48
Fly and Fly High
She had done it! She was doing it! What seemed like hours had passed, and Ember’s wings hadn't failed her. She was tired, but not as much as she’d expected to be. Not so much that she needed to find ground.
In all the exhilaration of her achievement, she’d not paused her racing mind long enough to consider what it was like to be something other than what she’d been all her life.
A raven.
She, Emberley Blackwood, had ceased to have two arms, and, in their place, she now had wings. Her legs had become talons. Her scarlet hair, her one vanity, was gone altogether in this transformation, and she had no care of it. She didn’t miss it. She didn’t miss any of it.
An icy wind rattled the trees, and she angled her head—her small, perfectly angled scalp, her curved beak—low
