[ WP ] Make up a fairy tale

When a witch dies, they say she will return as a bird. If she was evil, a raven; if she was plain, a sparrow; and if she was kind and pure hearted, a dove to bring hope. 
 
 ***** 
 
 Lyssa was never destined to be a witch. Orphaned and abandoned to the cruel streets of Khadrum, she consorted with urchins and tramps who knew no other life. She ran barefoot, clothed in dirty rags, slept in alleys looking up at the stars. By day she begged for work or food, but at night she lay silent, watching the sky, planning her escape over the dark city's walls. 
 
 Her friends disdained these ideas, laughing bitterly at her eager searches for secret tunnels, her intense interest in visiting nobility, her meager stockpiles of food and coins, neatly squirreled away for her planned escape. They laughed when she appeared in the mornings, exhausted from a night spent plotting the movements of guards on the battlements. They shook their heads in despair when, once again, she left the alleys to crawl, catlike, over roofs for a peek at the King's Mage and his entourage passing through the town. 
 
 `` What will you do if you leave?'' Kara asked as she returned. 
 
 `` Go to the Capitol and become a witch,'' Lyssa stubbornly repeated. 
 
 `` You ca n't be,'' Kara's friend, Thom, interrupted. `` Witches are highborn. Idiot.'' 
 
 `` I will be the first,'' Lyssa replied, carefully unfurling a map scrawled on a scrap of parchment. 
 
 `` You'll be caught at the gate,'' Kara insisted. `` Stay here!'' 
 
 `` I sha n't use the gate.'' 
 
 And that was that. One day, Kara and Thom woke up, and Lyssa was gone. No trace of her remained; save a single coin left on the floor, as if in apology for her sudden departure in the night. 
 
 Briefly, they wondered what had become of their friend. `` Dead in a ditch with an arrow in her back, for sure,'' Thom said without a trace of dismay. `` Run off to the Capitol,'' Kara speculated, turning the copper over in her hand. `` Or tried to, anyway.'' 
 
 Soon enough they forgot, though rumors circulated among the urchins of a body found bloated in Blackwater river, a girl shot dead trying to pass the gate, or eaten by bears, mauled by wolves, kidnapped and sold into slavery on a pirate ship. A hundred dreadful fates, and eventually, silence. 
 
 Kara was the first to notice, the day they heard of Alyssa May Lianna, the king's foreign witch who was to be executed for treason. `` That's her,'' she whispered to the other girls. `` It's Lyssa. Remember her? She disappeared?'' 
 
 `` She died,'' they said, eager to deny this false hope. 
 
 `` No, she did n't. She escaped to the Capitol and became a witch,'' Kara insisted. She had seen her! In a businessman's paper, a sketch of a pale teen with Lyssa's dark, determined eyes. 
 
 `` And now she's dead anyway, so it did n't do her any good.'' 
 
 `` But she escaped,'' Kara said. `` Maybe we could too.'' 
 
 They scoffed, and turned away, but the seeds had been planted. Maybe they could escape. 
 
 ***** 
 
 `` That was a long time ago,'' May insisted, tugging at her sister's sleeve. `` How do you know it's real?'' 
 
 `` We have to have hope,'' Anna told the younger girl. `` And we can escape too.'' 
 
 Just then, a white dove flew down their narrow alley. Perching on a windowsill, it peered at them curiously, cocking its head. 
 
 `` Look!'' May cried, running towards the bird. `` A pretty crow!'' It hopped closer, looking at the girls appraisingly before flying off. 
 
 Anna gasped. `` That's her,'' she told May. `` She's helping us escape.'' 
 
 `` Really?'' 
 
 The older girl nodded. `` We leave tonight.''
