Ailsa watched from her perch on the windowsill, high above the warehouse's concrete floor, as her clan argued down below. The few camping lanterns among them barely illuminated the box filled room and its winged occupants.

Two groups shouted at each other, wings ruffling and flaring in agitation as several of them nearly started fighting. A few Fae, six or seven of the cooler heads, tried to separate the two groups. Nearly impossible, considering the two groups combined were at about forty.

The argument only stopped when someone shouted that the noise they made just gave their location away to the humans and parasites across the city.

"I can understand your disgruntlement." Evreux shouted to be heard above their muttering. "You want to push against the parasites in one move."

The attention of the Fae shifted over to him and they regarded him with something akin to wariness. Evreux was a moderately good hunter, and he let that get into his head more than a few times. Arrogant, brash and extremely judgmental.

"It honors the Hunt to wipe them out in one blow, cleaning them off the planet once more. I truly feel the urge to do so." He raised a hand to his chest, pursing his lips. "But we do not live in the days of the past any longer; when there were much less humans and we were looked at with reverence and fear.

"Those days are long gone, and a new era has arrived. Humans have become skeptical creatures who put all their faith in shallow discoveries, things that cannot keep them alive any better than an arrow or a sword. They will hunt us as much as they will hunt the parasites and they cannot keep any alliance!"

"If they realize we are eliminating the parasites, they will see us in new light." Marlene, a female Fae in the opposing group shouted. "We cannot properly eradicate the parasites without help, not when they hide among humans."

"Hunters." Alexios barked, stepping onto a stack of boxes. "This fighting cannot hold any longer... we have lost sight of our true goal. Why do we hunt? Is it because of tradition? Or out of necessity?"

Several Fae looked like they wanted to spit answers at him, but they held their tongues. He was one of the best of the hunters in the squad, and while there were rules against killing their kind, there were no rules against severe mutilation. Which Alexios would gladly do.

"We hunt them because our way of living is at continuous risk. The refuges we keep out of sight, the lives we live among the humans... all of that will be gone to the blood-leeches." His voice lowered to an angry hiss. "It does not matter how we kill them. It matters that we do and quick, before their numbers grow any further. Already, the human's policing system, their army, is crumbling, because many of their men have turned. Once that resistance is gone, the parasites will overwhelm the humans."

A short, oppressive silence followed, until Marlene confidently strode up to Alexios's side and raised a hand. "I call a vote. All in support of using human assistance."

Over half of the hands went up immediately, and several more followed. No one even needed to vote for the opposite. Marlene had obviously won.

Ailsa, watching from her perch, realized what few others would have. Alexios had placed himself as one of the cooler heads, who supported neither one, nor the other. His speech though, had pushed the majority of the squad to see the danger of not finding a solution fast, and then Marlene had come right up, providing a quick solution to the parasites. The two were working together.

Ailsa despised Fae politics.

She turned her gaze back to the window, watching the moon as it slowly fell from its perch up high in the sky, slowly dropping behind the tall skyscrapers. Occasionally, it silhouetted the body of a night bird as it flew by, usually an owl or nighthawk.

Ailsa did not have a bonded raptor, and her Rukh, Jinn, was back at the settlement, far far away. She missed the giant Gryphyn, and his silent companionship. He couldn't follow on the hunt, since his size made him conspicuous and humans were not supposed to know the Fae, or anything about them, existed. And Ailsa didn't want him getting shot down by humans.

She frowned as she realized she was agreeing with Evreux, which she really did not want to do. He was right though. The shallow, wake beings, the original creations of the world, tended to consider anything opposing their way of life an oddity of nature and they were unlikely to form any useful alliance with the Fae.

The Fae below had quieted down, having come to an agreement. Most of them were setting up bedrolls, using their packs as pillows. They lay on their sides - the feathered wings protruding from their backs would not allow anything else - , most of them soon falling asleep. Evreux stayed awake, whittling at a small carving in his hand with his carving knife and muttering to himself.

The guards posted were either sitting at the doors or on the roof, out of sight. They were the only ones visibly awake, talking to themselves in low voices. Ailsa wished she could join them, but she wasn't one of them. Not any longer.

Not since Carmon.

She snuggled into the corner of the window, intending to sleep there for the night. She took one glance around the warehouse again, and her eyes snagged on Marlene's figure. She couldn't be sure, with the minimal lighting, but she thought Marlene's eyes were open.

And they seemed to be staring directly at her.

***

The rattling of chains woke her from the dark of her sleep. Ailsa had learned to recognize the foreboding sound, the precursor to another of her nightmares.

There was a moment in which she knew it was a dream, a fragment of memory from her distant past, but the next moment had her forget that, and she experienced it again, just as real as when it truly happened.

She was in a large circular building, surrounded by masses of Fae, hundreds of them. The atrium had no roof, letting in bright moonlight that illuminated the world in black and white. Several buildings rose in the distance, their forms visible above the edge of the atrium.

She struggled to her knees, groaning at the stab of pain in her bones. The world seemed to swim before her eyes. This place was not familiar, not one of the buildings she frequented in their forest city, yet she recognized it by its size. This was the Great Hall.

A stone pillar jutted out of the center of the atrium, four feet away from her. A man slumped weakly against it, loops of thick chain link looping firmly around him and the pillar. His bare chest was crisscrossed with welts and smeared with blood. She could see his body shaking with pain and exhaustion and he looked like he wanted to collapse to the marble floor, but the chains held him against the pillar, preventing him from falling. His breath came in harsh wheezes.

Carmon.

Sudden rage filled her, and she surged forward to help him - only to be yanked back by her chains. As she pulled them tight, Carmon cried out in pain, his own chains tightening. She looked up in surprise, and the realization hit a moment later.

Her chains were linked to his, so any attempt to reach him would only tighten his chains. She pulled back and his chains loosened, but before they could get anywhere near being comfortable, her length of chain finished.

She looked up to see three Fae, their faces covered with porcelain masks, step out of the shadows of the atrium, their arms filled with split logs. She stared with incomprehension for several long seconds as they lay the logs at the base of the pillar, high enough to cover Carmon's legs up to his ankles. The smell of fuel reached her nose a moment later and she flinched with horror as she realized what they planned to do.

She surged forward with a yell, but Carmon let out another pained cry and she released the chain. The tension, the fear and anger, bubbled up inside her and she released it all in a scream loud enough to ruin ears. It painfully tore out of her throat, exploding out into the atrium. The cheering crowds of Fae shut up at the despairing cry, but Ailsa did not stop.

She screamed as one of the male Fae stood up on a wooden platform, calling out her crimes.

She screamed as the Fae called her traitor. As He called her vile and monster-lover.

She screamed as the male Fae hopped down the platform, a flaming torch in hand. She screamed as he thrust the flaming end into the flame. She screamed as the wood caught fire happily, sending bursts of flame upward.

She screamed as her lover began screaming, the flames wrapping his body lovingly. His form changed for a moment, revealing the wolf beneath, before shifting back into human.

She could not save him, or even attempt to. She could not beg the Fae to stop, or the flames to die.

She could do nothing but scream.

***

Ailsa jerked awake from the nightmare, her heart slamming wildly in her rib cage and her breathing coming in terrified gasps. Her entire body was sweat-soaked, and she shivered from the wet cold.

She pulled herself into a tighter ball, hugging her knees to her chest and wrapping herself in her wings. Tears began to flow unbidden, but she remained silent. None of the others, not even the guards, could know her condition, that she still bled so long after. They did not deserve to know.

She hated having the dream, so real beneath the probing of her mind. It had been there since the decades it really happened, the nightmares popping up as though to remind her of her actions that got Carmon killed. The actions that got her labeled as outcast, one short step from exiled.

The crime of loving one that was not her kind.

It had all been real, the whole horror of watching him burn into nothing but blackened bones and melted flesh and muscles, releasing the sickeningly sweet smell of charred flesh.

The longer Ailsa thought about it, the harder it was to contain the scream building up inside. But contain it she did, because it was not the right time to release it.

Not yet.

- - - - -

Note- the Fae actually have bird wings, and Gryphyns are their... well, pet gryphons.

What do you think about Ailsa's past? Can you see how their community looks was from the glimpse I gave? And who is Carmon?

Thank you for reading. I hope you enjoyed it.