In the old days, when magic was still alive and well in this world, humans were the least of Earth’s sentient species. Superior to men in strength and cunning were many other races. One of those races was the race of the crowmen, living where no humans could in the heart of the sand deserts, in palaces of sand and lime.

On one such old day, a fierce wind raged outside, sweeping the sand back and forth so a traveler would think himself attacked by bandits wielding whips and arrows. The prince of the black crowmen was bored, and that was never a good thing.

“Tell me, Sehun,” he said, dark eyes glittering the same shade of blue-black as his feathers, “how long have I been trapped in this infernal palace?”

“Four days, sire,” his attendant replied carefully.

“And why is that?” Kai asked resentfully.

“The gods have sent a sandstorm to punish the infidels. Go outside and you will be swept away at once, sire.”

“The gods? There is only one God in this world, and His hand does not interfere in the affairs of this world.”

“One God with many faces, many incarnations, sire.”

“I am not afraid.”

“Your father is. Who will lead the black crows when you are gone?”

“My father is old, and senile. I am a man grown, and if I wish it I will go outside.”

“I cannot stop you, sire, only warn you.”

“And who are you that the prince of the black crowmen must heed your warning?”

With that, the prince unfurled the wings resting along his back and flew, sending clouds of dust billowing up from the sandstone floors of the palace. Sehun watched him go, and when he had disappeared from sight went to the shrine to pray for his safe return.

…

When Kai flew into the sandstorm bits of sand and dust flew into his eyes and whispered through his glossy feathers. The winds blew him this way and that, but his wings were stronger than most, his eyes sharper than most, his feathers finer than most. He survived the storm, though he flew for three days and three nights without any rest. On the fourth day the sandstorm was left behind and he landed in an oasis town of the humans.

Crowmen were not welcome where humans tread, so he willed his feathers to shrink back into his skin, leaving only a pair at the base of his spine to show that he was not human. On the outskirts of town he killed a man and entered the town center dressed in the ways of the humans, covering his bare chest and hiding his princely raiment under billowing clothes of gauze.

“What is this place called?” he asked a man drawing water from the well.

“This is Gis, a town of the horse people,” the man said. “Who are you, and where do you come from?”

“I am Kai, from the desert,” he replied, and resolved to wait in the shade of a nearby tree for something to happen.

The air was sweltering and dry, and the sun beat down mercilessly on his dark hair, but Kai had sought an adventure, and an adventure he would have. For hours he sat there, face hidden in shadow, a stranger no one dared disturb for the faint outline of strong shoulders and arms under his clothing.

For the rest of the day nothing of importance happened to him, and when night fell he flew over the desert, filling his stomach with stars and wind. But in the morning of the next day there was a great commotion in the town, and Kai looked up from his seat under the tree.

“Make way for the white crows!” called a strong voice, and Kai’s talons almost emerged from where they had sunk into his fingertips and toes.

Before the crowd could reach the town center, he disappeared into the shade of a nearby building, hidden from sight. As he watched the scene unfold before him, he noticed how the townspeople disliked the white crows’ presence in their town but how they seemed almost afraid as well. He craned his neck to see the crows out of curiosity--one crowman could fight three humans easily, but even a group of crowmen was no good against the combined efforts of a group of humans, with their steel and fire.

There were six of them, five with the crown of head-feathers and folded wings signifying nobility. They were the exact inverse of Kai’s own appearance, with feathers the color of clouds and sea foam instead of the color of night. Except Kai knew it was wrong, because crows were black, and anything else was blasphemy. The white crowmen were inferior creatures, not as swift or as strong as the black crowmen, and Kai knew when he got close enough to look into their eyes, they would be the bloodred of the albino mutant that was their ancestor.

The last, however, had neither the man-crow form of a noble, with all of the man and the crow features, or the crow-man form of a commoner, with all of the crow and some of the man features. Where he should have had wings for arms and talons for feet, he had a human figure and a pair of wings sprouting from in between his shoulder blades, white as snow and thick as velvet, and somewhere in Kai’s astounded mind he was reminded of an angel.

…

The angel’s name was Luhan, and he was a prophet, given by God the gift of foresight and the ability to work miracles. From the moment Kai set eyes on him, he wanted him for his own, white feathers and red eyes or no.

It is the right of the strong to take from the weak, so it would have been Kai’s right to steal Luhan away and hide him in the palace of the black crowmen forever. However, the five crowmen guarded him day and night and it would be no easy feat to slip past their watch. For this reason Kai decided that he would pretend to be a cripple seeking the guidance of God. Thus disguised he would meet with Luhan alone and kidnap him that way, with the crowmen none the wiser.

So while the white crowmen entered the town’s only tavern and refreshed themselves with the song of the town’s only singer, Kai sought Taemin, a warlock he knew and who lived close by to Gis. Taemin could change him into a cripple with a snap of his fingers, and change him back with a snap more.

It took him the rest of the morning to locate the warlock’s lair, hidden in a dune of sand so only the most practiced eye could detect it. He himself found it only after changing into his true form and listening for the fizzle and snap of magic in the air so characteristic of a warlock’s dwelling. When he knocked twice in the air and placed the palm of his hand on the ground, his friend emerged from the dune and, taking his hand, welcomed him inside his house.

It was a single dark room with packed dirt walls and a stone floor, surrounded by shelves cluttered with jars and boxes spilling over with various powders and potions. Taemin motioned for Kai to sit at a single wooden table in the center of the room, across from a cauldron bubbling with a viscous blue liquid.

“It’s been so long since I’ve seen you last,” Taemin said when he sat down, smiling, “Jongin.”

Kai scowled. “I go by Kai now--my wings have reached their full size at last.”

“Oh yes, Kai,” Taemin corrected himself. “I’d forgotten the ways of your people.”

“It matters not,” Kai said. “I’ve come to ask you a favor.”

So he explained his plan carefully and in detail, sitting back when he had finished to observe Taemin’s reaction.

“What do you think?” he asked. “Can you do it?”

“I have a bracelet that can do the trick easily enough,” Taemin answered, “but while you were explaining your plan you failed to specify what was in it for me.”

“Is it not enough that we are friends?” Kai demanded.

“Of course it is,” Taemin said. “But you know, it’s very expensive for me to make these little trinkets, and oh so tiring too. If I could only have something of yours in return, I would be delighted to help you.”

“Fine,” Kai said, “what is it that you want?”

“Just one feather from those great big wings of yours,” Taemin replied, playing with a loose strand on his cloak.

“That’s easy enough,” Kai said, and reached backward to pluck one of the largest from his right wing.

Taemin took it and turned it over in his hands, examining it carefully. When he seemed satisfied, he took a pouch from inside his cloak and placed the feather inside, pulling the opening closed afterward.

“What will you do with it?” Kai wanted to know.

“I don’t know yet,” Taemin said with a smile.

He stood and from a drawer laden with jewelry extracted a plain bronze bracelet clasped with the claw of a crow. When he placed this in Kai’s hand, Kai took it as his signal to leave, but Taemin stopped him. He placed two more bracelets into his hand, a matched set of gold and silver.

“The wearer of the silver bracelet will never be able to be parted from the wearer of the gold one,” he said. “Use them well.”

“Thank you, Taemin,” Kai said.

He clasped hands with his friend and left the secret place, back into the bright sunlight outside.

…

Kai’s plan worked well enough. One look at his face speckled with illness and his back hunched in pain was enough for the crowman guarding the prophet to let Kai inside his room.

“Be quick about it,” he said, red eyes shining. “The White Prophet will leave this place at sunset.”

“I will,” Kai croaked, his voice cracking an octave lower than he was used to.

When the door closed behind him Luhan was looking out the dirt-stained window at the horizon.

“Sit,” he said, without looking behind him.

Kai sat.

Five minutes passed before Luhan stood, his wings sending the slightest breeze throughout the room as he sat down in front of Kai.

“What is it that troubles you, old man?” he asked.

Kai was ready with his story.

“I have been plagued with illness since I was a child,” he explained. “Never able to find a job or attract a wife, always in constant agony from sores and bodily pains. I have always wandered the desert, begging for scraps and pocket change. However I am satisfied with this. I have always been a God-fearing man and a good citizen. It is only now, as I feel my life begin to slip away, that I worry about the pilgrimage I have not made to God’s holy city. What will He think of me, White Prophet?”

Luhan smiled. “You have nothing to fear, old man. God is a benevolent one, and he will spare your inadequacy. Let me give you something for your pain, so that you may die in peace.”

He turned his back, and in that moment Kai ripped off the bracelet, which fell to the floor, and revealed his true form. Leaping forward, he wrapped both arms around the white crow and broke through the window with the talons on his feet. The sound of breaking glass alerted the crowman outside the door and just as he threw the door open, Kai lifted off into the night sky.

…

(“Your prophet has been stolen away, U-Know,” Micky laughed, swilling around the contents of his goblet.

“Be quiet,” U-Know snapped. “I know that. The problem is: how do I get him back?”

“How?” Max asked.

It was quiet as the five gods pondered this issue. The heavenly room in which they sat shone with light so bright it would kill any mortal, and the sweetest music flowed from beneath the nimble fingers of hidden musicians.

“It makes no matter,” U-Know decided. “The crowman must first be punished for meddling with the gods.”

“What will you do?” Xiah wanted to know.

“You cannot kill him or you will anger the king of the gods,” Hero warned. “Killing a mortal is dishonorable, and the crowmen are his chosen people besides.”

“I know that,” U-Know said, “but there are many ways to punish someone without killing him, and many ways of having him die without killing him.”)

…

“Where are we going?” Luhan asked after they had been flying for a few hours. A silver bracelet glinted on his wrist.

“To the palace of the black crowmen,” Kai replied, not looking back.

“What is it like there?” Luhan asked.

“Boring,” Kai said. “It’s always dark and quiet, and when the moon shines the entire place turns into shades of gray.”

He was beginning to explain the palace’s layout when the black clouds overhead rumbled.

“A storm in the middle of a drought?” he wondered.

“Maybe it was sent by the gods,” Luhan suggested.

“I thought you were a prophet of God,” Kai said.

“God is but one name for Him. He has many shapes and forms,” Luhan answered mysteriously.

At that moment lightning split the sky and it began to pour. A wind picked up and blew them this way and that while they quickly sank under the weight of the rainwater.

“We have to land!” Kai yelled over the roar of the storm. “But where? There’s no cover in the sand!”

They could return to Gis, but that would mean running into the white crowmen and having to return Luhan. Kai could never do that, so he fought the storm and the will of the gods, dark wings buffeting against the wind uselessly.

“There is the ruins of an old city ahead!” Luhan shouted. “We can shelter there until the storm passes!”

The white of Luhan’s wings were easy to pick out in the black of the night, and Kai followed him down to the dusty stone skeleton of an ancient city. One building with a roof but only two walls still stood, and they landed there, pressed against each other against a wall.

…

When morning came Kai found Luhan sleep against his chest, the white crow’s wings a blanket over the both of them. He stood and carefully rested Luhan’s head on the ground, trying to rearrange his wings more closely against his body.

Kai was very pleased with his success, and after he had stripped from his wet clothes and put back on the feathery clothes of the crowmen he dared to defy the gods. As he laid his huge wings out to dry he said:

“If it truly was the gods that sent that storm, they must have been weak gods to allow a mortal to escape so easily.”

This was his mistake, for as he finished speaking the ceiling of the building which had stood for so long cracked down the middle and fell on his left wing. The pain sent shockwaves up and down his spine and he cried out as he felt the delicate bones inside his wing break.

His cry woke Luhan, and the prophet stood up, looking around. When he saw what had happened he immediately set to clearing the rubble from on top of Kai’s wing. He was quiet as he worked, but Kai complained loudly and often, tears of pain streaming from his eyes and wetting his bare chest.

At last all the rubble was cleared and Kai’s wing was visible, dripping blood and bent in several places.

“I can do nothing but set it to heal,” Luhan said, looking at Kai.

He began to wipe the blood away with Kai’s discarded clothes and when he was done looked for a splint. It came in the form of a branch from some long-dead fruit tree in the city’s center. Using the rest of Kai’s clothes to tie the splint in place, Luhan worked his fingers over the length of the black wing and smoothed the bones back into their places. All the while Kai gritted his teeth and felt the tears run down his face. When Luhan was done he looked up.

“I thought you were a miracle worker,” he accused.

“Is being able to fly after having fallen not a miracle enough for you?” Luhan asked in reply.

…

With one wing crippled Kai could fly no longer, and Luhan could not bear his weight for long. They covered their wings with cloaks and began to walk in the direction of the palace, beset by the renewed force of the desert sun and the humidity left over from the storm. As they walked they told each other stories from their different people, commenting over the subtle differences that marked a black crowman’s story from a white crowman’s.

In the nights, they searched out the shells of towns destroyed or starved. If they could not find one of those, they slept in the shade of a large sand dune, blinking grains of sand from their eyes in the morning. When they could not sleep, they would lie side by side and clasp hands. Then they would kiss hungrily, Kai’s fingers working their way into Luhan’s sandy hair needily. Luhan would hold Kai’s wrists gently against their chests and entangle their legs, his strong wings brushing against Kai’s broken one and raising goosebumps on both of their chests.

“How much farther?” Luhan would ask every night, a finger tracing Kai’s collarbone or shoulder blade.

“Not much,” Kai would reply, stretching his injured wing.

But it was hard for Kai to remember the way home when he had flown so quickly on his way away from it. He began to have the feeling that they were wandering in circles, or perhaps in the entirely wrong direction. Luhan went along with it--he had no desire to visit the black palace Kai had spoken of.

On the third morning after the storm they encountered a monster in the sand and though Luhan heaved Kai into the sky to avoid its reaching claws the black crowman’s calf was injured, leaking blood onto the desert as Luhan sped away.

On that night as Luhan bound the injury Kai pondered how far he’d come--from his lofty position as prince of the black crowmen to a wanderer in the desert, homeless, surviving off the whims of the world.

“When we get home,” he told Luhan, “we’ll sleep for days. It’ll be cool and dark inside the palace, and for once we won’t have to hide our wings.”

“Okay,” Luhan said, and pecked Kai on the lips before pulling him down on top of him.

On the seventh afternoon after the storm Kai was afflicted with a terrible madness and sat in his tracks, casting aside his clothing and spreading his body wide over the sand. He refused to move, and Luhan sat with him, leaning against a sand dune with a hood pulled over his face.

When night fell, Kai stood again, but his skin was burned red and sensitive and he could not walk for the pain.

Two days after that, a huge rock fell from the sky and shook the earth so Luhan and Kai were separated, looking for each other amidst the dust. As Kai wandered, he wondered if he had heard Taemin correctly about the bracelets--though he wore the golden bracelet he felt an unbearable pain in his chest from being too far away from the wearer of the silver bracelet. When they were finally reunited both of their hands were cut from sifting through the broken pieces of rock.

So this continued for twelve days and twelve nights after that first storm, with the two travelers trying to find a way home despite all the efforts of the gods. Then at last, on the thirteenth morning the black spires of Kai’s palace appeared in the distance, a mirage to all but the crowmen themselves.

…

Baekhyun was there to greet them when they arrived.

“You have visitors, sire,” he said, grimacing.

Kai only cast his cloak to the ground and took Luhan’s hand in his own, entering the palace with his broken wing spread for all to see. In the throne room he was surprised to find, along with the five white crowmen, the warlock Taemin.

“My son seems to have returned,” his father said as he saw him enter. “Tell me, son, how was your journey?”

“Fruitful,” Kai replied, “though I cannot say that I enjoyed it.”

“Is that so?” asked one of the white crowmen. Kai glanced at him and nodded.

“Yes. Many days ago I left this place in search of an adventure to be sung of. I found it, though I have but gained an overwhelming desire to never leave this place again, and Luhan, the White Prophet.”

“That may be so,” interrupted another of the white crowmen, “but you have still stolen what is God’s.”

“Not so,” Luhan spoke up, surprising everyone. He unclipped the silver bracelet from his wrist and let it fall to the ground. “I left with Kai because I no longer wanted to be your prophet. I was free the entire way--the bracelets meant nothing.”

Kai started and looked at the bracelet on the ground, and then at the one on his wrist. Indeed, they were nothing but bits of cheap metal painted over in silver and gold. He didn’t know how he had overlooked such a thing, but one could overlook a lot that one wanted to overlook. Taemin smiled mischievously at him when he threw a glance the warlock’s way.

“But why did you stay with us for so long?” asked the third white crowman. “Why were you our prophet for so long?”

“Do you think I wanted to go against the will of God?” Luhan asked. “God cannot interfere in our affairs, but the gods can--the gods that are in the wind and the water. And the gods are but manifestations of God Himself. Everything in this world happens because God willed it, and the gods carried it out. Being kidnapped by Kai was simply a way of escaping without angering God.”

…

(“What a twist of events,” Xiah marveled, whistling to himself.

“How does it feel being tricked, U-Know?” Micky teased.

U-Know did not reply immediately, but recrossed his legs and took a sip of the goblet of nectar he held.

“Now you have to punish both of them,” Max pointed out. “They both have defied you, in a way.”

“That warlock is pretty tricky too,” Hero mused. “Giving you that feather so you could track their movements, but first betraying you by giving Kai those fake bracelets. What will you do with him?”

“I cannot take back what I have already given,” U-Know began, thinking out loud. “Luhan must keep his powers. Kai has proven difficult to kill, and now that he has returned to the palace he is under the protection of the king of the gods.”

“The white crowman Kris is still under your control,” Micky suggested. “Why don’t you have him drive them into the desert together? They will wander in circles until the end of time.”

“You’re right,” U-Know agreed. “If they both mislike their powers so much, they will never be able to use them again--they will walk forever in the heat of the sun, with dust swirling around them, Luhan with no miracles to work, Kai forever unable to fly with his broken wing. So it will be.”)

…

So the gods willed, so it was. Kris the white crowman warned war on the black crowmen if Luhan and Kai were not punished, banished to the desert wastes. They were driven into the desert, in the day walking up and down sand dunes with no purpose but to walk, in the night lying side by side with no purpose but to be close. As for the warlock Taemin, the gods were so impressed by his trickery that he went free to continue his magic.

The white crowmen and the black crowmen were still bitter enemies, but forever after they told the story of Kai, who so wanted adventure that when he got it he only wanted to return home, and Luhan, who was born gifted but wanted nothing to do with his gift.