Wings

All this for a lousy piece of metal. Akara scoffed, looking at the flimsy pin in her hand. It wasn’t even silver. Just a crappy piece of tin Carna found in the junkyard. It was beautiful in its own way, she supposed, turning it over and over in the light coming from a flickering fluorescent rod overhead. Each feather was intricate, the wings curled in on one another, the very picture of innocence.

The effect was somewhat dulled by the brown flakes on the edge of the pin and Akara took to scrubbing them off with the hem of her tattered shirt. She gave up after a few moments, realizing that her shirt was even more filthy, still crimson in the places that had yet to dry. Blood. Blood everywhere. Akara squeezed her eyes closed against the onslaught of images flashing through her mind, but it did little to calm her racing mind.

A knife, glinting through pools of darkness, coming away slick with blood. The metal slipping in her hand as she struggled to bring it down again and again, skin giving away to soft muscle and smooth bone long after the man was dead. His eyes, those damn eyes, the ones that had watched as Akara's mother died in his arms, unmoving as he raised the pistol to her temple. His eyes now watched Akara, standing emotionless over his bloody corpse. She let him watch. You were supposed to close the eyes of the dead, but Akara couldn't be bothered. As if closed eyes can convince someone that the dead aren't gone but rather asleep. He had closed her mother's eyes before walking away, the touch tender on her paper-thin eyelids, as if he was putting her to sleep instead of condemning her to death. He was not worthy of such foolish customs.

Akara thought revenge would bring her peace. It didn't. Perhaps it brought her something even more valuable, though. A purpose. Everyone in the slums knew about Seraph, the gang of self-proclaimed "Angels" who hunted in the slums, killing indiscriminately. Few realized that their targets were far from random. Abusers, murderers... the list goes on. Men and women like Akara's father. The police were easily bribed to avert their eyes from such cases, but the Seraph would not be dissuaded as easily. Three years after her mothers murder and Akara had earned her wings. She grinned, curling her fingers protectively around the pin in her hand. She slipped her knife into the sheath around her thigh, turning to the door. Blood had been spilled tonight, but it would not be the last.

After all, what are wings without the chance to fly?