{we wanted to be angels}

General warning, even though I'm trying to phase out author's notes: this story is supremely messed up. Lots of blood, mostly, and then whatever else you lot have grown accustomed to expecting with my stories.

Also, apologies to Winter; I'mma grade your story asap but I had this one waiting in the wings (god that pun was terrible) for a while and my analytic muse has been far less productive than my creative one.

UGH.

GOD I'M SORRY.

we wanted to be angels​

so we ascended on the wings of the dawn-bringers.

[hr][/hr]
I first saw them when I was a child, too young to know more than the vague impressions of colors and shapes and elation upon my mind, as gentle as their feathery touches.

I was born on the plains facing the open sky, so that I could better see Him, the great feathered sky serpent, The Rayquaza, our father and lifegiver. I was a quiet child, apparently tearless, as if I knew from birth that it was my place to be seen and not heard and that my lips were not meant for words. Our warriors, our men, were granted their voices in our tribe.

I never said it was fair.

The women of our tribe cut me from my mother with knives of obsidian, the raw blades taken from the lips of the earth in the stone quarries of the desert and hammered into shape. We, the Nohuactl, hammer much into shape, and I was neither the first nor the last. The cord tying me to my mother was severed from the two of us and buried beneath the corn rows, so that I would learn to grow as my mother and her mother and her mother’s mother all had. They curled my tiny hand around an awl, so that I would learn to bind together.

It was this awl that I held in my hand when I first saw the dawn-bringers, when I was still too young yet to walk. Yet I knew what it was even then. It was a cuauhtli, the true eagle warrior, messenger of our god and father above, the feathered serpent, The Rayquaza. The cuauhtli had come to me from above, its eyes blazing like the flaming sun above that he served. I reached for it impulsively, wanting to feel his blood-colored wings which were trailing with the colors of the forest, but it recoiled, and I recoiled, and we started, suddenly feeling like we were ruining something precious.

I turned around, mouth open in excitement, ears ringing with awe, but by then, the cuauhtli had gone, its blood-wings taking him far above the thatch of our hut, vanished into the clouds that it walked upon with gentle claws.

I knew it then to be a sign that The Rayquaza, had blessed me as one of his children, chosen to serve Him as my ancestors had.

(My mother, when she thinks I am not looking, prays to The Rayquaza and curses me for my deformity before begging Him for a son who will bring her honor.)

I began to scream then, they told me, and when the village elders arrived they found me clutching a handful of the dawn-colored feathers, the rainbows of green and red and orange in my stubby hands.

But I was still watching the imprint of the wings flying away, the dawn trailing in their wake.

[hr][/hr]
My father was killed in battle in one of our flower wars, his beating heart carved out in the neighboring cities and offered in fearful trepidation to The Rayquaza, who surely must have smiled upon accepting the heart of a warrior so noble. I was but a child, and he was but a prayer to our god and father above. I know that The Rayquaza is pleased to have His children return to Him, but He always seeks more, more.

I did not fear death. We welcome it with wide arms, for it brings us closer to Him, and He is a ravenous god who will not send us rain unless he is sated.

The helm of my father stands in sacred memory tucked high above my bed, out of sight and beneath a huddle of blankets. I wish to give it a better resting place, one befitting of he who died serving The Rayquaza, but it was already enough that I snatched it from his burial train during his vigil. I could not bear to see the wooden helm, with its elaborate likeness carved into the open beak and maw of the cuauhtli, under which I had seen his face so many times, buried beneath the earth. He was an eagle warrior. Not the true ones, like my cuauhtli, but one of the many of our village, and he deserved to be above the ground, not below it.

The cuauhtli are masked. I was told they hide their faces from us because they are a reflection of Him, and His reflection is so blinding that we, his children and his humans, would be smothered. We mold our fiercest warriors into the image of the cuauhtli so that they, too, may be blinding to their enemies.

I vowed each night to the stolen helm that I would outshine all of them, brilliant and beautiful as our golden sun, but I was pinioned.

[hr][/hr]
I was never allowed to leave the outskirts of my village. The warriors left sometimes on their flower wars, off to carve more hearts in His name, but the women stayed home to raise the young or gather food from the nearby forest. The male children went to learn the ways of their fathers, and the female children followed the path of their mothers.

I was born with the top of my lip attached to the skin below my nose, so I went nowhere.

The elders said that it was a sign from The Rayquaza, but for what, they could not tell. My mother said that it was a curse. It was agreed on all sides that I was not to leave my house.

I, of course, had no say in the matter, and was left to watch them, simmering in quiet rage, as they walked away from my window, whose sill I could barely reach even when I struggled.

[hr][/hr]
Our village does not smile on visitors. We send out our warriors to conquer the lands and defend us when necessary; the only visitors we receive are the chosen from the slain whose hearts we lift up to the Rayquaza. Once in many moons, we will receive slaves laden with gold, signs of goodwill from those who fear us.

Otherwise, we will receive war on our doorsteps.

So when the gods in their pale skins came and walked among us for the first time, we were frightened. I was fascinated. For the first time in many moons, the way was open, and men with white skin walked unopposed through the main path into our village, wearing furs all the colors of the rainbow. Our warriors trailed behind them like kicked dogs.

They met with our leaders and talked in hushed voices, and we all stared in awe. Their faces were as pale as the moon and they had hair the color of corn.

I heard the whispers spread. Surely, the village elders said, the pale-skins were the spitting image of His chosen, and I wondered how they knew. The cuauhtli still came to me, perched where I could see them in the corners of my eyes and then gone when I turned. But I’d seen their skin, which, beneath their robes of bloody feathers, was as white as the pale-skins or maybe even whiter.

He must have sent his children to help us in the coming winter. Our warriors brought back less and less with each hunt, and the sunsets were frequent when they returned empty-handed altogether. Our sacrifices from the flower wars did not help—no matter how many hearts we offered to Him, we had not been rewarded with the blessed rain.

Perhaps His gift was better than rain.

I crept out of my room after my mother had left, my nimble feet making easy work of the window that I had long ago been able to tower over, scraps of fabric wrapped around my face to hide my curse. With it, I was defective; without it, I was nothing.

On feet as light as the liepard, I snuck in and watched as our village elders conversed with the pale-skins, who wore strange clothing made of furs I could not recognize. My eyes were drawn to their furs, to the resplendent colors there. I had not seen so many bright colors on a single pelt except on the cuauhtli, whose brilliant touch had been burned into my memory long ago.

Perhaps we should’ve guessed it then.

They spoke in the language of gods, wondrous and harsh and grating to my ears, but it seemed that we did not understand them either. The most ancient elder spoke up, looking every year his age and more, but his voice was thin and reedy and as flimsy as a blade of grass.

The pale-skins looked at us in confusion as well, but their befuddlement had a degree of condescension to it, as if, in a world where neither us nor them could understand one another, we were still firmly in the wrong.

Some voice in the back of my mind recoiled at this point, watching the lead pale-skin stand up and begin addressing us, hand-gestures as slow as a lazy brook wandering around as he attempted to tell us what he wanted, but I knew better than to be afraid. The gods were not always merciful to their children, I knew, and if He had seen it fit to send us these, these cruel gods with their rainbow furs and their skin as white as the summer clouds, then it was our fault and ours alone.

I crept back to my room, then, hoping that submission would please Him.

We offered them the ceremonial gifts of friendship, I learned later, lauding them with the gold we had earned in the flower wars, enough to feed our people for a month, but the pale-skins seemed to want more. They moved their lips apart, and we all flinched back, for that is the sign that the cornered animal makes before it strikes, and we did not want to anger His children.

But the pale-skins made strange sounds from their mouths, conversing with one another and baring their teeth at us again. One of the Eagle Warriors tightened his grip on his spear, but the most ancient elder froze him in his place with a wave of his hand. We do not dare attack the pale-skins, he seemed to say.

And I knew why. They were His children.

I felt ashamed as we threw loops after loops of gold onto their backs—returning men laden with wealth was a sign of submission, one that we received but did not ever give. Sometimes, other, weaker villages would send us slaves bearing riches, but we bowed to no one. We bowed to no one save The Rayquaza. So perhaps that is why we bowed then.

We gave them as much gold as they could carry, surely so heavy that the earth would swallow them and they would sink into the reeds, but they stood blinding and tall toward the sky.

They gave us round pieces of ice that would never melt in a small basket with moveable jaws.

[hr][/hr]
I begged our village leaders to send them away, to launch an attack on the pale-skins while we still had a chance, but I was voiceless.

They didn’t know, were blinded by their circles of power, chose not to see. I wasn’t sure which. But no matter the reason, they refused to see the danger that dripped from the pale-skins, refused to understand that the pale-skins might be angels but we could be, as well.

Please, I began to say. Please, don’t let them—

“Silence your whelp,” one of the men snarled, glaring at my mother, and I was dragged back into my cage to watch from the window, blows and curses from her alike raining down on my unhearing ears.

It wasn’t fair.

[hr][/hr]
Sneaking out the next night told me that the pale-skins lived in tiny huts made of cloth that they had set up on the edge of our forest, tucked safely out of sight from our hilltop village but just near enough that the spirals of the smoke of their fires could be seen, threads of grey on the bloody sunset.

Sneaking back told me that He had seen it fit to send one of the cuauhtli back to me.

It stood in my path, wings flared wide against the moon, the eagle warrior half my height and yet terrifying. Even from a distance, I could see the curved beak and sharp talons, and the grim determination in eyes shaped like coals portended no mercy.

There were legends of the true cuauhtli back in my village. Their visage alone was enough to send people into madness, and I’d seen a man crawl back from the war clutching his bloody feathers and screaming, his eyes wild at whatever insanity he’d witnessed. He begged for scraps now and devoured whatever he was thrown, and we taught the children of our village to avoid him, in case the madness came for them as well.

So when I was but a child, clutching the feathers in my hand and screaming, they feared I would follow the same route. And when I did not, they were confused, for it went against all else they had learned.

And now, staring at the cuauhtli who had come back for me again, I wondered if my time had come.

It wasn’t fair, I knew somehow, to spend my life waiting inside of a cage because the village feared me, because the elders did not know me, because my mother despised me. There was so much wrong with the world, but I could not change it, because the weak were weak and the strong were strong, and I was left holding no power and trying to oppose those who held all of it. There were gods in the world like the pale-skins, and yet we had angered them and Him to send them to us, and we did not know why.

But I was not an eagle warrior, not a man, not even a normal child of Him with an unblemished face, so I was weak.

And it was wrong to be weak.

The cuauhtli came at me then, the green feathers lining its mask glinting in the moonlight, and I knew that I hated it and every remnant of our society that had put me on the bottom and everyone else on the top of the pyramid, crushing the masses and leaving the weak in the dust, helpless and alone. It wasn’t fair. There were gods in this world, angels, but we could never be like them, pure and untainted as they were.

And that would never stop us from wanting it, of course.

I hissed, long and low, a challenge to the highest warrior of our highest god, because if I didn’t try, I’d never know.

Wings spread wide, the true warrior rocketed toward me, its sallow beak like an arrowhead, and then it pulled up short at my feet before spreading its legs and dipping its head into an unmistakable bow.

I let the movement come then, feeling the flawed skin of my lips creeping upward into what looked like a snarl, baring my teeth as I had seen the pale-skins do, and I stood plain and tall as the others alighted from the trees, all sinking onto one knee and bowing to me.

The realization came to me in slow waves as the flock surrounded me, their masked heads bowed low in the light of the moon. They had chosen me.

I was no longer weak now. I had power.

I knew then what I needed to do.

[hr][/hr]
They say that the next night, a warrior no one recognized alighted in the center of the village, its wings spread wide, helm standing proud and tall. I would not know, of course, for surely I waited in my room like a princess and a curse and waited for the others to save me.

They gathered around the warrior, whose wings of cloth and feathers glared at them in resplendent glory, tried to peer beneath the helm and make sense, friend or foe, of the matter?

But I was a foe to all who had power, and I would rain destruction on them in the name of protecting the weak. The only thing that remained was determining if my village was weak or strong.

One of the men shot at me then, and I watched, unflinching, as the arrow raced closer and closer, before one of the cuauhtli swooped down from the skies and clutched it deftly in its crimson talons, throwing the unworthy shaft of wood to the ground.

Beneath my father’s old helm, I bared my teeth like the pale-skins again, feeling the exhilaration. I was weak no longer.

The cuauhtli landed in rough formation behind me, my warriors to match theirs, and I waited in silence for the next challenge.

I had been spared by the eagle warriors because I did not fear them. I stared at them at equals, had the guts to challenge them even though they were well beyond my place. Perhaps they knew as well as I did, the watchful guardians of our world, that the leaden circles of power that we so dutifully served were wrong, and there were new gods and old alike.

And the village warriors assembled at my feet, looking at the helmed eagle warrior and the true cuauhtli assembled behind me. I did not see fear in the trained, battle-hardened eyes of our men, but I saw determination and uncertainty, and I could forge those into whatever shape I wanted. The Nohuactl were good at hammering things into place.

I did not dare speak to them, though. My voice would betray me.

Instead, as the village elder himself finally hobbled out—a symbol, a puppet, no more; he held no power in those bony, wasted limbs of his—I allowed the warriors to bow to me, for the priest to light the bonfires in my honor as they believed that He had finally sent a sign from the heavens.

I threw my head back and raised my fist to the sky, allowing my spear to stab the heavens. Around me, the cuauhtli raised their voices in caterwauling unison, the harsh battle cry grating amongst the cloudy darkness.

And the warriors joined in. We were the Nohuactl, the bravest warriors on this world, and we would take it by storm if it refused to bow to us.

No one, of course, noticed that the deformed girl in her hut with her lip fused to her nose like the beak of a bird was missing, but she was weak and they were strong and that was the way of the world.

I would change that world.

[hr][/hr]
I heard the hints of apprehension as I and my cuauhtli brethren led our tribe to the camp of the pale-skins, whose fires had died down in the night. They were sleeping in their arrogance, and I knew that we could tear them down without question.

We struck with the speed and grace of the liepard, our spears making quick work of their flesh. The screams of the pale-skins were quiet in the night, and they died out beneath our own, for we were—

Stronger, I almost said, but it couldn’t be.

It was almost too easy. They were unprepared, and we came in and out as gently as the dawn, death sown in our wake.

But the pale-skins were mortal, and they fell like mortals, and they died like cowardly mortals, the looks of surprise still painted across their white faces as the blood began to paint their rainbow furs the same color as we all are inside.

I slipped out in the chaos and allowed our warriors to plunder as they pleased.

But watching from the forest as my flock gathered around me, their own beaks long ago stained red by the fighting, I saw something fascinating.

The pale-skins, too, had hearts just like our enemies did, and they beat and bled and broke the same way that all men’s did when we offered them to the great feathered serpent above in thanks for our victory and in prayer for rain.

The rains did not come.

[hr][/hr]
Instead, the pale-skins came once more, apparently unaware of their failure the night before. These must have been a different tribe, for they attempted to laud us with gifts and abscond with our gold.

I watched in the window, saw the calculation forming in the eyes of our men as we studied the imposters who pretended to be gods but had beating hearts and died just like the rest of us. We would not make the same mistake twice, even as they opened box after box of gifts and waited for ours in return.

I bared my teeth at the pale-skins, although they could not see me imitate them from my cage of a room, as our warriors descended upon their party and allowed their spears to find homes in the ribcages of men we had once feared as gods.

We were all mortal. That was the great secret I had told them, the great lie I had finally allowed my people to see—it was amazing, really, how I could see it and they couldn’t—and we all could reach for power if we wanted it.

We pinned their heads on wooden spikes to guard the road to our village, and I watched in silent satisfaction as the pale-skins did something useful, their bloodied pale faces guarding us from fools.

[hr][/hr]
We are the Nohuactl, and we hammer all into shape.

[hr][/hr]
Under my father’s helm, spear in hand, I led them like I never could. We fought as the brave warriors He had commanded us to be, and there were many hearts to be plundered.

And they worshipped me, you see. They offered me hearts as well, after the tenth, twentieth, hundredth victory against the neighboring tribes and pale-faces alike, for we the Nohuactl had nothing to fear from mere mortals.

And I, helm covering my scarred and scared face, masked, alone, accepted it and wondered if this was what godhood felt like.

[hr][/hr]
It was only after moons of bloodshed, when my mother whom I thought I had always hated died in an enemy raid that we expelled soon after, that I understood the bitter truth of my plight.

She bled out before my eyes, fixated, hands reaching out as her gasps slowed and the shaft in her heart finally sucked her dry, but I was the eagle warrior and I could not reach for her, could not stop fighting, could not fall to my knees and weep as I realized that I still had humanity left in me after all.

I fought, then, carved out more hearts than I had ever before, felt their lifeblood trickling down my fingers, staining my feathered wings and splattering my helm with blood, but as I hacked and hacked and hacked and held the beating hearts in my hands, offered them high into the sky even as the battle raged on, it was not enough, and she died.

I saw her truly then, not as the cruel, tight woman I had hated, with a pinched face like a pidgey and all of the ferocity of a liepard hiding beneath her wretched tongue, a warrior among our kind, but as a frail, weak old woman, her cooking pot her shield and her awl her sword as she tried to eke out a meager existence for her deformed daughter who only knew her father as a murderer.

She died with my name on her lips, but I was no longer her daughter, the cripple, but her daughter, the murderer, who had followed not in the footsteps of the mother but in those of the father, and now there were ashes in my wake.

Our village almost lost that battle, I was told, because the sacred eagle warrior and his fleet of cuauhtli had ceased fighting for no discernible reason.

They did not mourn the fragile old woman, mother of the cripple, because she was weak and they were strong and that was the way of the world, the world I had vowed to change.

[hr][/hr]
I raided that night.

It helped, a little, to prove that I was stronger by shedding great oceans of blood whenever I pleased, my spear unable to quench its thirst.

A little.

The cuauhtli orbited around me like a galaxy, each warrior a star in my constellation as I swept forward like an oncoming storm, their beaks thirsting for blood like I did. They and I fought like one, the angels of the great feathered serpent sent to bring retribution to the world that was cruel and unfair and needed salvation. They swerved and dipped, their rainbow incomplete in greens and reds like the dawn that they brought, and we carved a bloody swath across village after village.

The warriors I dispatched with no qualms. They were strong, but I and my cuauhtli were stronger, and it was our job to dispatch them.

But the women, the children, the crippled—

I and my cuauhtli were strong.

But if being weak was wrong, did being strong make us right?

There was still no rain, but there was enough blood to water fields and fields.

[hr][/hr]
I saw it then, the agony I had created without intending to, and I knew that I had done a terrible wrong.

The world wasn’t fair, but I couldn’t fix it. Even when I had the power, even when I had the entire village at my disposal, even when He sent his warriors in winged legions to assist me on his quest (and surely that was the reason why he had sent the cuauhtli, wasn’t it?), I was still too weak, for the world was too strong.

But I wasn’t wrong. I couldn’t be wrong. I, who wanted equality for all and a world in which no one’s mother had to die any more, couldn’t possibly be wrong, even if it meant spreading fire and brimstone in our wake to make the way smoother. We did this sometimes to grow crops, and burned all of the trees in our way to make room for the new corn to grow, the ashes of the old giving life to the seeds of the new.

And I couldn’t be wrong about this, for everything came at a price.

It was this world that was wrong, no doubt, and it was this world that would change rather than me.

[hr][/hr]
I pointed my spear in one direction, and the cuauhtli sprang off of my shoulder and buried his talons into the eyes of one of the pale-skins, causing the false god to reel back in pain, screaming and blinded. I spun in the opposite direction and sunk my spear into the next, watching him double over and die through the slits of my helm.

There was a rumble as loud as compressed thunder, louder than the screams of my cuauhtli and our eagle warriors, and there was immense pain in my shoulder and the smell of acrid smoke in the air.

Brow furrowing in confusion beneath my mask, I looked down the shaft of my spear to see the pale-skin, his teeth bared at me weakly before his defiance faded, a stick in his hand that leaked tendrils of smoke.

I truly felt the pain then, felt the impact of the hit send me reeling backward, clutching my shoulder and unable to choke back the scream of agony that tore from my lips.

Another clap of thunder, and his stick spat out a piece of metal, and one of my cuauhtli fell to the ground, his lifeblood giving life to the dirt, which animated itself in tiny rivulets to mark his passing with each throb of his beating heart.

I couldn’t—

No.

We were strong.

We were—

But did being strong make us right?

[hr][/hr]
I woke up surrounded, watching as they prodded at me with confusion.

My mask was still on. That was good enough. I leapt to my feet and then staggered again, head swimming as I tried to regain my balance, arms outstretched, and one of them jabbed a spear in my direction and I froze, back to the wall of some innocent’s house.

I blinked again, trying to clear my vision, and felt the comforting feathery touches of the cuauhtli around me. Had we lost?

But no, these were the men of our tribe, these were the spears and the masks and the warriors of the tribe that had birthed and betrayed me, and soon the betrayal was going to be complete.

“Unmask yourself,” the lead elder asked, his eyes wide with fear, and I realized then that I was cornered.

They had never loved me, never the way I had wanted it. They had feared me, yes, and for that they had obeyed me without question, but I knew the same reaction.

Unbidden, my hand crept to my shoulder, where blood from the wound from the pale-skin’s thunder-stick still flowed. I knew what it meant, knew from the time that I had first led our people against the pale-skins.

I bled, which made me human, which made me weak.

And they knew now that I bled like they did, that I could be killed like they could, that I was mortal like they were, and now they didn’t fear me any longer.

Another jab of the spear.

One of my cuauhtli hissed in warning, but I silenced it. No need to bring the dawn-bringers into this any more than they already were. This was my burden to lift, and it was heavier than all of the world, but I would bear it, laden like a slave with riches returning to appease an angry god.

I removed my father’s bloodied helm, hands trembling, and I realized I was afraid as well.

“A cripple,” one of them said, his eyes instantly drawn to the features that had forged me.

“A woman,” whispered the next, and I knew my fate was sealed.

[hr][/hr]
They would carve out my heart, they said, and offer it to the feathered serpent above to see if it pleased Him enough for rain.

I did not mind that; I had been taught from a young age not to fear death.

But it was the whispers that damned us in the end.

“The cuauhtli,” they whispered, pointing at my ragged and bloody entourage, we who had fought tooth and claw and beak in the name of protecting them, we whom they had betrayed. “How else could she have gotten the power to vanquish?”

My cuauhtli led the way, and I, the dutiful leader, prepared to follow.

The pale-skins came to us then, but this was the punishment that He had seen fit to rain down on his children, sending his gods to walk among us, to test our mettle, and we had failed in the fire of battle. In his eyes, we had failed him, but we would die honorably, our bloody talons pointed toward heaven in His name. I heard screaming and cursing and chaos as our warriors milled around and died, and the pale-skins pointed their thunder-sticks at us and split as asunder. Our cuauhtli visages could not protect us, and we fell beneath their magic as their thunder-sticks ripped our men to pieces, warm blood upon cold earth, the new gods to usurp the old.

“Help us!” a man screamed, his war helmet half torn from his face and the feathers crowning his brow falling to the ground to mix with his life on the dirt. He looked up to the heavens as his body rocked, the thunder-sticks sending him dancing as he fell, his helm useless to their powers. “Save your children!”

They spread their wings apart then, the wings stolen from His angels and sewn to their helms beneath the shoulder blades so that they, too, could fight with the strength of the cuauhtli. We had to be strong, like He commanded us, as He had gifted us to be.

They had hacked my cuauhtli apart, believing that I had drawn my strength from my eagle warriors and there was no other way that I could’ve gained my power, and I was soon to follow.

I knew then that we were lost, watching with my beak-lips still open and praying to the angels who would not come any more.

“Please!” the warrior was still screaming, but the others ignored him. We taught our children not to beg or fear death, for we are warriors who run into our lord and father, The Rayquaza’s, welcoming arms. We give him all that we can—our lives, our bloods, our hearts—and He rewards us with rain.

The cuauhtli would save us, as they always had. They still believed that. Our remaining warriors spread their wings too, holding the bloodied tips in their fingers and throwing down their weapons. The cuauhtli would save us.

I prayed, eyes casting upward as well, for although we all would welcome the return of The Rayquaza, there were less painful ways to go than at the hands of the pale-skins and their thunder-sticks. The cuauhtli came to me since I was a child, and I wanted them to come again. They marked me as a warrior, which meant that mine was to be a noble death.

The cuauhtli are masked. When I was a child, I was told they hide their faces from us because they are a reflection of Him, and His reflection is so blinding that we, his children and his humans, would be smothered.

But it was then that I understood the lie.

The cuauhtli do not hide their faces for the same reasons that we do. Our people paint our faces before we go to battle because to kill another is to do the unspeakable, and we cannot use our normal, everyday faces to spill the blood of the warrior. How could you murder a man and speak to your child with the same lips, the same eyes, the same face?

But the cuauhtli, I learned, were different. They hid their faces from us because, sometimes, they looked down at the world they had saved, the people they had protected, and they were ashamed. We quibbled like children and burned their beautiful earth to the ground, and they could not bear to look us in the eyes when we repented and cried out to Him even as his messengers on the wings of the dawn stood silent and stony.

And, standing from my perch and watching my world burn, I understood as well. I turned my face away and let them all go up in flames, even though I would surely join them in the dust if I did not join them in the battle, because we did not deserve salvation.

I was weak, after all. A female and a cripple.

If being weak was wrong, then being strong had to make you right, didn’t it?

The cuauhtli did not come, for they were no more. Our village had offered their hearts to The Rayquaza above, but He had abandoned us and the skies were empty without the feathered serpent and the rain fell down like tears from His face, but He had left us and His angels had left us and in the end we had nothing. And now he hid his face in shame.

They fell in the dirt, their stolen wings and their stolen beaks useless, and the pale-skins came to silence us forever.

We wanted to be angels, so we ascended on the wings of the dawn-bringers.

And we were so wrong.

[HR][/HR]

attempted captures: hawlucha, hawlucha
Note: I'mma use my story pass that Airik gifted me in the WGS to knock one of these hawlucha down to Medium-rank
character count: 31,521

 

Okay, well take that! I'm gonna grade this one then!

/claim

 

@Elysia; Okay, you said I could go in-depth for this grade, so I tired to be thoughtful without going too overboard.

Intro: The beginning lines of your story actually start with the title and then continue into the first sentence. I've seen a lot of poetry and some fanfics beginning this way, and it's a pretty good signal of what the rest of the story is about. This line gave me an ominous feel even before seeing the warning or reading through the entire story, which is fitting for what actually happens. Then again, that may be because I know the kind of stories you write, too, so that may have skewed my perception of it. Either way, I think it worked as a starting point.

After that, I definitely got the Aztec vibe right away. Rayquaza as a Quetzalcoatl figure is pretty cool. You had the appropriate tribal language to back it up as well. It made me really excited for the setting, since this time period hasn't been done much.

One of the only things I was uneasy about was not knowing for sure that the main character was human at first. Because I knew the story was for Hawlucha, I thought it fairly plausible that the main character could've been one of those because it fits in with the theme. This was impacted by Nohuactl, which has an added c for the word of the language. The 'actl' reminded me of 'dactyl' in prehistoric birds.

Of course, it became obvious later that the main character was probably human, especially when you brought back the Hawlucha again, but I was still left wondering for a few minutes. I think this was mostly because the story was in first person. A couple of context clues would help that, such as making reference to the fact that the gods were a lot higher than lowly humans or something else fitting to clear that up.

The only thing really out of place was the small bit about the deformity, and that was mostly because nothing more was said about it in the intro. I thought at first it was referring to maybe being a quiet child, since the story said tearless—I was thinking perhaps mute. We find out later that this isn't the case at all (in fact in the very next line), so I was wondering if that sentence even belonged there at all.

It's already structured as an aside with the parentheses around it, so would it maybe work better as an introductory sentence to the third section, the one that describes her not being able to leave the village? Where it is now seems like its just glossed over, and it actually comes into play a lot later in the story, through being the reason she's always locked away and a black mark on her in the eyes of the villagers, so it's worth bringing out a little more.

The intro does wrap up nicely, though. I'm a fan of one-liners. This one in particular ties back into the opening and then the bit at the end, so it definitely works.

Plot:

The plot was very interesting. I liked watching her view change as she took up arms and then realized that their way of life wasn't all that they said it was. The punch at the end with the different reasons for hiding their faces was particularly awesome. I also appreciated that she didn't lose her faith completely, which is where I kinda expected it to because of that whole from gods to mortals that bleed and die just as easily and the repetition of the rain never coming. Instead, she sort of came away with people being unworthy, and I thought that was a much more fitting end for what the character had stood for up until that point.

That being said, I think you could've really drawn on the main character's plight even more. I felt a lot of the story was summarized versus being shown, especially in the first half. That left me feeling a little split. I wanted to feel some empathy for the main character, but in a way, I didn't know enough to feel it. I didn't get very invested until the point when she took up arms in the village and rallied people behind her.

Of course, feeling for her did get stronger toward the end of the story, but I feel that it could've happened a lot sooner. She did keep saying things weren't very fair, but all I really did was gloss over it since I didn't have a lot of physical proof that it wasn't fair. All I had was her word for it instead of some action.

For example, you did this very well when her mother died. You showed the reaction, and then the girl went off and killed a bunch of people. I liked that part because it showed how the character was dealing with it. This was also more evident when the girl started to question what she was doing as she did it. However, when she brought up being flawed and trapped, I didn't really feel as strongly. The parts where she explained this were rather brief and summarized (like the third section). I think I would've much preferred to see some sort of scene to show this instead, like her trying to leave and her mother stopping her or something. Or people giving her shifty looks while walking down the street.

It also made a couple lines near the mother's death slightly awkward. When the girl mentions how she seemingly hated her mother before, I didn't really see it. Other than the assumption that the mother keeps her locked away and that she prays for a son, there wasn't enough interaction to make me believe it. The rest of the scene was well done, but that little detail bothered me and kinda shifted my perspective on it. It felt like a lot of the story was left out.

I also think the scene about the father could've been expanded. It was pretty significant that she stole and kept his helmet, especially because she donned it later to hide her face. There was also the comparison of her becoming more like her murderous father when her mother dies as well. Showing some emotion from the girl here would've made it easier to sympathize with her on her whole 'wanting to change the world' phase.

I have to assume that you did mostly summaries on these sections on purpose, because I know you can flesh things out when you want to. The battle portion where she was shot is a wonderful place where there was detail and plot and everything happening. Even if this would make the story longer, I think it would be worth it. I felt significantly more in the places you actually did expand and not so much for the rest of it.

The story gained more momentum when she sneaks out of the house to peek in on the meeting, but after that, it also drifted a little back into summary. I drifted in and out of interest until the girl actually was chosen by the Hawlucha, and I didn't really start to get invested until she rallied the rest of the village.

Even though you gave the warning up top, I don't really think the story was that bad, especially considering the culture. I think that the first raid she partook in on the outsiders could've been expanded some more, too. That was the point that she discovered that these pale faces were not from the Rayquaza at all and that they were mortals that could die just as easily as them. It was a big part of the whole gods/mortals theme being woven into the tale, especially when you make the comparison to her own warrior status when she was outed at the end. I think that describing it here more would make it even more powerful at the end to make both scenes parallel.

The only other thing I was wondering about was structure wise, and it was very minor. What would happen if the 'she can't leave the village' section came before the section about her father's death? This isn't a super big thing, but I was drawn to the last line of the father's section because you ended it with 'pinioned.' You did explain this entrapment in the next section, but if they were reversed, I think the pinioning part would be reinforced. That could also be a point to capitalize on her face because of her father's helmet and bringing up how the Hawlucha are masked, too, really driving the point home of how different she is from the rest (sort of desecrating her father's sacrifice by stealing from it and then her flawed face).

Detail/Description:

Your language is very good and was fitting for the topic. Like I mentioned before, I was very excited to see a story in this type of setting. That being said, I wish I could've seen some more of it.

Detail for people and Pokemon were very good, and some places were also described, like the camp where the white men stayed. However, a lot of it also stayed hidden. That was probably mostly impacted by the amount of telling verses showing in the tale, which is unfortunate. I think you could've milked a lot out of the setting details as well, especially in contrasting how different the main character is from the attitudes of the rest.

For example, what was the village like? What was their technology level compared to the invaders who had some primitive firearms? Was there something special about the place where they offered up hearts? Did it leave any kind of impact on the main character? More detail could've also been used to really describe the battlefields and how brutal the conflicting cultures were to each other. I know there's ratings and whatnot to keep in mind, but you already warned the audience so you may as well take advantage of it.

It would've been interesting to see if the main character got more savage in her actions too. Or the reverse, from savage to hesitant. That could've been a metaphorical statement about her doubts in people that was displayed at the end. There was a little of that already, like the fluctuation when her mother died and the end when she had just deemed them all unworthy, but I really would've liked to see the first raid and how it differed.

I also wondered about the main character herself. Other than her cleft lip, we don't know much about her. Not even a name. There's a certain charm to anonymity, since that can make a statement connecting to her belief that they were unworthy, but it is a little strange. A little detail about her physically could've been nice too. For example, how did she not get questioned before she was shot? I know she had the Hawlucha behind her so they were viewing her as godlike, but if she was a thin girl, that doesn't exactly say holy warrior.

More than that though, I was curious about her age at different points in the story. How old was she when she recognized that the other villagers scorned her? What's a realistic age to understand what her father's death meant? Was she still a child when she became a warrior or was she what equates to a teenager? These could've also helped develop her character a little, since we would've known if she was mature for her age, etc, especially because this Aztec culture is much different than the standard, run of the mill Pokemon world.

But since this was mostly a thoughts story from her perspective, I guess I can let a little of it slide. That comes with more summary than showing. It would've been cool to see more descriptions of things, especially when it impacts the main character, but there was enough for most of the people/Pokemon she interacted with, and I got a base feel for environment from the camp of the white man. Still, this setting is fascinating, and if you do another story with a similar location, I would love to see more.

Grammar/Mechanics: Nothing really to complain about here. You do very good endings for sections, which is something I specifically look for when I read. Those are the lines I most remember, after all. There were also a few one-liners that made things pop. Sentence variation was okay too, although you do tend to favor some long sentences (like mid 30s in word count), so be careful when you string too many of those together. It wasn't anything to complain about really, since you did change it up with some short sentences after. Just be mindful of that. Paragraph size looked pretty good to.

There was only one other little thing that I can't decide if it's plot relevant or mechanic relevant. When the white man came, there was a line that was slightly confusing:

Particularly with that still, it makes it seem like the Hawlucha were visiting more than the first time. I may have just missed something, but other than the introduction, I didn't see the Hawlucha coming to visit more often. This may just be a word placement thing, but it also gave me the vibe that there was more to the story that I just wasn't getting to see, too.

Nothing too major here, as I already talked about swapping the position of those two sections around. It's always a relief when I don't have to worry about grammar and stuff XD

Length: Since you knocked one of the Hawlucha down to Medium, your new goal is 30-50k. 31,597 fits nicely into that. Like I mentioned before, I think you could've definitely made it longer in some areas, but has no bearing on this part.

Reality/Miscellaneous: Nothing here that I didn't say elsewhere, other than maybe the logistics of a however-many-years-old girl posing as a heavenly warrior and getting away with it. Good to go.

Result:

Spoiler

Like I said, some parts could've been added to, but I understand about just wanting to get things done and losing motivation and all that. What you did have was strong, and it's not like I wandered around the story wondering what was going on. Next time I'd like to see some more setting stuff, and a little bit more showing on important scenes. I liked what you had, regardless.

Hawlucha: Captured
Hawlucha: Captured

If something I said doesn't make sense, please ask me. I've been trying to do the rest of this grade all day, and I kept getting distracted @[email protected]