The Chief Bird Witch is the final username that tumblr suggested for me.
The Chief Bird Witch was no doctor, nor *the* Doctor, nor a police officer, or a gardener. The Chief Bird Witch sat on the council of Chief Witches. While the men held their political court, all the other genders made the real decisions at the Court of the Coven of Witches.
The village, nestled in the foothills in the evening shadow of a single, solitary mountain, houses the Town Hall. That was where the superfluous decisions of men were made.
During the day the Chief Witches were simple participants in the village. They clothed, fed, bathed, and tended to the tight knit families.
At night they gathered quietly at a plateau a short climb above the village. A fire was lit to keep the Coven warm. There gathered the Chief of the Coven, chosen every year by consensus. The Chief Agriculture Witch, the most knowledgeable of the seeds and medicine. The Chief Animals Witch, the most knowledgeable of hunting and husbandry. And the Chief Meteorology Witch, who tracked the winds and the seasons.
The Court of the Coven of Witches did not suffer fools. The men in the hall called their practice witchcraft; the Coven of Witches called it fact based reasoning.
Yet this year was different. There was a new Chief Witch. The Chief Bird Witch. The Chief Animals Witch did not cover this territory. It was important to diversify, to innovate. So the youngest of age proposed the position, with the intent to fly.
Logic and reason can only get one so far: imagination should not be stifled. And it was on the coldest morning, as the frost melted from the village below, that the Chief Bird Witch stepped from the plateau.
A rig of canvas wings dropped and their stomachs churned. Then the wind caught the material and it billowed. The wooden handle under the fixed canvas triangle dug in to the Chief Bird Witch’s hands as the canvas tugged and lifted.
The Chief Bird Witch glided over the village and the tip of the Town Hall. To land in a field beyond.
The Chief Bird Witch was the first human to fly. Not even the politicking from the Town Hall (that brought the invasion of murderous men that tore the village to the ground the next day) would change that.
