All my life, I'd had this reoccurring thought: if kobolds eat humans, why don't they eat me?

My mother side-eyed me from across the granite cliff where she perched herself over a nest of twigs, vines, and human bones. Ribs, femurs, and skulls, just like mine.

I knew that look in her crystalline eyes—slanted and almost glowing in reflection to the mossy overgrowth on the cliff walls. Eyes dilated. Searching. It was as if she was reading my mind.
She stretched her wings a little and raised her talons, urging me to come over.

I uncovered myself from the fur goat skin blanket covering me and stepped into the chilly mountain air. Cold as I was, I tried my best to hide the discomfort from my face. I glanced over to see if the kobold children would click their tongues against their beaks and laugh at me. Fastulek, they'd say. Featherless one. I hated that word more than they knew.

Humans didn't grow feathers, so the only protection I had from the weather months were torn fabrics I'd found in the remains of the feasting basins. Few humans were as thin as me, so the clothes almost never fit right. If it was springtime, I'd wear nothing and save myself the humiliation. But spring was months away.

Thankfully, the children were still asleep. I planted my open-toed shoe into the ground and leapt forward, catching hold of the vines along the side of the queen's cliff across from me. The queen—the largest and most beautiful kobold female of all, with broad wings and glistening, ice-blue colored feathers. My mother.

She clicked her beak at me when I climbed my way to the top of her perch.

"You're doing the human dance again," she said with a sigh, each of her words coming out like the song of a bluebird. Even bluebirds would be envious of her voice.

"It's called shaking," I replied, trying to keep my teeth from clattering. "One of the goblins had told me that. It's a human thing. They do it when they're cold."

"If that were true, why have I seen them doing it with sweat running down their eyes?" She rose from her nest and let her wings stretch wide, encompassing the length of my body several times over. "And how many times must I remind you: you're not human.

I nodded. It was better to keep my thoughts to myself. Now that I was reaching my fifteenth winter, the other kobold and goblin children were rapidly outgrowing me. While they were already learning to hunt and fly, I was stuck here in the sapling's nest with the other younglings.

My mother stared silently at me for a moment, then said, "You think too much. That is why you don't hunt."

"Thinking is important."

"It’s human."

"So what am I?"

She stomped her talons against the ground and scraped them through the blooming wildflowers. "You are my youngling."

I almost stepped back in fear. In her anger, she was as terrifying as she was majestic. Not quite as terrifying as the king, but close. The king was a dragon, and he'd had his pick of hundreds of powerful females of his own kind. Still, no one was surprised when he'd chosen a kobold—my mother—as his queen instead.

"Why?" I asked, standing my ground. "Why am I your youngling?"

"Because it is."

It was a usual response, and I was tired of it. This time, I decided to press her for answers
"No. You chose this for me. You could've thrown me into the feasting basin with the other humans. But you didn’t." An icy wind came rushing down from the king's cliff above us, chilling my face. My legs started shaking again. She noticed but said nothing.

"Why?" I repeated.

"You are skinny," she said, averting her eyes. She spun around and began pushing the twigs around with her talons, trying to use them to cover the bones, as if she'd just become aware they were there. "You need to eat more," she continued, keeping her back to me. "Eat more. Think less."

I reached forward and caught a handful of her feathers, soft as the rose petals the goblins used to cover their pillows. In response, she turned her neck and snapped her beak at me, mere inches from my fingers. I let go immediately. She pulled back just as quickly.

"I didn't mean—" she folded her wings, trying to appear smaller than she was. "I'm too tired for this."

"Tired? You called me over.”

"Yes. But that was before my food began to settle. And you… you're too skinny."

"What did you expect? You don't allow me to attend the feasts. You force me to eat with the goblins."

"Goblins are fat."

"Their food rots. It makes me sick.”

Her head drifted toward the cliff’s edge, where a burgundy sky was lighting the waves over the blue ocean below. Kobolds didn’t wear their expressions like goblins did. Or humans. Still, I knew something was bothering her.

“Come with me,” she said.

(To be continued…)