you'll take flight soon

Before you listen to this song, I want to take a moment of your time to explain the circumstances in which it was written. There is some very upsetting language in it and I just want to warn you before you hear it. This song is the story of my life. I'm a first-generation native Menagerine and I had never originally intended to leave like many of us so as to avoid humans and discrimination especially in the wake of the Rights Revolution. I was born during it, but I didn’t experience the conflict. Unfortunately, some extenuating circumstances forced me away and to the mainland. It was a hard transition as to be expected, especially after landing in Mistral like all of us do. Being treated as lesser simply for the circumstances of our births is reprehensible and should be abolished and that was where I found myself. I joined Mistral's Communities With Faunus organisation but it proved to be unfulfilling for me. I spent four years campaigning with them and nothing came of my efforts. We came close so many times, but the legislature stopped it at the very last minute. All our hard work had been for nothing. Granted, looking at it now, it was only ten years after the Faunus Rights Revolution ended, so it made sense, but I didn’t realise that until later. Slowly, I became angrier and angrier. I heard the whispers of revolution against humans. Blood for blood became my rallying cry and I fell in with the Shadow Storms, the most radical sect of Faunus right organisations at the time. I spent twelve long years in that organisation, causing untold damages to human settlements. It felt cathartic and righteous in my mind as they had oppressed us and deserved some of the pain they had inflicted on us. Unfortunately, in the last three years I was active, the rhetoric and targets shifted. We went from harming humans to Faunus that allied with them and fought peacefully for their right to exist safely. I thought nothing was wrong with it at first, but in the last year… I was ordered to shoot some hostages. She was a single mother with her three children. She begged me to spare them and I finally stopped and questioned what I was doing. She was an innocent civilian that had done nothing but ask for her right to exist. In that moment, I realised the atrocities I had committed. I helped her and her children escape alive and never went back. The organisation dissolved six months later after a major sting operation by Faunus authorities. That's where the slur of stray comes in. I understand that it'll upset you to hear it, but I truly was everything it implies. I was a radical from Menagerie that had no home now, no purpose in life. I was truly a stray in every sense of the word. I wandered for three years, wanting to hide from my past, but I met a wise human while wandering in Mistral. A woman named Ciane Branwen, a cat Faunus from the Branwen tribe, sat down with me and helped talk me through what I had done. I stayed with her people for a time and she helped me through some of the worst of my feelings and set me straight. I even returned to the village with them for the inactive season, meeting another wise woman named Dove, her adoptive sister. I returned home to Menagerie and started writing songs that tell my story and can be used as protest tunes for those fighting for us. I’ve been doing that for four years now. Even if you feel lost, you can find your way again, and I hope that this song can serve as the light in the dark for those that fell to the same destructive path I did.