The reek of moldering seaweed hung above the thick, soupy bog. Sella gripped her climbing gear, scanning for monsters in the peat slopping around her calves.
Nothing came up. Yet.
I’ve fallen all the way to the surface. Tremors of panic coursed through the wing stubs on her back.
Stupid late wings. Her nest mother had said they’d grow in eventually, but “eventually” mattered a whole lot more now than it had on Mt. Hazi.
She’d gone and done the thing they warned hatchlings about. She’d wandered to the outer edge and had slipped on the cold, dewy stone. Sella, the clumsiest angel in the sky, her nest sister, Isa, always teased. A real cloud toot.
She had tried shooting her climbing gun into some trees. The hook had caught on some spindly branches, which had slowed her enough that she hadn’t hit her head or broken a leg when she landed. Thank Solace that Isa had insisted on her keeping a climbing gun.
Would anyone notice her missing yet? Probably not until noon, when she didn’t come back from her walk.
She tilted her head up and surveyed the sky. Trees seemed to float in the high, wispy clouds lining Mt. Hazi’s slope. Her home. Too far, too high for her climbing gun. The thousand feet of spider silk coiled in the mechanism would not reach the lowest of Hazi’s trees.
She could reach Mt. Pell, the lowest of the mountains. He smiled down like a jolly bard in the distance, maybe a few miles away. He had a silly mountain face, his cavernous lips in a permanent smirk. If she got close enough, maybe he could speak to Hazi for her and tell someone at home what had happened. She slogged forward, testing each step to avoid bog pits.