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Kewkud presents Birds of Empire Season 2, created by Jason Liu.

The Mending

Sweet Soft Child The Mending Sweet soft child sleep upon thy wooden bough.

Pray the gods it be not forever, and only just for now.

Ibus looked at the poem on the blue-gray parchment.

The words seemed to float up into the air,

hovering against the dust motes of the Cramp Palace schoolroom.

Here were each generation of preening nobles before him sat.

This is where he discovered the verse of the song age

and the suspensional beauty of his people's art.

Birds were known little outside of the empire,

but their early poetry was the foundation upon which the landfolk built their written languages.

This particular line of this particular verse returned to him again and again during his studies,

not because it was robust of sweetness or skill, in fact.

It wasn't even attributed to any of the great masters.

It appeared as common phrase and was well known among wary nursemaids and mothers across the empire.

In his teenage stew of restless defiance, Ibus could feel it calling to him

with a strange, distant voice, like an itch for a bite that was yet to happen. And here it was again

...