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Once upon a time, in a kingdom where people were flesh and bone and nothing more, there was a boy with magic in his veins. It was right there at his fingertips, woven into the threads of his being, yet he was unaware of it- he had been born like any other child, cried when he was sad, laughed freely and loudly, and bled like any other human was wont to do when he scraped his knees. If there were inconsistencies in the stories his mother told him before bed, if he didn't know half of where he came from, he wasn't one to dwell on it. But just because power could be ignored, it didn't mean it should be. Boxes left unopened bred deadlier monsters with every passing year, as the tale of Pandora reminds us. And as the boy grew in years, so too did his magic.

Other than his blood, the boy was unremarkable. No stories would be written about his ventures into town to buy fennel, no arias composed about his technique in shaping a horseshoe. He would blend into census's and historical writings as 'the general population,' one of thousands who kept a kingdom running and were underappreciated for it.

And the boy was fine with this. He whistled as he worked, made projects-gone-wrong into toys for children of the village, and kissed his mother on the cheek every night before he went to bed. He would never be a hero to the masses, but being a hero to his baby cousin when she was crying was enough. He grew up humble with the knowledge that he was one of many, clever with the understanding that he chose his place in the kingdom- to help and support others. The world had a tendency to spit in his face, but that was when he would smile brighter, dig his heels in harder. His mother taught him how to fight for his place in the world.

But, there was always the matter of his blood. Power craved release- and if the boy would not use it, others would come take it for themselves.

The boy did not have to worry about this yet, however. He was free to grow, free to dream of a future among his family in the warm embrace of home, and hopefully become strong enough to weather what was coming for him.

**

Across the sea, in a kingdom very different from the boy's, was a kestrel. She lived the easy innocence of every other bird of prey, too close to the clouds to see the suffering on the ground. When her father visited their nest, he told her stories about the wonderous ground creatures, wreathed in colour and ingenuity, living peaceful, happy lives. And because she didn't know any better, the kestrel believed him.

There was only one lesson the kestrel's mother ever taught her- and that was that magic couldn't be trusted.

"It chooses bearers made of the same stuff it is, darling." She'd chirped the first moment her daughter peered up at her with wide, owlish eyes. "Evil. Magic makes monsters of any man."

The kestrel didn't believe she'd ever see the ground kingdom or magic either way, so she did what every other child was inclined to do, and promptly forgot her mother's sage advice in favour of the juicy beetle her father brought for her.

The true value of innocence is never known until it is lost- and one day, after her parents left the nest to hunt, the kestrel's learned its worth in the debris of a mighty gust of a wind, the power and unnaturally sharp taste of it enough to shatter her home and push her from her perch in the sky.

The kestrel fell, down into a world colder and more dangerous than she'd ever experienced or expected. With a hard thud, the stern mistress of pain visited her for the first time. The instinctual thing to do would have been to flap her little wings and rise back up to the perch so high above the dying earth, but though she tried for hours, hopping was the closest she'd gotten to the heavens.

Something was wrong- and it was only once she looked to her feathers that she realized they were made of lead, dull gray and too heavy to take to the skies. The kestrel couldn't remember whether they'd always been that way, or if it was a new development- it wasn't like she'd ever needed to use them before.

She was a kestrel without flight or a nest. The last thing she had was her song, and the kestrel let it fly loose in a keening wail, far from the pretty little melodies of songbirds. She cried for her parents so that they could come get her, she raged against the unfairness of leaving her on the ground when she was meant to soar.

But her song did not bring her parents- other creatures heard an easy meal of a fledgling with clipped wings. Finally, the kestrel became acquainted with the monsters of the human kingdom. She realized her father was a beautiful liar.

The kestrel learned how to run instead of hop, to snap her beak at anything that got too close. She was small, but she was a predator. It was the twin monsters of bitterness and loneliness that were the hardest to run from, however. The kestrel would look up at the stars she used to nest in and wonder where her parents were. If they were looking for her, or worse- if they'd found her but decided they didn't want a lead-winged kestrel for a daughter.

One day, the kestrel had been digging through the ooze that a passing monster left behind when a yellow ball of fluff landed on a perch above her. It was one she'd recognized, who'd taken to following her- who would sometimes take the scraps she was after.

"Don't come any closer little chickadee, I could eat you whole." The kestrel spat, fluffing up her feathers to try looking big and dangerous like she remembered her parents looking. But the tiny little yellow bird was unconcerned, and just tilted his head.

"Eat me up and you'll be alone again, kestrel. I believe you could do it, but maybe you shouldn't."

The kestrel grew up with other kestrels, and didn't trust anything part of a world filled with magic- for it turned men into monsters. But what about birds? He had wings that she was jealous of, with feathers that could lift him high into the air- maybe she would eat him, just to prove him wrong.

But the kestrel didn't because the chickadee was right. Half of her anger came from her loneliness, the other half, jealousy. As a noble kestrel, she considered herself above such things. She heard him out.

The chickadee was good at making friends- or at least, he was friends with a magpie who was good at it. Flocks usually kept to their own kind, but the kestrel found herself stumbling into a mishmash of fringe-birds far too attached to each other.

"Blood of the magic kills all manner of curses." The starling cawed the moment she spotted the dull gray of the kestrel's feathers, looking at her through the side of her eye as though she couldn't believe the kestrel didn't know such a thing.

"Is it a curse?" The young nightingale hopped towards her with wide eyes, but the kestrel flapped her heavy wings to make him stay away.

"How would I know? Magic meddling is for dumb humans."

"Well, you'll need a dumb human if you want to get rid of it." The quiet jackdaw with only one leg piped up, the intensity of his beady eyes on her wings making the kestrel pull them tight to her chest.

"Where would I even find one? I know nothing about humans or magic or blood. Maybe I should have consulted a crow." The kestrel sniped, fear and hopelessness at the unsurmountable task in front of her making her ill-mannered.

The tiniest little bird, whose fluff of childhood still puffed around her neck, stopped chasing a gnat to look at her.

"You follow the noise makers, duh. If the humans take something they want, they make loud noises about it. And magic is something they want more than anything."

The kestrel looked up at the older, wiser birds, but the mismatched flock just nodded at their youngest members advice. And because the kestrel missed the days where she would sing in perfect harmony with her kestrel parents, she ignored the chickadee's warnings of danger and invitation of staying with the lost and found flock. She'd hop her way across all of the ground kingdom if she had too, searching for magic and all of its evils.

**

It was at this point that the boy was having what he considered the worst day of his life- in the following months he would find that there were many even worse, but the boy still looked back and considered this the Big Bad one. The day had began in a dance of routine, lighting his forge just as the sun began to shyly emerge from the foothills, because they were in the midst of summer and as every seasoned blacksmith knew, work would be nearly impossible when swaddled under both the oppressive humidity and the heat of the forge. He wanted to get as much done as he could before sweat dripped into his eyes and breathing became painful.

He didn't end up finishing much.

From the very hills the sun blinked over came many important-looking men bearing important-looking flags that the peasants of the valley were unfamiliar with. But the large hats and the guns and the golden buttons told them enough.

"We're here for the boy with magic in his veins." Their leader barked.

"Who?" The peasants asked.

They couldn't stop the leader from corralling all their boys like cattle in the town square, could do nothing as they took out a strangely unshiny dagger and drew it in a neat line down the forearm of every boy the village had to offer.

Perhaps if the boy's mother hadn't been busy with her work stitching humble little masterpieces, she would have seen the golden-buttoned army at the crest of the hill with the others- she would have had the opportunity to finally carry out her plan of escape. But as it was, her boy had been corralled by the time she'd known her nightmare had come alive. And even a crazed, desperate woman would know she could not stand against all those muskets.

Her expression was stony as the lead blade met her boy's skin, as his magic blood was spilled. As it met the blade, it sizzled into nothingness instead of dripping down it, as all other blood had. And ultimately, that had sealed his fate. The trumpeters began a grand anthem for victory, and the important-looking men had a grip on him that even the broad blacksmith could not break. He couldn't hear his mother screaming for him over the blaring of the trumpets, couldn't see her fighting to get to him over the confused and concerned crowd. No goodbye was allowed to the boy with magic in his blood, for he was needed elsewhere.

**

The boy was brought before the richest man in any kingdom, a man with golden coins for eyes and clouds of blood for breath. He had been given magic at birth, though it had been of the stolen sort. His mother had been different from the boy's mother, who had done her best to hide her boy from destiny- his spoke a poisonous truth she had stolen in his ear the moment he was born, so that he could become the monster he was meant to be. She'd thought he would bring her along with him through his carnage, yet unfortunately the only blood the man found value in was the magical kind. But this story isn't about a mother's son-destroying greed.

"Every day you will give me a drop of your magic." The man spoke through the blood that bubbled in his mouth, spitting little bits of his stolen magic all over the marble floors. 

A drop didn't sound like a lot, but the boy was grim with his fate. It would be a death that crept up on him, that smiled with kindness to his face while its hands were at his throat. The man's unblinking eyes watched this boy who didn't know just how fortunate he was. Magic had a way of burning a body from the inside out, and though the man was only a few years senior of the boy, he was dying. He was looking forward to rectifying that.

"And once your magic is bled dry, our skeletons will be buried together so that in my next life, I will be born with magic in my own marrow and blood. You understand little of the power you hold, boy- it would serve me much better."

The boy did nothing to acknowledge the man's words. Revelations still clamoured and screeched in his brain, and there was no room for any more. His eyes were blankly fixed on the rafters, where he caught sight of some gray feathers.

The man nodded to the burly servants with sewn-shut eyes, who neither spoke nor stared. They took the boy to his new home, with locked doors and a very small window. The boy was determined that he must escape, but first he desperately needed a nap.

**

The boy almost stepped on the kestrel when they first met. Maybe he should have.

"Give it to me!" The kestrel cawed, so close to her dream that she pecked and clawed, trying to steal power for herself in the only way she knew how. 

The boy, who hadn't expected the tiny bird who'd fallen from his prison's window with a dull thunk to start attacking him, stuck out his arms to cover his face, running to the corners of his tiny room.

"Leave me alone, get away!"

"No, your blood is mine!" She hissed back, fluffing up her lead feathers. "I need it more!"

The boy huffed, and then he laughed. A loud, breathy, crazed laugh of someone who just realized they could understand the words of a bird on top of all the other mind-melting revelations of the day. The kestrel was quite alarmed by this reaction to her intimidating display, and bristled more.

"I'm pretty sure you're wrong about that. My blood is kind of necessary for me." He finally managed after all the crazy had left his body, leaving only the resigned and bitter behind.

"Magic makes monsters of men. You will be no different!" 

The boy was quiet at that, remembering the blood at the man's lips, the way his servants resembled puppets. That was not anything he wanted to become. The boy slid down the wall until he was sitting, a tired look on his face. The kestrel slowly hopped forward.

"I think I was rude. Give me your blood. Please."

The boy looked down at the talking bird's attempt at politeness. Maybe he should just give it what it wanted, if only so one of them could improve their day. 

But the boy knew by now that something inside him had the capacity for evil. While it had remained inside his body, solely his own, no harm had ever come to anyone. Maybe it was using the magic that gave the man the hunger in his gold coin eyes. The boy slowly shook his head.

"Why do you even need my blood, little bird?" 

The kestrel leaned forward and fluffed up her feathers like a peacock, displaying the dull metal where there should be keratin. 

"I'm cursed." She spat. "And I cannot fly home."

The kestrel would have preferred abject horror to the curiosity that lit up his face. Humans and their inconvenient curiosity- she wanted him to get rid of her little metal feathers, not stare at them like something to be preserved and treasured!

"Blood." She chirped again, eyes narrowed with the promise of attack.

The boy bore hesitation easily- patience was ingrained in his trade, and he knew when to hold his words until his thoughts were fully formed. He held within him the capability for evil, but didn't every human being?

"Maybe they were monsters even before the magic." The boy suggested quietly in answer to the kestrel's earlier claim, with more hope than conviction. The kestrel knew hope to be a useless and disappointing sentiment, so she clicked her beak.

"You're the living experiment for that. Let me know when you feel like wearing big hats and small creatures for fun."

His blood could help the kestrel in front of him. That couldn't be evil, could it? His mind was still swirling, the only certainty that he was bitter and alone. All that he knew was that his mother taught him that kindness and a good work ethic would serve him well in life- but that left him ill-prepared for those with gold and magic at their fingertips. She left him ill-prepared.

But now, he was just as trapped as the kestrel in front of him. Maybe it would be better, to really see the capabilities of his blood with a kestrel who just wanted to go home instead of a man who was a monster.

The boy silently held out his hand in permission, and the kestrel wasted no time in using her sharp talons to carve a path of magic into his skin. She only felt a little bad for how he winced in pain.

The kestrel danced excitedly under the dripping blood, as though she were delighting herself in a birdbath. One that sizzled instead of cooled and disappeared before it even reached her skin, revealing beautiful browns and speckled whites with every drop. The kestrel happily wiggled, ignoring the ickiness of a sharp smell because it was her path to freedom.

But the number of feathers turning back from metal was slowing down. The boy was paling. And the magic was losing its potency. Something was untethering inside of him, eking out through his arm, and he clasped his other hand over the wound as though he could stop it. He felt something in him weaken, but it was from more than blood loss.

"Are you made from lead, by any chance?"

He didn't know where the words came from- maybe the part of him that was still a blacksmith, that understood something to do with metals before he did. The kestrel frowned. She remembered something the starling had told her.

"That's metal favoured by witches, who made daggers and cages to almost eradicate magic from this world." She confirmed.

The boy blinked. It had been the same material as the knife that had tested him for magic, the only thing that could draw it out of him. And it seemed, the only thing capable of destroying it. 

They looked up at each other, and the boy swore he saw a conniving smile on the kestrel's tiny beak, answering his hopeful one. Perhaps they could help each other after all.

So there they were, big and small, bird and not, unable to take a single step forward- for it would lead the other one step back. The happily ever after would have to begin with a compromise- if the proud kestrel and stubborn boy were even capable of such a thing.

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