1 Ai'oko and Red

Ai'oko led a normal life, like all the others on the farm she cared for herself and seemingly appeared out of nowhere. For as long as she could remember she had slept out in the old barn with the daylight shining through the dilapidated roof.

She was one of the only cats to inhabit the old barn, most of her company were stray chickens who wandered too far from the new barn and many rats and mice nesting in the old hay. Most of Ai'oko's time was spent sleeping where the sun could warm her golden and black fur, or chasing after the pests. For fun, she often found herself terrorizing the chickens; she ripped out their feathers and brought them to Sammy in hopes of getting some kind of treat.

Like every other day, she lay sunning herself, her fur reflecting golden and brown in the light as chickens roosted around her. Sammy came in, patting Ai'oko on the head, giving her a grumpy wake-up.

"Don't look at me chubby kitty, all you do is sleep" Samantha scolded the lazy calico, "go make yourself useful and kill some rats."

As if she had understood the human's gibberish, Ai'oko stood and stretched, readying herself to catch her morning meal, only this meal never happened.

Suddenly, the air crackled to life as if a thunderstorm were coming. The hens began stirring and becoming nervous, Ai'oko stood with her back arched and hissed as the sky darkened and lightning began to flash.

Sammy screeched as a crash sounded outside, and Ai'oko jumped a mile high, slowly they made their way to the barn's entrance. Ai'oko turned her ears, keenly listening to the strange noises coming from just outside the barn walls.

Lightning struck just miles away, and thunder rolled over the deep valley. Just barely could his cries be heard, the cries like that of an injured child.

Sammy gasped as she went out the doors and peered to her left, Ai'oko slowly following behind. There, half lying on the ground and half on an abandoned haystack was a boy no older than sixteen. He laid there as the storm rolled over only half alive. His face was bloody and bruised, his right arm mangled, and to Sammy's surprise, he had wings bent at odd angles under his half-dead body

It had been him who Ai'oko had heard from inside, he was moaning and crying out in pain, but now was unconscious. Sammy rushed forward to his body and began cursing and crying out, clearly panicking. She was used to dealing with wounded and sick animals, even humans to an extent, but she had never seen anything like him, only angels could compare

Gathering herself, she ran through the pouring rain towards the farm house, hoping to find her grandfather, Dr. Ford. The rain started pouring down as she ran, and when she made it inside she was already soaked to the bone.

Ai'oko slowly approached the avian boy, unsure of what to make of his lifeless form. She ultimately decided he was harmless and went to his limp hand. She began purring in a worried manner, rubbing against the boy's limp hand and attempting to clean his wounded arm.

Running from the farmhouse, Sammy managed to drag her grandfather behind her through the pouring rain. As they reached his body, Dr. Ford gaped at the boy in disbelief. He hadn't believed his granddaughter when she said that an angel had fallen from the sky, but now he had nothing else to rationalize what was in front of him.

Ai'oko sat on the boy's chest and began meowing for the humans' attention, also trying to save his life. Dr. Ford came forward cautiously and began to investigate the young avian, checking his pulse and wounds.

He made the decision that he must be moved, his wounds had to be sutured and sterilized. His right-wing, however, was beyond repair; it must be amputated.

Three days later Red began to stir on Sammy's bed, he had been asleep there since his arrival. He lay bandaged and bruised after all he had been through, things he refused to even remember.

It was that night that a raid had come in, and nearly every person was killed in the town. For only six months Red was there as a soldier, and he couldn't even help the people in their time of need.

Red was pinned to the ground by the hard boot of a raven, those who demanded constant war. He was held there with such pressure that his ribs began to crack, and he started suffocating. Just as he thought he was going to die, the raven relieved the pressure and instead leaned over him and yanked up Red's exhausted body.

The raven had a cruel smile on his face when beholding the poor hawk's state, and found pleasure in breaking his arm, Red unable to fight back due to exhaustion.

It was a slow and deafening pain as the raven help Red's arm over his head and slowly bent it in the wrong direction, enjoying every second of the torture. Red began to go blind with the pain, his breathing labored from the long endurance and his cracked ribs. He thought it couldn't get worse but the raven threw him back to the ground, down onto his face.

Lifting his boot high, the raven brought down all of his force onto Red's right-wing, cracking and shattering the bone. The young hawk's screams of pain and terror could barely be heard over the rest of the town being pillaged.

Red's vision blackened as the pain became too much, and the raven grew bored with his heap and walked away, deciding to torment others.

All he could remember was blacking out, and then the feel of rain and wind hitting his body. So suddenly he had been knocked unconscious and beaten senseless in the streets, but now he was high in the sky as if he were flying.

For three days Ai'oko sat and watched the boy's lifeless body. She played and purred within his limp arms, not caring that he was unconscious. She had taken a liking to him, which was unusual for the usually independent and nippy cat. Perhaps it was because he was unconscious, he had no way of bothering her and so she enjoyed her time with him more.

His warm body was pleasant for her to cool up next to without the worry of being annoyed by too much attention. So instead of sleeping out in the haystack for those days, she grew to enjoy the warmth and shelter of the indoors.

It didn't take long for Sammy to notice Ai'oko's attachment to the strange boy, she too was curious about him. He looked enough like that of a regular boy around fifteen or sixteen, despite having large wings.

Overall he looked like anyone, perhaps on the skinnier and runty side, but she could tell there was still power behind him. His large wings fascinated her, they were strange yet beautiful to see on a human body. His right-wing Had been amputated into a two-foot stump, but his left still remained in all its glory. The span of his wings must have reached over twenty feet when he had soared through the sky, but she shook her head at the thought. There's no way someone could actually fly and have wings.

It took three days for him to start stirring, and Sammy just happened to be sitting there attempting to read. Instead, she began staring at Red and wondering just where he was from and what his past was like. She couldn't help but notice his unusually dark skin with red hair, matching his red and tan wings. Everything about him impressed and ensnared her, all other males she had seen seemed to pale in comparison to him.