Updraft

On a morning like this, fear is a blue sky emptied of birds.

I tried to quash my anger and fear. If I was being set up to fail, then I would fail spectacularly.

I had become an arrow of sound aimed at the most terrible creature in the city.

Singers say ‘tradition’ when they don’t want to explain.” “It’s more than that.” Wik shook his head, struggling for patience. “It’s about our history. About how people work. Traditions hold the city together, like the bridges do the towers. Once, we had no traditions. Only fear and loss.” There

I did—and if my stomach hadn’t been emptier than the sky before a migration, I might have been sick with it.

Worse, I had yet to go into open sky since the migration. The thought, even though the Singers had declared the skymouths gone for now and the skies safe, made my dinner feel like a pannier full of guano. Elna

This was why Singers clung to tradition. To Laws. Surprises conflicted too much with duty. Sellis