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Sharp pain surges through me. After blocking the connection to a trickle, I swoop down and locate the crippled fawn, its leg twisted and broken. Alighting in the tall grass beside it, I bow my head, shedding a single tear onto the ruined limb. The fawn stirs as my teardrop, the embodiment of my compassion and sorrow, mends the injury with alchemical grace.

Once the fawn scampers off, I take to the air again, glowing with warm satisfaction. Nothing compares to the feeling that comes from helping other creatures heal. Even when the process proves exhausting, like the time I healed an entire alicorn herd from a parasite they picked up in a contaminated pond.

A flock of geese flies past, honking as they go. I return the greeting.

I continue coasting on the wind, sunlight warming my feathers as I sweep over treetops on the way back to my nest. I’m just entering the clearing near the human dwellings when a scream shatters the calm. Ice-cold terror slams into me from the ground below. A torrent of white-hot agony follows and almost knocks me from the sky.

The pain reels me in. My surroundings fall away as I dive down to track the suffering to its source.

Collapsed on the outer edge of the clearing near the trees, a human woman moans. Blood streams from multiple deep cuts that mar her pale arms and legs.

When I hit the ground hard by her shoulder, her eyes flutter open and widen.

“No,” she whimpers. “G…go.”

She’s scared of me, but that’s okay. Once I heal her, she’ll realize I’m no threat.

One of my tears drips onto her bleeding arm. Slowly, the wounds begin to knit back together. That white-hot agony bludgeoning me reduces to tolerable tapping.

The woman gasps and attempts to sit up. “Leave! Trap! It’s a tra?—”

Though I try to extend my wings, I’m too late. Hunters burst from the trees, and a heavy net engulfs me.

A male human shouts, “Don’t let it get away! We’ll be unstoppable once we start farming its tears.”

The net tightens, enmeshing me inside.

As I fight, one of the human males crouches by the female with a weapon in his hand. The last thing I see before they carry me away is her lifeblood draining from her neck and the light dying in her eyes.

The vision shifts, and I am not just one phoenix in a cage, but several. A kaleidoscope of images flash past, overlaying each other.

First, nets and traps ensnare my kin. I know their pain and confusion as they’re captured and hauled away. Then arrows pierce our bodies. Rocks break our limbs. The poisoned prey we eat rips at our insides. Each time, we fall from the sky.

When my flames of rebirth fade, we are someplace strange. A valley littered with metal cages and humans who will do anything to harvest our tears in their glass bottles.

Even breaking free of the cage isn’t enough. Capped with ice, the valley offers no salvation. Only a human who can move earth can open the way to the world outside. Death after death, life after life, the tears of grief and pain remain a coveted prize to the despicable humans.

The first phoenix that falls and doesn’t rise in flame goes unnoticed by the humans until the body starts to rot and smell.

Believing this death to be a fluke, the humans toss the phoenix aside.

But this continues to happen.

These humans have extinguished our will to live. Some of my brothers and sisters do not wait for death but seek it out by flinging themselves on blades or lodging their heads between the bars imprisoning them to break their necks.

As more of us die, the humans become alarmed, convinced some disease has entered their valley prison. The cages are carefully guarded. Each dead body is removed as quickly as possible and tossed outside to limit the spread of the disease.

Sick in hearts and bodies from our incarceration and harsh treatment, those of us still able to summon the strength to resist devise a plan. We feign death and wait.

When the humans arrive to remove us from the cages, we play dead until they carry us outside and then flap our wings to take for the sky.

Not all of us survive. Some are shot down with arrows. Others, too weakened, simply fall from the sky.

Those of us who do escape fly north, where we eventually cross the water and leave this cursed land behind.

On the next stretch of land, we find a new type of animal. Ones who can communicate. Despite their large size and lack of feathers, they are kin in fire and thought.

Dragons.