BlackBird

MoonPhaze Publishing is just about ready to post my next 'book' onto www.smashwords.com. I understand they just want to double-check the title page, add a few lines of advertising to the rear to tell readers what's coming, attach the cover and then upload it. With any luck, you'll be able to read this next offering on Thanksgiving Day, maybe as you sit and digest turkey and dressing.

This is another story about Atlans, and as I've mentioned in other blogs, there are 27 known 'types' of Atlans. The main character of this story is a BlackBird, an Atlan premier warrior. Why would they name their warriors after a small bird?

In the very beginning, they didn't. BlackBirds have black hair, black eyes, and a black birthmark in the shape of a sword – all the signs of Crassus, their God of War. But since the Atlans don't get along with that particular god, they didn't want to name their warriors anything that might be a perversion of his name. Also, it took some time for the Atlan population to grow from the 3 original girls to a population that had several of most types, and for them to figure out that each combination had a different set of Powers. So, for the first few generations, the group of Atlans with black hair and black eyes were called 'Blackies'.

Even on their remote island home, the Atlans knew the small, black birds that came seasonally from the north. At first, they were thought to just be small birds. Then a pair of large birds of prey came to the island and set upon all the smaller birds; the white canaries, the orange finches, the multi-colored parrots ... but not the small black birds. Intrigued, the Blackies watched the birds of prey, prepared to hunt the larger birds to keep them from decimating the populations of the smaller birds. But the raptors evaded the first arrow, and after that, they both stayed out of range of Atlan bows. They must have been hunted in other places.

Then they spotted one of the raptors, orange finch in his claw, under attack ... by one of the small black birds! The raptor looped and spun, its beak snapped a hair's breath from black feathers again and again, but the blackness was a whirlwind, flying circles around the bigger bird, darting in over and over to pull off a feather here, take a nip of skin there. The finch was released and fell a few feet before it got its wings functioning and hurried off. The BlackBird kept up its attack until the raptor straightened, spread its wings wide and set off for the distance.

It was a hard thing to believe, but after seeing it a few more times, and after comparing the all-black Blackies' fighting skills to those of the rest of the tribe, they began to call their warriors BlackBirds. They were two creatures of one kind.