Half a broken Wing - Prologue. Prologue

Riley waved to his mom, but the sliding doors were already closing and she was talking to one of the doctors. Suddenly he felt quite alone. The walls were yellow and it reminded him unpleasantly of sunlight - and he had to be careful of that, he knew.

The nurse, a dragonfly who from his vantage point seemed almost to touch the ceiling, smiled. Her lower pair of arms clutched a tablet, her upper hands intertwined as if in prayer. "Hello, Riley. I'm Nurse Leah and I'm in charge of your group."

"Hello," Riley replied quietly.

"You're sharing a room with another boy, also a moth, but before I can take you there, we need to discuss a few rules, alright?"

"Sure." Riley nodded. He hadn't expected anything else.

"Good. Of course, it's very important that you listen to us nurses and the doctors," Nurse Leah said seriously. "And there's no flying here in the building. We'll go together as a group to areas where flying is allowed, but if we say we can't, you have to listen."

Riley nodded again, but frowned. "Why shouldn't I be allowed to fly if we're going there?"

"You'll be given medication. And that's the next important point: if you don't feel well afterwards, if you feel anything other than normal, you have to tell us, do you understand? The medication may affect your senses so that you can't fly well. We don't want you to hurt yourself or anyone else."

Again, Riley nodded, but the frown didn't disappear. He didn't like the prospect of being unwell after medication, and he rustled his wings in discomfort. And anyway, he didn't understand why he had to go to hospital when his first year of school was about to start. After all, he wasn't ill.

Nurse Leah stroked his cheek; the unexpected and unwanted touch made his antennae twitch. "What do you want to be when you grow up?" she asked gently, her smile back.

The question surprised him. "A policeman. Like my dad." he answered anyway. When Nurse Leah put a hand on his shoulder and held him tightly when he tried to pull away from her touch, he decided he didn't like her.

"Then I'll take you to your room now. Your suitcase is already there. And as I said, your roommate Danny is a very nice boy." She led, no, literally pushed him along the corridor, talking about the group he now belonged to.

It all sounded very final and permanent to his ears and he painfully realized that his mom hadn't said exactly how long he was supposed to stay here. "A while" could mean anything. And she had only said "if the doctors allow it" she would come and visit him.

Fear rose up in him. He was all alone in this labyrinth of corridors in sunny yellow and wooden beige. He couldn't read yet, so he couldn't orient himself by the signs next to the doors.

A fine tremor starting at his antennae covered his body, his wings rustled softly. It was eerily quiet here. The scent of caramelized nuts wafted in from somewhere and his stomach growled audibly.

"It's snack time in half an hour," said Nurse Leah, her voice sounding far too loud.

"Okay." he mumbled quietly.

They stopped in front of a room with a painted nine and a pink flower he didn't recognize. "Here's your room. Go and meet Danny, will you?" With that, she opened the door and simply shoved him inside.

He didn't want to be here. He wanted to go home.

And the boy, a brown moth with orange-red patches, must have felt the same way, because he was huddled on a bed, crying.

Riley didn't want to cry, even though he felt like it. Crying meant being weak. His brothers would laugh at him and his dad would reprimand him. His mom would comfort him and call him "my baby" and only make things worse.

He sat down on the other bed, wrapped all four arms around his knees and chewed his lips until the pain replaced the feeling of being alone.

~

Cedric smiled faintly. It might seem benevolent on the outside, but it was just a façade. He had nothing but dislike for his stepmother Jennifer, but for the sake of peace and his admittedly sweet little half-sister, he pulled himself together.

"I still think Dad made a big mistake." Out of nowhere, Cyril, Cedric's twin, appeared at his side and held out a glass of champagne.

Taking the glass, Cedric snorted. "You don't have to tell me." He stroked his antenna with one hand, leaving the lower set of hands in his trouser pockets.

"Did you hear the whispering?" Cyril wanted to know, twirling his own glass in his long fingers.

"There's a lot of whispering at parties like this," Cedric replied dryly. Even though most people usually held back at celebrations like this one - the name-blessing ceremony for Joleen, their one-year-old baby half-sister.

"Quite right." Cyril nodded. Very briefly, displeasure flitted across his face before his usual somewhat arrogant mask appeared. "I heard Dad only married Jennifer because she was pregnant."

"Yeah, so?" Cedric looked questioningly at his twin. "He wouldn't be the first man to do such a thing. Besides, a story like that could have caused a scandal otherwise."

"If you're going to fuck your way around, you should watch what you're doing," Cyril replied in a strange tone of voice. Contemptuously, perhaps?

Cedric wasn't sure, but he didn't like the tone. "Well then maybe you should learn from his example and do better," he said a little pointedly.

"Yeah, and like you just banging guys who are known not to get pregnant?" Cyril grinned dirty over the rim of his glass and Cedric's antennae curled up, half in shame, half in offense.

"I'm in a committed relationship-" he began, but a bright squeak not far away interrupted him.

Joleen, waving over her mom's shoulder to her big brothers.

Cedric raised a hand and waved back, Cyril snorted into his glass before emptying it demonstratively.

"And as always, you hide behind a sweet smile and do everything you can to make Dad happy. I know you hate that woman as much as I do." Now Cyril sounded downright disgusted.

"Hate is a strong word. I don't hate her." Cedric shook his head and again ran a hand along his antennae.

"Still, you're just being nice to please Dad." The hint of a dirty grin flitted across Cyril's lips.

"That has-"

"A little daddy pleaser you are," Cyril whispered spitefully to him. "Is it because you like cock? Do you like Daddy's cock?"

Cedric's antennae curled in tightly, his wings folded firmly together. Although Cyril's vulgarities and homophobic remarks were nothing new, this was reaching an unprecedented level.

"You're a little cock-slut," Cyril added when Cedric - as usual - couldn't find a suitable retort, because he refused to stoop to that level.

But as suddenly as Cyril had appeared, he disappeared again.

A shudder ran over Cedric, then he carefully helped with his hands as his antennae slowly unfurled. He had only sipped his champagne and kept the glass to hold on to as he dived into the crowd of guests as a distraction.

Why, for the warm light of the Sun, did a name-blessing ceremony have to be so big?

The answer came in two forms. Firstly, there was his grandfather Nolan, in the third generation head of Cartwright Pharmaceuticals, standing in all his green and yellow glory on the open terrace holding court. Secondly, his father Frederick, heir to the said company and also a sought-after surgeon, who did the same not far from the staircase leading upstairs, albeit in yellow and white.

Cedric would have liked to speak to his grandma, but he didn't see her anywhere. Instead, the bright pink splotches that were dominant in the pattern of his stepmother's family shone everywhere in the crowd. Moochers, Cyril had said the other day, and he was probably not entirely wrong.

However, Cedric was immediately ashamed of the thought and flinched when his gaze met his father's and he beckoned him over.

"Cyril-"

"Cedric," Cedric corrected immediately, but his father didn't seem to notice.

"Make sure your brothers don't run and flutter around uncontrollably. Aunt Letizia needs a break."

"Of course, Dad," Cedric said, nodding. Letizia wasn't his aunt, she was his half-sibling's, and he liked the woman even less than his stepmother, but he still cared deeply for his siblings.

"Oh and Cyril-" This time Frederick interrupted himself as one of his politician friends stepped close enough to more than clearly signal his desire to talk.

Cedric nodded politely to the man and then turned away to find his little brothers. The fact that his twin brother grinned meaningfully at him he ignored.