The rocky streets are rough against the torn soles of your shoes. Maybe when you have a bit more money, you will buy new ones. Probably not.

You pause in your walking to shake some dirt off your hair. You know that the dust that blankets the city of Praevehor is there for a reason, but sometimes it gets a little extreme.
The stuff is in your clothes, your shoes, even the bread that you hold clutched to you chest. Blegh.
Yet, it is still food, and that in itself is a blessing.
Here on these orphan-run streets, food is few and far between. You have been driven to stealing to get the meager amount needed to sustain yourself. Luckily, you fancy yourself quite good at it.
You keep walking again after shifting the weight of your satchel over your shoulder with your free hand. In the small bag you keep all your burgled goods, most of which you later sell. The others you keep as trophies of successful heists. Sometimes you suspect that keeping at least one stolen item from each day has begun to border on a full-fledged infatuation. Even though the money from those trophies could be better used for food, you feel you can afford the luxury.
Your eyes flit around the scenery as you walk. Short, dirt-colored houses are scattered all about the place, as if whoever designed the town had felt no need to include any streets.
He probably hadn’t.
When you look up, you can see adults gliding on the wind with mammoth wings, taking a billowing stroke every few seconds. Each feather is completely void of dust, even when their owner is covered in it.
It’s always odd to you how obsessed most are with keeping their wings clean. (Though you really shouldn’t be -- what with your own passion for pilfered knick-knacks.) You could understand if one did not want to be held down by water or mud coating their feathers, but really, the extreme that most go to is just ridiculous.
Your eye catches on a man strolling through the market with a condescending grin plastered on his face. He is clothed in the garbs of a Noble -- the only class lower than royalty. Golden bangles adorn his wrists, jangling as he walks. He is wearing loose, silk trousers and an embroidered tunic, tied at the waist by a jeweled metal belt. His wings gleam powerfully in the sunlight, just another brand of his class; the feathers of the lower classmen are splashed with muddy browns and midnight blacks, and even this man’s wings are not truly white -- more a soft, dove-grey. Only the feathers of royalty shine a pure white.
But that’s not what really strikes your interest. No, what intrigues you is the heavy purse dangling from the man’s belt. It briefly crosses your mind that you should be content with the loaf of bread in your hands, but you ignore the thought. More is always better, right?
You shove the bread into your satchel and start walking faster. You catch up to the man, and begin to match his stride. It takes a few seconds for him to notice you, but when he does, his patronizing smile widens.
“What do you want, dirt-wing?” he asks disdainfully, raising his chin as if to inflate his aura of haughtiness yet more. Snobby, are we?
“Well sir,” you say, making your eyes large and innocent. “I was wonderin´ if I could maybe get a closer look at those wings of yours. Men of your class hardly ever come to this part of the market, after all.”
He sniffs, smirk dropping from his face. “No way. Now skedaddle, rug-rat.”
You almost drop your angelic facade and blanch in dismay. Skedaddle? Rug-rat? What century is this guy from? Luckily, you stop yourself just in time.
“But sir, they’re just so beautiful!” you say admiringly, leaning forward.
The man inches away from your touch, still looking doubtful.
“And white!” you say for extra measure.
“Well…”
“Oh, thank you!” you gush, leaping forward to dig your hands into his feathers. When he is distracted, you slip a hand into his purse and snatch a handful of coins, then jump away, beaming happily. “Thank you!” You exclaim again, then turn on your heel and sprint in the opposite direction. You see the man rub his neck with confusion just before you vanish around the corner.
You are just starting to relax when you hear the man shout, “Thief!! Stop!” You roll your eyes and keep running. Why would you stop for him?
You hear police whistles from behind, and pump your legs harder. Though the Nobles are pompous fools, the cops here are no joke. Armed to the teeth and ready to kill, the police of Praevehor are known for their brutality. If they catch you… you don’t really want to think about it. You’ve seen one too many lower-classmen pounded into the dirt for scant crimes.
You throw your satchel to the side as you duck into an alleyway, not even faltering as you round the corner. You need all the speed you can get, and can’t afford to be laden down by unnecessary trinkets. You can always buy a new bag after this is over.
They’re not going to catch you; no way. You own the market. You know the dizzying twists and turns like the feathers of your wings. No way.
You take another turn, and come face to face with a sadistically grinning man.
You curse a bit before the policeman brings his club down on your head and you fall into a painful unconsciousness.

When you wake up, you instantly know something is wrong. You just feel so clean -- you’re so used to the presence of a thick coating of dirt that it had almost become comforting.
Oh yeah, and there’s the fact that you’re chained to a chair.
Thick, metal manacles bind your wrists to it’s hard, marble arms. The stone digs into your back uncomfortably, and you squirm a bit, but ultimately fail to adjust your position to one more preferable.
It’s only a few moments later that you notice the other people in the room.
Wow, that’s a lot of people.
They fill up the room to the brim, all dressed in finery that you know would sell for tons on the blackmarket. And every single one of them is staring at you.
“Let this court come to order!”  A voice from above you bellows. You twist your neck up in an attempt to catch a glimpse of the speaker, but all you can see is a pair of jeweled slippers and glossy white wings tips. White, white. As in Royal white.
You scan your surroundings, beginning to feel a little nauseous. The chair you sit on is on top of a podium of sorts, surrounded on all sides by stairs. In front of you are rows and rows of benches, filled completely by the upperclassmen. You have never seen so many Nobles in one place before. And had the Royal just said court? That was one word you could do without ever hearing from high-classed lips. The courts of Praevehor are known for being biased against the lower population. You’ve never heard of a lower-classman winning a case.
You fidget in the chair. You have never been one for sitting still, especially when nervous.
“Do you know the charges against you?” It takes you a moment to realize that the booming voice is directing at you.
“N-no?” you stutter before you can fully wrap your mind around the question.
“Please present the evidence.” The Royal says, completely ignoring your response to his question.
A Noble stands up. It is the man from before; the one you had stolen from. You swallow uncomfortably, but the movement does nothing to soothe your dry and aching throat.
“This wretch,” The man spits out the words like they are venom sizzling on his tongue. “Stole from me.” It takes a moment for you to realize he has finished talking. You almost want to laugh. That’s it?! That’s what this government considers enough evidence to be incriminating? You don’t really know what you were expecting, but this still seems… wrong.
The Royal is quiet. In fact, the entire courtroom is quiet. Eerily quiet. You can feel goosebumps forming on your arms, and fight to keep your breathing regular.
“Guilty.” That one word, accompanied by the bang of a gavel against wood, rings for a moment in your head. You don’t comprehend what it entails immediately, but when you do, you let out an indignant cry, straining against the chains.
“What?!” you shout.
The Royal once again ignores your words. “I’m in a bad mood today,” he continues. “So clip it’s wings, and throw it to the mountains.”
You fall limp back into the chairs at the Royal’s words, eyes glassy with dismay. It is one thing to clip someone’s wings -- it is another thing entirely to then exile the poor soul to the mountains.
It occurs to you briefly that the Royal didn’t specify which mountains. Maybe you will be sent to a nice, happy, mountain that won’t undoubtedly lead to your demise.
And maybe pigs will fly.
  As you were registering the punishment the Royal had dictated, you hadn’t noticed a Noble walking up to you. You whip your head around only to see her hold up syringe, complete with a wickedly sharp needle. You twist away, trying to avoid the woman, but the chains binding you to the chair once again restrict your movements, and the Noble plunges the needle into your arm.
You feel… dizzy… all of the sudden....

Pain. So much white, hot pain. It threads through your mind, cracking through the silence of unconsciousness. You hear a scream. Is that your voice making that inhuman sound?
Your wings burn. They burn like twin embers, like a never ending inferno of hurt and pain and hoarse screams that rip out through your throat.
And then the silence takes you once more.

The first thing you notice when you pull up out of the groggy unconsciousness is the pain in your head. You also notice the bumping, unsteady motion of the vehicle you are in does not help this pain.
You crack open a single eye, only to quickly close it again. The light filtering into the vehicle is bright, painfully so.
After a few moments of impossibly bright darkness, you slowly, carefully open up your eyes. You are in a closed wagon of some sort. It is sloppily pieced together from wooden planks, and splinters dig into your hands as you push yourself into a sitting position to get a better view. It is a painstaking task, as your wrists are bound together by a rough length of rope, but once you are up you can get a better sense of your surroundings. You are in an inclosed space, and the only way in is a door in one of the walls that is firmly sealed shut.
You shift to get more comfortable, only to let out a cry of pain as you jostle your wings.
Your wings!
You hiss as you turn as to get a better look at the appendages, but your neck is not exactly made to turn like that, so you can only catch a glimpse of the very tips of your brown feathers. Still, judging by the shooting pain that pulses from them, they probably were clipped as the Royal had ordered.
You sit numbly for a moment, letting the thought sink in. For one who the skies were a second home, being chained to the ground is an unbearable torture. Suddenly, you just want a hole to open up in the bottom of the wagon, and for the ground to swallow you, so that you can get away from this cruel place you call home.
The wagon jerks to a stop, sending you flying forwards. You groan in pain as you faceplant on the wood. The door opens, and you can see the legs of a soldier as he roughly grabs your arms and drags you out, ungraciously dumping you to the ground outside the wagon.
“Up.” he says through a thick accent, nudging your head with the toe of his boot. You moan in response, and he kicks you harder. “Up.”
You drag yourself to your feet, a lengthy and arduous process. You glare at the man from under your rumpled, dirt-streaked fringe. “Rude.” you say, taking a moment to survey your surroundings.
You are standing in the middle of a grassy field. Well, grassy is not exactly the right word. There is a lot of grass, certainly, but most of it is withered and yellow. And even though there are some splotches of green in the field, they are made up of mostly weeds. The wind howls relentlessly in your ears. “Nice scenery,” you comment. Predictably, the soldier ignores you.
Eventually, your eyes come to rest on what you had been trying to ignore -- mountains. They are purplish-gray bruises against the skyline, pockmarked with caverns and dusted with the skeletons of trees that had long since died from lack of water.
You laugh uneasily. “So… is that where I’m going?” You ask the man.
He grabs your forearm without replying and drags you towards the mountains. The mountains, which loom over the both of you like rocky grim reapers. The place where you will surely wither and die wandering seemingly endless caverns.
When you reach the base of the mountains, he stops. You crane your neck and look up, straining to catch a glimpse of the tops of the peaks, but the mountains vanish into the clouds about halfway up. You gulp.
The man ties an oil-stained cloth around your eyes, cloaking your world in brownish-black darkness. You wrinkle your nose. The blindfold smells like grease and despair. Wonderful.
The soldier shoves you, and you stumble forward in the direction he pushes you.
Soon, the grass under your feet gives way to rock, and the smell of pine fills your nostrils. Why pine? You have no idea.
You blindly navigate the tunnels, pressing your shoulder against the wall to keep from falling. Your wingtips drag on the floor, leaving twin trails in the dirt as you stagger forward.
You walk. And walk. And walk some more. The minutes fade into hours, and those hours fade into nothingness. There is no time here for you, only the lopsided beat of your feet against the rock.
Your ears occasionally pick up the traces of voices. Are you going insane? Probably. What’s your name again? You’re not sure. There is only the walls and the darkness and the smell of pine slowly, slowly suffocating you.
Your feet are bloody from shuffling on the rough, rocky floor. You wish your shoes weren’t quite so tattered.
You wish you weren't here, you wish the Royals weren such royal d*****bags, you wish, you wish, you wish.
Your foot catches on a rock that juts out of the cavern floor, and you fall forwards, not even bothering to thrust out your hands and catch yourself. You tumble through the air for a few agonizing moments, accepting the fate that undoubtedly awaits you, bracing yourself for the ground--
But the pain never comes. Instead, a pair of arms wraps around your torso, pulling you back upright. Hands lift the blindfold from your eyes, and you blink as light fills your vision. This time, though, the light is not painful. It is soft, gentle against your retinas.
You look up into a boy’s face. His sickly pale skin strikes you first. In Praevehor, where the sun is constantly beating down, you have never seen anyone with a skin tone lighter than a dusty caramel.
Then you realize something, something that hits you like a sledgehammer.
Your mouth opens, but instead of words, you make a sound akin to that of a mouse being stepped on.
The boy has no wings.
“What are you?” He asks, voicing your thoughts exactly.