Midsummer Rain

It rained on the midsummer solstice. The sky drizzled pathetically, conjuring a mist that hovered just above the ground as I picked black feathers off a dead crow. This weather was abnormal in every possible way, no doubt spoiling the midsummer festival. Not that I would have gone anyway. Like I said, I was busy scavenging what I could from a corvid that had been run over by a wagon wheel.

“Poor thing,” I cooed, plucking feathers from the corpse. Its bones had been crushed and ground into the muddy road, so there wasn’t much left but a few feathers. But they were mine. They would not go to waste.

“What are you doing?” a low voice asked. Someone had approached and I didn’t even hear them coming. Odd. I looked up to see a knight. Or someone dressed as one at least. I wasn’t sure if they’d taken the sacred oath or just wore some fancy armor.

“Collecting feathers,” I said, shrugging.

The knight sighed, shifting their weight. “I need directions. Can you help me?”

Having picked the crow clean, I stood from the deceased and tucked my handful of black feathers into my pocket. I finally got a proper look at the knight. Ambiguous in gender, they were beautiful in an indescribable way. I’d never seen anyone like them before.

“Where are you going?” I asked, suddenly very aware of how muddy and presumably reeking of death I was.

“The temple in the north,” they said, gesturing up the road. “I wish to ask the assistance of the gods.”

I laughed bitterly. “The god’s won’t–” But I stopped myself as they gazed at me with such genuine hope that I couldn’t bear to dash it. I took a deep breath and sighed. “I’m going there myself,” I said, resigned. “Similar reasons, I guess. Keep going up this road, at the next town turn–”

“Will you take me there?” the knight asked, interrupting me.

I bit my lip and studied the knight for a moment. They had no idea who I was. They had no idea I was the disgraced and abandoned former champion of the gods. They had no idea that I was going to the temple to beg to be allowed back within their company. If this knight needed the help of the gods, I was exactly who was supposed to help them. Or at least I was. Back before I was banished. Shame gripped me, shoving itself down my throat and suffocating me.

“I can’t help you,” I said, casting my eyes down to the muddy remains of the crow.

The knight tilted their head to the side, studying me. The mist landed in their shoulder-length silvery hair, their eyes the color of the sky on a sunny day. “Why were you collecting feathers?” they asked.

“I was sad for the crow,” I said honestly. “I wanted to honor it somehow.”

“By taking its feathers?”

“By giving it life after death,” I said, turning around to show the knight the back of my cloak. Sewn into the black fabric were dozens of feathers from all kinds of birds.

“Soon you’ll have wings!” the knight exclaimed, not unkindly.

“Something like that…” I grumbled. I had a pair of real, functional wings when I had been the champion of the gods. But they were taken from me. I couldn’t tell if collecting feathers and sewing them into my clothes was a healthy form of grieving or a desperate attempt to get my old life back.

But before I could descend further into my spiral of muddy, death-scented despair, the stranger clad in silver armor held out a feather to me. I wasn’t sure where they’d produced it from, but they held it out to me with a gauntleted hand as if it were a flower. “They don’t have to come from dead birds, do they?” the knight asked.

“No,” I said. But I didn’t take the outstretched feather.

The knight tucked the feather behind my ear, determined to give me the gift. “Walk with me for a little while,” the knight said. “Only until the next town. Then we shall part ways.”

“Fine,” I conceded. They turned away from me and began walking down the road. I hesitated, touched the feather they had given me, then caught up to them.

“Where I am from, rain on the midsummer solstice is a bad omen,” they said. “What do you make of it?”

Anymore, it just felt like the gods showering me in spittle. “Hard to say,” I said.

“You have no superstitions about something so strange?” they asked.

“No,” I replied curtly.

The knight was quiet for a while as we walked, our boots making squelching noises in the mud. They did not wear their helmet, but kept it tucked under the left arm. “When you sew the bird feathers to your cloak,” they finally said after a long moment of silence, “do you think the birds can feel your love?”

“What?”

“The birds from which you gathered the feathers, do they sense the care and consideration you have given such a sacred part of their physical forms?”

“I’ve never asked them,” I said. How did the knight not find me repulsive for rooting around in muddy wagon wheel treads for dead bird remnants? I didn’t understand.

“Surely the gods will listen to your pleas,” the knight said. “I can tell you have a good heart.”

I wanted to burst out laughing. I wanted to erupt in sobs. I wanted to run into the forest. I wanted to scream. The gods hated me. They hated me down to my very bones. And yet I trudged through their spittle-soaked weather on the way to beg for a second chance. This stranger knew nothing about me. This stranger dressed in fancy armor was wrong.

Then the sun broke through the clouds. For a moment the mist fought against the sunlight, and it was unclear which would win out. The knight ran a hand through their hair, shaking off the water droplets clinging to it.

“It seems you are my good luck charm,” they said, grinning. “I do hope you continue with me to the temple. We are going the same direction after all. Surely I can’t be that terrible of a traveling companion.”

“You aren’t,” I said quietly. In truth, I didn’t know what to think of them. Their kindness was maddening, but only because they knew nothing of who I truly was. Or who I thought I was. The gods had thrown me away and made me feel like an abomination, but was I really?

As I stepped out into the sunlight, a strange new thought came over me. One that I had never even considered. What if it was the gods who were wrong?