Concept: The First

That little scribble in the middle there of a skinny bird person dancing is what spawned everything.  I'd grabbed the first scrap of paper to hand - I don't even have any note paper with butterflies on it - and there she was.  I spent most of the next two months adding ideas to this one little piece of paper, but it wasn't until that June that I actually started working on it.

Most of the ideas on the paper didn't make it.  There were going to be two different opposing sets of priests, for one - and there are no sorcerers now, either.  And of course, the "bird people" did not originally have the ability to fly unless they used "magic".  I still love the idea of someone making chirping noises at a skyborne as an insult, but that never made it into the story itself, sadly.  Consider it something that could (and probably does) happen.