I cannot decide if I would prefer my bones and muscles remain light as they were, or adapt to my new body… my pride tells me the former is the truer path, but the latter certainly helps with all of the new bruises.

I suppose I have no choice in the matter either way. I don’t understand yet what decides when I… adapt… or advance. Advancement came, among bruises and abrasions that nevertheless taught me about my composition in a way I was unable to study before. I asked my brothers and sisters, pleaded pathetically with them to tell me how I can regain myself, and finally when I did beg they told me to learn like they did- jump, and jump, and jump until you fly.

I felt like a fool, but what else could I do? An unconventional path? Undoubtedly. I know no one else who jumps off rocks and screes as I did, tumbling through the grass… until finally, it clicked. I’m ashamed to admit the breaking point was hearing laughter in the distance, I’m not even entirely sure on human or corvid, but it enraged me as I climbed up the cliff and I felt I would do anything to fly again.

And it pulled from me like fishhooks on my essence. Stretching my soul out like a rubber band, if only for a moment, back into the shape it remembers… I could soar before it snapped back, but I could soar.

I did it again, and again, until I was exhausted. And then I brought a mirror out to see what it looked like when I did, picking up bandages along the way. It looks just as it felt. My core came out, flickering but living and there, and as I climbed the hill to see it again… I pushed myself too far. I woke up when the beetles came out to harass me.

• Advancement came on hardship
• Necessary to beg
• Desperation unlocks power?
• Soul is still flickering
• Know my limits

I have firmly decided that if the nature of these experiences is to subject me and mine to brutish, impertinent illogicalities, then I must contest by being prepared for combat. However, I would never take up a weapon so crude as sword or, Mistress-forbid, “firearm”- no, I am more than that, and they are less than the world, especially the latter. I will take a slingshot.

A slingshot is a fair weapon. The shape of the rocks makes how they fly mundanely incalculable; if they are meant to hit their mark, they will. Choosing the wood, carving my weapon, devoting my time and energy- that’s what makes the slingshot mine and suitable. The wood knows me and the rocks allow themselves to be borrowed. By transforming the ash we cultivated in this way, I create my own ash, my Aušros Medis.

I know the Medis accepted my purpose, because when I tried the weapon I had made, it appeared over the slingshot in much the same light as my wings: my core, grey and iridescent with lights beyond mortal comprehension, that otherworldly light shining brilliant in swirls and geometrics which branched from the shape of the weapon and followed the rock, imbuing it with purpose- it hit square into the hollow of a tree, and for a moment, I was as happy as when I flew.

I can only hope that going forward, Laima allows me to hit my targets as squarely. But if she doesn’t, I can’t be upset… I am happy to allow the gods to control my success.