The Colours of the Gift

Every Zephyrian is born with a connection to one particular ability, and nobody has to ask which. It shows in the colour of their eyes and in their wings, which run white at the shoulder and deepen into their own colour towards the tips. A child's feathers settle into their colour during training. Before that, Zephyrians say, a young one is "still choosing", although nobody believes the choice is theirs.

The colour does not decide a path. A gold-winged Healer and a gold-winged Defender share a gift, not a life. What a Zephyrian does with their colour is the work of the Healers, the Defenders and the Unbound alike.

The sixteen colours

🟡 Gold: the elements

Earth, water, fire, air, stone and sand. Gold wings are the most common sight on a building site in Ayrith, because a gold-winged mason does not quarry a stone so much as ask it to move. They are also the reason the old Zephyrian saying runs "never argue with a gold on a beach."

⚫ Black: life and death

Life, death, souls, spirits and the passage between them. Black-tipped wings are rare, and outsiders mistake them for a bad omen. In Ether they meant the opposite: the one who sits with the dying, who hears what the dead left unsaid, and who knows when it is time to let go.

🔵 Blue: the mind

Mind-reading, memories, illusions, empathy and the quiet speech from one mind to another. A blue Zephyrian hears a room before anyone in it speaks. Taara is a Zephyrian of Minds: ice-blue at the tips of her wings and in her eyes.

🟠 Orange: time and fate

Foresight, prophecy, the bending of time and the reading of fate. The oranges are the most careful of the colours, and the most often consulted. Most of them spend their lives learning when not to say what they have seen.

🟤 Brown: the beasts

Speech with animals, command of them, and for the strongest the taking of their shape. Brown-winged Zephyrians are rarely found in town. They are in the fields and the forests, usually with something following them.

🟢 Green: the storm

Lightning, weather and storms. Green wings crackle faintly in dry air, and the young ones are kept away from the archives. Emery's gift was the weather, and Taara still watches a storm a little too long.

🩷 Pink: growing things

Plants, their growth and their healing, and the slow conversation with nature itself. Pink wings belong to the gardeners of Ayrith, and much of what grew around the Burning Tree was coaxed there by them.

🔴 Red: blood and life force

Blood, blood magic and the life force that runs through it. Red is the colour Zephyrians speak about most carefully. Its gift can mend what nothing else can, and it can do the opposite just as easily, so a red-winged Zephyrian learns restraint before anything else.

🟡 Yellow: light

Sunlight, radiance and illusions woven out of light. The people who were born from the Sun count yellow among their oldest colours. A yellow Zephyrian can bring daylight into a room with no window, or make a whole street see something that is not there.

🟣 Purple: crystal and energy

Gemstones, minerals and raw magical energy. The finest ornaments in Zephyrian wings, from gem charms to crystal hair-jewels, are almost always a purple's work.

⚪ White: healing

Healing, purification, the cleansing of curses and restoration. White is the colour of the wing's root on every Zephyrian, and some say a white-winged one is simply a Zephyrian whose root ran all the way to the tips. Many Healers are white, though the path is open to every colour.

🩵 Turquoise: water, ice and mist

Currents, tides, ice, mist and fog. The turquoise ones can turn a morning into fog, and a fog back into a morning. They make the best teachers of the young, because they are patient in the way water is.

🩶 Silver: metal

Metal, the enchanting of weapons, and magnetic force. Silver wings are common among the Defenders: a blade made by a silver-winged smith is one their Bonded can trust with their life.

🟧 Copper: sound

Sound, music, vibration and, in need, the shout that breaks stone. Copper Zephyrians are the musicians of Ether, and the lute is the most common thing found in a copper's hands.

🟪 Lavender: dreams

Dreams, sleep, nightmares and the wandering of the spirit outside the body. A lavender sits by the bed of someone who cannot sleep, and in the morning neither of them remembers quite where they have been.

🟩 Teal: space

Distance, portals, teleportation and the folding of one place into another. Teal-winged Zephyrians are rare, and they have a habit of arriving before they set out.

Still open

Whether a colour runs in families, whether one can ever change, and how common each colour was before Ether froze are not written.