A Mortal Who’s Worth It

I thought I hated all mortals.

In my mind they were foolish creatures, weak and insufferable, ugly and greedy, pathetic and argumentative. They were the race bearing a lack of compliance or acceptance for another's differences. Seeing the perspective or point of view of a person standing right next to them was a feat that didn't come naturally and a skill far too few achieved. They were quick to wage war, but quicker to beg for their meaningless lives.

Such a being was too easy to kill, off a whim.

I stopped trying to understand mortals long ago, so on a particular fateful day, I didn't question why an infant mortal was left alone in a dessert, unmonitored and defenseless.

Its wailings were faint. Had I not been a superior race, I would have flown past it without realizing. Instead, off a whim, I descended towards it.

I remember the wailing stopped once my claw reached the sand. I had never seen one that small before. My wings curled around the creature - call it predatorial instinct. The sunlight cast a faint red shadow through the thin of my wings and against their curious little eyes. Its sun-tanned hand stretched away from its strangled blanket and out for me; an empty threat, one I chose to ignore.

I stooped down to its level and the first thing it decided to do was reach for my hair, pulling the red strands in tiny bunches - as I said before, 'quick to wage war'. I grabbed it by the wrist and raised it up high for a better display. It fainted. On another whim I decided to bring it back with me.

I thought once it reached my den I'd want it dead, but it intrigued me with its strange behaviour, making bubbly scream-noises anytime it saw something new. I fed it and decided to keep it around. It wasn't like the other mortals I hated so much, this one possessed a certain light.

It gave me a thought.

What if I nurtured this light? What if I grew it in a way that could improve the species from within?

So I did. I became a sort of mother, or father perhaps - I forgot what they were called.

It grew fairly quickly and I grew used to its company. So used to it, in fact, that I found myself preoccupied with needless thoughts on its safety, its wellbeing, and its joy. I grew fond of its expressions when I took it for a fly. I had to protect its bubble-scream, and its gentle, constant, expression changes. I had to give it more reasons to latch its arms around me. I had to make sure it wouldn't wail and leak through the eyes in that awful way mortals do.

I paid attention to the many, many things that could cause its demise. Since falling over could cause it to bleed, anything greater than that was a threat. I hated this. This threat-list made me do crazy things; like take the full force of an attack to shield it from harms way, or dive into a lake that naturally seeps my energy to prevent it from drowning, or beg...

beg other mortals to spare its targetted, fleeting life in exchange for the immortality of mine.