This is the product of an idea I've been toying with, and I wrote this brief description to try to get my mind working. If I come up with anything else, I will post that, too, but as of now this is the extent of my writings on this particular storyline—if it ever becomes a full-fledged story.

Blood of Heaven (working title)

By Lómiel

Deadly.

This is the one word that can describe them—the only word. They are deadly. Everything about them is lethal—their inhuman grace, their perfect voices, their brilliant eyes. No one who has seen them ever forgets it—the feeling of utter inadequacy, the knowledge that nothing stands between you and death but the whim of this beautiful, enigmatic, untouchable creature.

These are our enemies.

Many say we are fools to fight them. They are the ultimate warriors; few fight one and live, and thousands fight them and die. Their weapons are as perfect in fatal elegance as they; they are weapons.

But men are easily frightened, easily provoked to war. And they—the highest and most glorious vessels of unworldly magnificence—are a people worthy of that fear. So fight them we do; and each time men kill one of them, a little bit of heaven is smashed in their blood.

What they call themselves, no one knows. Few outsiders have permeated their society; rarely do those few live. Their sweet tongue once spoken throughout the world is now little more than a memory, held only by the few words we use so lightly, shards of a broken past. But some of their words survive; some of their legacy endures, hidden in our culture like a silver coin in the mud; one side blessing, the other curse.

The Caelennai are a part of that legacy. They are the ultimate expression of unity, the purest vision of the their being: melded inextricably with one of the creatures they love, one and yet two, split and yet whole.

How they become Caelennai is something no mortal may ever know. It is their most intimate secret in a culture of untold miracles. All we know is that the chosen enter a ritual, a ceremony, and when they return, they walk beside the other part of their soul incarnate. Some are bound to dark animals; these we call Nightborn, the companions of panthers, dark eagles, owls, wolves, bears, and all manner of dark- and stealth-loving creatures. Others are the Dayborn, those tied to falcons, tigers, monkeys, dolphins, songbirds, and those who long for the light and for song. Never has a man faced a Caelenna alone and lived.

And yet the war rages, destructive and foolhardy, against a people that are our nearest link to perfection and our only chance for joy. Someday we may learn; hope that we will not discover our horrible mistake after they are gone.