You were sheltered, you were blinded, and you were hidden away from the galaxy along with everyone else who lived on your miserable little seedling of a planet. Some may have called your home a utopia, a functioning society, but that was further from the truth than any outsider would ever know. Your homeworld was dark, little light shone through your home, an in the sky hung nothing but the inky expanse of the universe, the stars up above, clouds that poured down a surplus of snow, and occasionally, a display of colors from the northern lights up above that did all but better the morale and mood of the avians who made the land under it their home. Occasionally, you look back on your life there, and let out a puff of air from your nostrils atop your curved beak, not of humor, but of shame of having lived there. Of course, you never thought of your childhood as inherently flawed until the time came for you to leave, but now it has become increasingly obvious. You were glad you went away and never want to look back now. You lived blind. You lived sheltered. Even when you lived on the grounds of your own homeworld and knew next to nothing of anything on the outside, you still did not know about your very surroundings. Perhaps it was because of your complacent nature, you don't often look further into what you see on the surface. Surely, your lack of knowledge of your own home was not because of a lack of being taught and a poor schooling regime, but because you never cared enough to listen, or to look deeper. This is why, until it was explained to you, and you could put one and two together, you lived under the grip of a cult of contrarians, on a small planet known as the God Killer's Quarry. The stench of oil and smoke hung thick in the air. Your mother had always told you that when traversing the Commons of Natsari, you and your brother, Paztul, should hold your breath until you could make it through all the way to your destination. Today was a Tuesday, and as was customary, everyone who lived in Natsari was awoken by the reverberating sound of a bell being struck with the thick end of a mallet by the young hen who'd been assigned to do so by the temple. Avians, each of a uniform white and black feather stock flooded into the streets of the Commons to visit their place of "worship." That Tuesday, you were walking along with the moving mass of white and black feathers in down, fitting in perfectly. You took great pride in you being already Cleansed, a status even your brother you were walking with, or even your mother, whose hand you were squeezing tight on to keep pace with her, had not taken up. Your brother was an elegant dark purple color, it would always remind you of "blueberry guts," your made-up name for the juice of the fruit. All the while, your mother was an orange, though you couldn't come up with anything clever to compare that to for quite a while, and even when you did, you'd probably forget it. The temple, thankfully, was clean and your mother gave you a tap on the shoulder to tell you it was safe to breathe. You would, as always, take in a deep, loud breath and sigh. Your mother led you to a set of pews, where you would sit nestled between the laps of your brother and mother. While a "grounded priest," may sound like an oxymoron, it was the arsenal of the temple, and was very, very real. An older avian, short, though not as short as her, stood proud at a pedestal before the cloud of avians in the pews, and gave his sermon. He spoke of a false god, who, albeit very divine, was unworthy of holding power over the avian people of the universe. While the older avians, like your mother, clapped and cheered chants along with the sermons, the children, including you would sit there, dumbfounded and confused. Who was Kluex? Why were your elders so obsessed with him, and why was he bad? You'd ask your mother the first of your questions finally, though you weren't completely happy with the response you got. "Who is Kluex?" "A bad man." "So... He is like a cri-mi-nal? Is he in jail?" "No. We ah' looking for him." "...Maybe I can find him, I found ya' housekeys once, mada'." "Tha's a diff'rent deal, you canna' find 'im anywhere. He is... Not of our world." You, of course, never got the general idea. An extreme hatred for a religion run by fanatics had become its own religion run by a society of fanatics. To prove the former religion, that of the Flightless, wrong and to shoot their god out of the aether and slay them being their goals, which they would stop at nothing to prevent over a number of generations of brainwashing. Your mother was at the head of such, how could she have let the fanaticism roll though her and become an integral part of the person you were without telling you what it entails? You were furious. You were not destined for prosperity like your brother or mother; you were Churuqui, the daughter of High Priest Thezdul who was unfortunately afflicted with Dwarfism. You left to live in the mountains outside your hometown for a time in a cabin, living the next few years of your life in a cabin, making use of an influx of tourists to make your way as a sherpa. Your time away and dealing with scoundrels and people you generally didn't like shaped you from a naïve avian to a still naïve, but characteristically skittish, quiet, untrusting, and sometimes dishonest avian. The Fringe and its denizens gave you a wing to rest under and, eventually, your relationship with your home mellowed. After your rekindling of this relationship, you'd take part in the culture, even going on a recleansing trip to repent for your bridges being burnt. This was one of your worst choices. Prolonged time spent in the volcanic no man's land your people had sent you to without any way of keeping your throat clear of ash damaged your lungs to the point of developing a pseudo-asthma. You are now often seen with a respirator mask or inhaler, and though you are not ashamed and embarrassed over it, it is a little inconvenient. -Update Log-
