LOFTWINGS AND RIDERS:

A Basic Guide to Skyloft Bird-Riding Culture

Part IV: Partners in Life and Death

Ideally, the partnership between a Loftwing and its rider is a lifelong bond. In fact, the natural lifespan of the wild Loftwing is unknown as the only span we've been able to study has been the lives of partnered birds. Birds that remain purely wild vanish from our skies after a number of years. Tagging and tracking individuals for research has only left us with more questions. It is almost as if elder birds without human partners simply vanish into the Goddess' Sacred Realm.

It is theorized that there is an island somewhere that serves as the "Loftwing Graveyard" – where Loftwings go to die - but this is merely speculation, a legend. This mythical island has yet to be discovered by Man and no hard evidence for it exists.

It remains a pretty story told at funerals.

Skyloft has a small cemetery. In it are monuments that visitors from off-island often mistake for individual memorials. Each stone in our graveyard serves as a marker for an entire family or clan. Names are etched into a family's stone when a member of that family passes on. There are remains buried in the cemetery, but they're in small urns of ashes or boxes of bones. Myths about the Surface tell of a time when people were buried – body entire – in the ground, but it has never been able to be done in Skyloft, for the space we have and the depth of our earth are limited.

Most of our citizens die without leaving remains. Some of our number have met death by falling into the Sea of Clouds, but more than that, most opt for a Sky Burial. This kind of funeral is the default for fallen Skyloft Knights.

When a knight or a civilian who has previously made a request for a Sky Burial dies of sickness or accident or some other thing that leaves the loved ones that remain a body to take care of, the Skyloft Knights erect a pyre for them out of any wood or support material available near one of the diving-docks. The deceased is cleaned and dressed in their best – their uniform if they were a knight – and hoisted up onto the pyre. There, below, they that loved them gather, hold service and talk of their good memories. Inevitably, before the sun sets on that day, the Loftwing belonging to the deceased will swoop down and gather the body up in its talons to take off into the sky.

It is said that the Loftwing takes them to the Loftwings' secret graveyard where it, too, dies – beside its human. All that is known for sure is that Loftwings belonging to the dead are never seen again after the funerals.

This is the usual way of things. Loftwings often outlive their riders. It is a gut-wrenching thing to see the Loftwing belonging to a terminally ill person pacing outside their home, calling and crying. If a riders fall from the sky and are lost in the Sea of Clouds, their Loftwings have been known to circle the area where they fell continuously until they exhaust themselves and also fall. All attempts by mounted knights to steer a bereft Loftwing from its vigil have been met with failure. The Skyloft Knights, however, always make the attempt to save the bird.

It is a far worse thing to watch a man lose his Loftwing. Very few, indeed, have ever seen their birds succumb to injury or illness, but when it happens, the former rider is grounded for the remainder of their lives. They often take a feather or two from their fallen bird before the animal is committed to the Sea of Clouds. Bereft riders describe their grief in terms like that of losing a spouse or a child. If they ever need to be taken off-island, they are carried by friends, family, or one of the knights, but it never is the same as riding the skies on their own.

There are a few stories in which a bird and rider have been found in one of the fields of Skyloft, lying still together. It is said that as far as ways go to leave the world, that this is the ideal.

Our legends say that the souls of birds and riders ever fly together in the golden skies of the Sacred Realm. Even those that disbelieve the legends can appreciate the strength of the partnership – longer than a wingspan, deeper than time and vaster than the sky.