But Kaelira was hungry. And when a Topeagler is hungry, it does not calculate odds. It dives.

On the morning this story begins, Kaelira launched herself from the Spire of Sticks—a precarious tower of woven branches and mud that she had built herself, year after year, until it stood fifteen feet above the highest flood line. Her wings, though scarred, caught the sulfurous wind. She climbed. Not high—the Topeagler was never a creature of the open sky. She preferred the liminal space, ten feet above the water, where her shadow could slide over the surface like a promise.

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For a moment, there was peace.

The eel was a young one—foolish, flashing its lights in open water. Kaelira’s beak (a serrated, bone-white thing that could shear through chainmail) closed around it with a wet snap . She swallowed in three convulsive gulps. The eel’s dying glow flickered down her throat, illuminating her insides like a swallowed lantern.