It’s cold out, with no rays of yellow sunshine to give the illusion of warmth, just the lightest of snowfalls and a biting breeze, and the palest spattering of stars. Techno is living here, in the cold, because the howl of the winds holds memories of a different time, some of the best years of his life encased in a sheet of ice. And now, with Phil here, those grey and black feathers catching in the breeze, he’s hit with a dizzying sense of déjà vu.
******
The night he’s remembering is lighter. There are more stars outside their fortress, up on top of a mountain that seems to almost touch the Milkyway. Technoblade sits on a blustery stone terrace, wrapped tightly in his cloak, a wing draped around his shoulders, feathers tickling the side of his face. Phil is so still could be asleep, except for his eyes, open wide with wonder, gazing up at the constellations in their delicate spirals.
The sun will rise soon, light already caressing the horizon, but neither of them has slept. It was one of those nights when the voices in Techno’s head grew angry, or bored, or simply loud and too much, too much for sanity, and he had found himself outside of Phil’s door.
What a wasteland this place would be without an Empire. And what a wasteland Technoblade would be without Philza. He sighs, his head gently butting against Phil’s shoulder.
“What is it?” Phil asks, returning to earth with a glance. “You alright? Are they--”
But the voices are miraculously quiet, soothed into what is almost silence. Perhaps they too know exactly how sacred this moment is.
“Phil,” he whispers, and for once he feels like a child, wistfully ridiculous. “Phil, fetch me a star.”
Phil laughs. “Sure mate,” he says, and then he’s standing, those great grey wings reaching out, a canopy of feathers, and suddenly he’s nothing but a speck in the sky, a silhouette against the stars. Like a dragon, or an albatross, flying forever across an ocean of glittering diamonds.
It’s nothing Technoblade hasn’t seen before. He and Philza have been a pair for a long time now but at this moment the wonder of it all is caught in his throat. He can’t speak, can’t breathe, just watch. Snowflakes dizzy him and catch in his eyelashes, and for a moment he too feels like a small speck lost in the heavens.
With a rush of feathers Phil is back, breathless and laughing, his cheeks pink from cold and wind, his hat pulled tightly over his eats, hair windswept. “Sorry mate,” he says, giggling a little, “they didn’t want to come.”
“What did they say?” Techno asks. He’s half-asleep, and Phil must notice because he hauls the piglin to his feet and begins to guide him indoors, to where a warm bed is waiting.
“The stars said hello,” Phil’s grin is electric and mischievous. He looks like he got the starlight caught in his eyes when he went to greet them. “And also some things I can’t repeat in good conscience.”
****************
Phil is standing on the roof, looking away towards a pale horizon, and he has grey and white wings and they’re wrong. Technoblade feels sick looking at them. Ragged and eaten away, exposed quills and blackened pinions, skeletal and shattered. There are gaps and missing bits, and they’re not the most broken piece of Phil, but they’re the most obvious.
Techno pulls himself out of the hatch in the roof and stares at his friend. “It’s gettin’ late. You gonna come in?”
******************
Phil is balanced on the rooftop, feathers ruffled by a sharp and angry breeze, and he is thinking.
Once upon a time, Saint George slew a dragon. It was a long fight and the dragon breathed fire and burned Saint George. The hero faltered, and he fell, but he was a brave warrior, and he returned. Some say that he collapsed into a quiet brook, and the burns were healed.
And once upon a time, there was a dragon, and Saint George slew him. He snatched the knight up in his claws and went flying up and up and up until he and the hero were both near blinded by the sun. But Saint George had a lance, and it found its place in the wyrm’s heart, and they both fell back to earth, spiraling endlessly down, down, down, for when a dragon is no longer made of flame and life he is simply a dead weight, the lead in his blood pulling him back to earth.
Philza has been both Saint and Dragon, and he spreads his wings to the wind, and fire has burned them (though there is no healing spring to save him) and his son has pierced his heart (though death does not claim him and offer relief).
*************
And Techno comes to stand beside his friend, and Phil stares out at the horizon, dark feathers framing his face. “Phil,” he says. “What is it?”
And Phil wrenches his eyes away from the skyline and says, in a voice like shattered glass and more terribly shattered wings “I really can’t fly.”
**************
Phil falls to his knees on the wooden shingles of Techno’s roof, and he gasps out a single strangled sob, because no bird is meant to be pinioned, and no dragon should be pulled back to earth and forced to stay.
Techno touches ashy wingtips with reverent hands. What foul world do we live in now, where Phil cannot speak to the stars? he wonders, and feels like something in him has died too.
