalls and the smell of baking pastry entered Calum's awareness. His mouth watered.

"Here you go," Deadwing plopped a jam covered pastry in Calum's awaiting hands. "I made a gamble and guessed you have a massive sweet tooth."

Calum muttered something unintelligible as his brain processed the heaven, he'd just taken a bite out of. Deadwing smiled again, and Calum's mind went blank, again. He wished Deadwing would look at him like that and feed him sweet pastries forever.

This was so much fun.

"I haven't had something this good since..." Calum blinked, "Dee, I think it's my birthday."

Deadwing glanced at him, startled. "What?"

"Well, it's probably passed now. I completely forgot with everything that happened."

He still looked bewildered. "Happy birthday, there's still time to get you something, I hope."

Calum blinked once more. "What? I don't need anything."

"Do they not—? Gods, they don't celebrate birthdays in the Hunt, do they? Of course not, you can't have parties in the murder regime. It's probably a distraction from all the propaganda."

Calum smiled, despite himself. "I got a muffin once, and an extra shift for mentioning it."

Deadwing scowled, "ridiculous, there's a lot of wrongs to fix in this world, cara, this is where I will start."

"Cara?"

Deadwing halted in his tracks, blushing a deep crimson. "Calum. I meant Calum, come on, we have shopping to do."

Like a rut from a wheel, the market carved its way through the colony. Its premade stalls were the branches of a fine olive tree. Calum was starting to wrap his mind around this being the city's laurel. Deadwing seemed to know the path well enough. Calum was entertained simply to collect eyefuls of the place. Welves of all shapes, sizes and colors gathered in dense clusters around some stalls, while other were completely avoided. He thought it might have been a coincidence until he noticed all throughout the strip the same pattern appeared again and again. He watched as Deadwing bought bags of seeds, a variety of small metal farm tools, a jar of oil, a large bag of dust, and three spices. He never went to the stalls empty of customers.

"I think that stalls offering less than this one for the salt." Calum pointed across the road, he'd been trying to figure out prices all day and was starting to get the hang out it.

"That one's marked with werekund. We can't go there." Deadwing said offhandedly.

"What?"

Dee blinked, like he was snapping out of a deep thought. "It means shameful. They're not as renown as the other sellers. They have not been around long enough to prove themselves worthy. The other stalls are from generations of merchants, they're finer people for following the paths of their ancestors. We bring that shame into our family by endorsing the werekund."

Calum stared at him with wide, horrified eyes. "What?"

Deadwing frowned. "It's the welven way. Do humans not follow similar customs? Do you not care about renown?"

"No—" sputtered Calum, "humans are greedy. They always go for the cheaper option. There are men who'd rather sit nameless on hordes of gold then feed their own starving country."

He watched his counterpart for sings of a boundary he was sure to cross, his chest ached with a rampant concerned that hammered around in him like a loose bird. They stared at him blankly. The two of them had struck each other speechless. His bright blue eyes were dull.

"I'll go. You can give me some of your tomato seeds to trade them."

"But..." Deadwing's voice trailed off. "Why do you care?"

Calum shrugged, taking a step closer to them. "Because that's what we are in both our culture's eyes. They see us as worthless, those whose existence is treason, those who eat after the dogs. As far as I'm concerned, those are our people, we're not above anyone else, cara."

Deadwing's gaze snapped back into focus and his eyes went wide as he stared at Calum. Satisfaction gleamed through Calum's grin. That was his deadwing. That was the welfling who'd brought him here, the one he'd leave with. That was the boy he'd leave everyone else behind for.

"Y-you—do you know what that means?" Their face had gone red as their tomatoes.

Calum was growing used to that look. "Shot in the dark. I'm hoping it's friend and not some insult?"

Deadwing covered his mouth with his hand and rolled his eyes. "Sure. Let's go buy some salt."

On the road home, the sun was getting low in the sky, when Deadwing reached into his now very full bag, and pulled out a brand-new set of panpipes. "Happy birthday Calum."

Calum's face lit up like an evergreen in the winter. "How did you get this without me noticing?"

He tilted his head, smiling slightly, "I'm sneaky."

He stared at them, taking in every detail of the solid reed sticks bound in colorful thread. There was a trinket hanging off the side of the longest one. A little tag on a string, with a welven symbol in it. "Thank you so much! What's this mean?"

Deadwing frowned, and leaned in to take a closer look. He inhaled sharply through his nose. Calum couldn't see his face but it looked red.

"Allu curse m—it says delikiae." He looked away, hand over his mouth. "It means...uh...sweet of heart. I didn't see that."

Calum's cheeks singed, but he didn't feel embarrassed, it surprised him how much he liked it. "Thank you."

"Yeah well, maybe some of my welven customs are better left undone, but birthday gifts I think I'll keep around."

If it always made Dee this flustered, Calum could get used to this tradition. In the crook of silence between them and their footsteps, he broke in those new pipes with a soft lullaby. They put their shattering resignations to bed for the day, and finally flew home.