Birds of Mage and Time

The light coming through the door of the daycare illuminated every tiny hair on her chin and cheeks. The sight of it shocked me to my core, along with the realization that came with it. My mother was gorgeous in every way a person might agree. She was smooth and smelled nice, with long, soft hair and painted nails and eyes. I guess she had never thought to shave her face, not with her hair being as microscopic as that. Plus it might make her feel she had a lot to shave. Better to ignore it. But I saw it. And that was enough. 

After she kissed my forehead and waved wistfully before leaving, I felt my own chin. Smooth. But I had hair like hers, I knew, tiny white hairs that caught the light like crystals. A flood of strangeness, not unpleasant, filled my body from the bottom of my gut to the tip of my throat, and I smiled. 

That night, I tossed in my sleep, the dream that had passed my nights since I could remember was different this time. It was the same all except one thing. The horizon bled with sinking orange and pink light and there was a forest far below. The sky filled up with the Birds of the Mage, their brilliant white not unlike a cloud turned golden by the end of day. It was all the same, the rise of immortal magic setting deep into the core of earth and giving strength to every living thing. Even as I woke, the impression of a beautiful green world full of prosperity was still imprinted in my eyes. 

But I woke up with a start because, unlike all those other nights, I was not watching with only a set of eyes like a spectator above the motion. This time I felt the weight of my body standing with my two feet. The downing sun warmed my face. The breeze, slight as a whisper, combed through my hair, including the hair thick beard on my face. I had been there, or I would be there.

Groggy still from sleep, I touched my chin and felt my cheeks, there was only the smoothness of my young skin. 

My mother was a mortal, already 35. My father had warned me that she would be gone in a blink and would never understand the gifts I brought with me to their mortal realm. Still, I wished dearly for her to feel how I felt when I relayed the premonition I had experienced first hand.

“It might have been a nightmare, having a beard.” She tsked and stroked my hair trying to comfort me. “Don’t worry dear, you can’t grow a beard.” She shuddered at the thought. She loved her smooth flawless face, rounded by blushing cheeks and framed by her soft blonde hair. 

But I knew that my start from sleep, my reaction to those scruffy beard hairs, had not been frustration, but excitement. The only frustration I felt was her not understanding the end of mortal  war and the rise of permanent peace. She would be dead long before then, that I knew. In the dream, I had felt a sadness for her that was numb with age, an echo of the mother I loved but understood to have lived a good life.

I wished dearly, as the young child I was, that she could experience the splendor of the end as I had. My father told me sadly that it was not possible. In the following weeks, I let her fawn over me. I let her fret over my food and kiss me multiple times before school. I welled up with tears to think what she would never witness. But I found that she looked at me with quite a similar look as I must have worn upon seeing what was to come. And she seemed endlessly happy with only me in her gaze.

At school, I attempted to tell my teacher of my vision. They knew less of magic than my mother, who believed to the end that my father was simply hiding in a resort somewhere instead of fighting a dreadful battle that would last another 40 human years. When I did tell them, I could see the confusion in their eyes when I came to the part where the hair grew on and tickled my throat. They liked to say, “don’t worry, honey, you won’t grow a beard.” But luckily, I trusted my magic enough to believe I would one day. 

Human science provided that to me the first prickles after a fresh shave at age 19. I did have to learn the magic to maintain it as the battle bled into the human realm and took many simple amenities of human life away. There was simply no time for milk in coffee, cars, and injectable hormones when the world had to learn to adapt to the all encompassing danger of war.

I was 46, in a form that would probably last another 10 decades when my father came to me after the war had ended. I had watched from my perch on the cliff as the sun sank that day and the greenery below swallowed the evidence of the bloody battle. 

It had been a long hard fight, one many believed would never end. I had known only of war since my father took me back to the immortal world due to the loss of my mother. 

The mortals I protected for a quarter century were uncertain even when I assured them of what I saw in my dream during childhood. They understood now, being my disciples. They enjoyed the chance of watching from various points of victory as the porcelain Birds of Mage rose from the earth and filled the sky. 

My father gripped my shoulder and said in all his hundred year wisdom, “My son, this could not have been possible if you had not clung to your vision. The script of time is a prickly thing and turns and bends purely out of spite. What was it that made you so certain, so secure that time themself could not deny it?”

The breeze flowed through my beard again, smelling like the sweet scent of magic and flowers. He would never understand how the simple fact that I saw who I was meant to be, sent me through every trial a victor. 

I simply shrugged. There was no trick to my accomplishment. What I had clung to was not a shortcut through time. It was something deeply felt. He had lived longer than anyone I knew, but even he could not comprehend that I had not mastered time. I had mastered who I was to become. And for that, the world had been saved.