Long before anyone called them a wanderer, they belonged to a line of sky-herders who lived on the highest ridges of the world. At birth, each sky-herder carried a great crest atop their head. It was a magnificent, curling structure of horn, bark, and living bone that stretched high above them like a crown. The elders believed the crests were gifts from the wind itself. The skylings compared their crests. The larger and more intricate a crest became, the more stories of the world it had gathered. Their crest was once the grandest of their generation. It spiraled upward in elegant loops, decorated with feathers, moss, and tiny flowers that bloomed only in mountain fog. Travelers could spot them from miles away, standing against the clouds like a living monument. But unlike the others, they loved wandering. They chased storms. Every season they climbed higher peaks and crossed harsher valleys, always following the strange songs hidden in the wind. Years became decades. The storms grew stronger. Sand-filled winds scraped at their crown. Winter gales cracked away pieces. Salty winds from distant seas polished its edges smooth. The wind never broke the crest all at once. It carved it little by little. A sliver one year. A curve the next. A whole spiral lost during a century-long storm. Eventually the magnificent crown was reduced to the small weathered remnant that remains today—the strange shape perched above their brow like the last fragment of a forgotten castle. Many of their kin pitied them when they finally returned home. "What happened to your crown?" they asked. They only smiled.
I worked so hard on this it took two days. Wait I forgot to do my homework
