Molted Feathers: 1

     There were many important and sentimental things that Bazroph kept in his pack, and one that he treasured above all else. He kept it in a small, unassuming chest that he would sometimes pull out to run his fingers across the wood, mindful of his claws. The touch calmed him, gave him hope, reminded him of the need to carry on. It was his molted younger plumage that lied within. Feathers that had never touched his homeland, but whose importance was deeply tied to it. 
     The Swiftfell had a ceremony when one outgrew the stripes on their chest. During the molting season, the Demons whose patterns gave way to their adult colors kept ahold of their shed feathers. They would meet with the others in crafting, whether it was sculpting, metalworking, or another skill, and each make an urn side-by-side. Family and friends would join for feasting and dancing and other such festivities, and at the end of it all, the new adults would each in turn make a vow, a wish, something to work towards in the new chapter of their life, and then burn their old feathers to make ash for the urn—something impossible to do with a feather not yet shed, as a Demon’s passive magic makes them immune to the scorch of heat.
     If Bazroph was any other person, he might have found it naive to keep his old feathers for so long. He was banished and cursed by a god. A shard of its soul resided in his own body, constantly dragging him to doom. Even the thought of home was distant when he spent so much of his time trying to survive, to find some way to break his curse first.
     But Bazroph was Bazroph, and the presence of the feathers only fueled his determination to return no matter the odds. Each fiber of the chest was imprinted in the memory of his fingertips, each curve of the decorated metal trim, and the arc and click of the clasp that held it shut. The feathers within were a lighter orange than the one he was now, though the ones that used to be on his upper body were more often the brown color that his stripes had been.
     He had spent his molt into adulthood on Earth, far from Hell and the ones he would have celebrated with. The ones he’d played with as a child, the ones he’d known he would have had a ceremony near, if not with, to whom he had chattered excitedly at the ceremonies of older demons about what kind of urns and vows they would make together. Wyx had offered to hold a ceremony at the farm, but performing one there, not among Swiftfell, would have felt like giving up. All he could bring himself to do was keep the feathers.
     He would return someday. He would return to his mother and aunts, to his mentors, his friends. He would hold on to the reminder until he needed it no longer, and he would burn it into ash and forge it into something new.