It was on a rocky beach, there along an unremarkable stretch of shore in the Eastwood duchy of Glashowal, that it happened. The nearby fisherman’s children might run barefoot over slabs of wave-smoothed stone, leaping from boulder to boulder, hunting for living treasures left stranded in shallow tide-pools. Yet the closest village was leagues away, over by the mouth of the Auburn River, where the land was more level, the soil rich and good for farming.

The sea-wind from the west that spring afternoon was like the sea-wind any other day, carrying the sigh of the surf and the distinctive smell of salt. The ever-present gulls and terns could be seen, scouring beach and wave alike in their unending quest for food. A cormorant flew low over the water, long neck held in a serpentine curve; sandpipers and turnstones tottered among the rocks.

Into this quiet setting came another bird, borne on the wind like a leaf. A farmer down from his fields to trade grain for fish would have dismissed it with a glance; just another seagull, too young to bear adult plumage. Yet the fisherman, looking up from his bartering, would know otherwise. Gulls flew with a masterful grace; this bird soared over the waves with the rigid economy of a pelagic wanderer. The tubed nostrils were signature of a creature that could live amid the wastes of the sea and not suffer the lack of fresh water. No gull, this, whatever the ignorant land-dweller might believe. Perhaps a shearwater; more likely, a fulmar.

Yet there was no human witness that day as the immature fulmar rode the sea-wind to shore. The bird, all varying shades of grey and ashy-brown save for yellow feet and bill-tip, flailed its wings and made a clumsy landing, staggering amid the cool shadows of the boulders. Pinions outstretched, half hopping and half flying, the fulmar leaped and clambered over the rocks until it reached a nearly level space of smooth stone, some two lengths in breadth and width. There it paused, head turning, dark gaze scanning its surroundings.

The fisherman would have forgotten his scorn and the farmer dropped his produce, had either seen what transpired next. The drab seabird disappeared, and there in its place crouched an avarii fledgling.

There was no human witness as the ava, youthful survivor of a continent-spanning holocaust, rose to his feet. His silver gaze, brilliant with imbued power, alien, turned toward the green shelter of the distant forest.

Yellow wings, closed at his back in a mantle that stretched from shoulder to ankle, opened. The fledgling stretched, unfurling them to a span more than three times the height of a full grown human. With a single, wistful glance skyward, the ava folded his wings and set off on foot. To fly low over this new land would catch the notice of whatever moved on the ground, and he did not know what perils might dwell in this unfamiliar place. Hunger and thirst pricked him; he would not take wing to begin his search until they were satisfied.

There was no human witness that afternoon as the fledgling, shape-changer and mage-seer, set out on his exploration of a foreign continent, a new realm. There was no witness, yet the tale of the coming of a being that would one day be reckoned most powerful in the world was a tale that would be told by farmers and fishermen alike for centuries to come.