This is an opening and I feel like it's all around horrible.

I've been using this story as a bit of a thought dump, so it's pretty heavy and all around horribly clumsy. I'm not really looking for critique at the moment, but I would like a little help cutting things out. Basically if you could skim it and pick out anything that seems grossly unnecessary, I'd really appreciate it so I can mark it out now and then go back and clip it out when I'm editing later.


Andon Essaice began life as a simple pigeon shepherd. Though no pigeon shepherd likes to be called a pigeon shepherd, for even the poorest beggar of the city Rhinelark has their pride.
So in Rhinelark, bird herding was called roof dancing. And it really was a kind of dancing, leaping from roof to roof to keep up with the flock, twisting and sidestepping to avoid the holes, precarious ledges, chimneys, loose shingles, and of course the bird refuse.
Andon never had much ambition, mostly because she didn't see anything lacking in her life. Though roofdancers were somewhat looked down upon when they weren't totally disregarded, in Andon's mind she lead an ideal life. When other six year old children of the middle class were sent off to stuffy boarding schools and tight-starched uniforms, she spent her days lazing away on rooftops, basking in mild breezes and gentle sunlight, flicking the longwhip at the occasional wanderer to keep it in line, watching the herder ravens to make sure they didn't get too rough with their wards, brandishing the club at a cat that might grow too bold. And then every other half hour to an hour, a sudden surge of wild energy as the flock decided as one that it was time to move on, brilliant adrenaline-fueled dashing and leaping from roof to roof to keep up with them.
Andon lived this way since the time she could leap a one-foot gap, around three years or so, and looked forward to spending the rest of her life this way. Though magic fueled most of her country, her father's bleeding heart pigeons, so named for the smudge of red on their breast above the heart that uncannily resembled fresh blood, were well favoured for their hardiness among mages for experimentation and message sending, and more recently were becoming popular as pets among upper class. In the mind of six year old Andon, she spent enough time on her future to decide it was secure. Her city would always need her pigeons, and her pigeons would always need her.
And as for magic...well. Other people in the city were glad enough for it. Other people that didn't live in the West Wall district behind the Ketlington University of Magic, other people that weren't taught from early childhood to expect to be horribly mutated into something awful by the time they were middle-aged, other people that could afford to live in normal houses and hang them with charms against bad luck, unwanted pregnancies, sickness, and, of course, harmful magic enjoyed it well enough. But for those who were too poor to leave West Wall, magic was known as the sickness. It was not spoken of, and those of the West Wall district knew little of it. They could not tolerate even the meekest of charms or spellbooks, as the magic that seeped out of the University in invisible tidal waves--waste from spells, experiments, and just the sheer mass of power accumulated by those that dwelled there all twisted and tangled and gnarled together. And together all that mangled, raw power sunk into the dirt and stones and water of the West Wall district and, in time, gradually warped its residents into unpredictable, often horribly wrong shapes.
Andon's mother in particular was beginning to succumb to the more terrible changes.
Andon was not a very curious girl, or adventerous, and didn't even consider herself particularly brave. Leaping rooftops was hardly dangerous in her mind, and she was content with the idea that there was nothing better.
The amphiptere changed that. The amphiptere changed a lot of things.
Andon had her first encounter with true power a few weeks before she turned seven.
A pigeon's scream startled her from a pleasant afternoon half-doze. Andon was immediately alert and on her feet, the club in her hand, the longwhip ready. She snapped a command at a nearby raven to hold the flock on the roof, and it croaked in acknowledgement. The pigeon squealed again and a tremor went through the flock. The raven cawed them into submission as Andon darted around a chimney in pursuit of the cry, club raised to strike.
Instead of a cat or a wild, territorial pigeon or even a gargoyle, Andon found her ward menaced by a winding blue shape with wings on one end and the other end wrapped around the pigeon's leg.
Andon had seen snakes before, but never on roofs and certainly not with wings. With a sharp blow she stunned the body long enough to extract the pigeon, its leg badly mangled.
"Stewpid biddy," she murmured gently, carefully knocking it into unconsciousness. "Po' helpless, useless thingy." Her father would not be willing to spare the money to heal a leg so badly injured, not for one bird in a flock of over two hundred. Andon took out a small shiv and cut the leg off cleanly, as it dangled only by a shred of tendon, then quickly wrapped it and fashioned a sling out of her jacket. With her shiv she snipped the flight feathers on the bird and tied the wings to its body so it would not flail and fall from the sling when it woke. "Silly dumb biddy," she crooned, and turned to kill the strange winged snake.
It stirred as Andon raised the club high over her head. She knew nothing of snakes. Andon decided then that her policy when encountering a threat she didn't know was to make sure she killed it on the first blow.
Vivid orange eyes peeked out from the pearlescent and dark blue feathers, and a bright white tongue flickered briefly. Andon brought the club down.
It slammed into the rooftop with a loud thwack as the serpent's head was suddenly three inches to her right. Andon yanked back before it could strike.
But it didn't.
"Mercy."
Andon froze. She knew nothing of snakes, but she was fairly sure they couldn't talk. She hesitated, staring at the serpent, club gripped tight.
"Mercy," it repeated, its mouth and tongue clearly shaping the word. Andon swallowed nervously, stepping back.
"Ahr yew some so't of...godling?" she asked suspiciously. Godlings tended to make strange things happen. Like talking snakes, or talking animals in general. But Andon hadn't heard of godlings being found anywhere other than Farthacia, another continent to the south.
"No," it replied. "What I am is a bit of broken wing and a good deal of hungry. Give me the bird."
Andon scowled and kicked at it. The snake yanked away, and this time Andon saw its right wing lagging awkwardly.
"Stupid child, I am wounded enough! Lash at me again and I will strike, and you will know my poison."
"Yu'll not get one a' my birds," Andon scowled, backing away from it. "Godling or what, you'll not 'ave a one."
"Wait," it hissed as Andon turned away. "Wait...pleeasse..."
Andon hesitated.
"I will give you a gift," the snake whispered.
"Ah don't wont nothin'," Andon snapped, becoming irritated. The thing unnerved her,
"It is a very special gift. A gift that could help you against what ails you."
Andon's hand reached unbidden to her neck, to brush against the ugly patch of warted, purple skin. Her own changes had begun to take root, though she spent most of her time not thinking about it, or that her younger brother was nearly the same age and showed no signs at all yet.
"It turns against you more quickly than others," the serpent murmured, "because you have potential. You are adept. The magic is drawn to you. My gift could change the tide, though. My gift would give you power over it, the power to drive it back, to undo, to obey you. My gift would save your life."
Andon thought heavily on this, as heavily as any almost-seven-year-old can bend their mind to anything. She stroked the bird pensively, holding it close to her chest. She touched its stump of a leg. She thought of her mother, half-dead already, confined to her bedroom for the past months. She thought of her father, who had always relied on her mother for strength, slowly shrinking into himself, even as he tried desperately to hang on to his family.
Then she looked at the snake's broken wing.
It was a hunter, and not a hunted, but it was still a flying thing, and Andon's father had told her flying things were to be treasured. There were plenty of things over land and under sea, and it was easy enough to hug the ground and sink in the water. But flight was something very special. Something that ought to be protected.
And if the gift could indeed help her undo the sickness that magic brought...
"Ah'll fetch ye' a sparrow," she decided. "And ah'll mend ye wing. But ye'll not have any ov me father's birds."
"Deal," the snake said.
"Ye wait hare, then. I'v nay stewpid enuff to pick ye up wit a bird in me arms."
The snake hissed quietly, and Andon smirked.
She brought the bird back to the flock. It was waking up, dazed and a bit wobbly, but didn't seem to notice it lacked a leg. Pigeons were notorious for their stupidity.
The birds were trained to fly home when they had a parcel on their leg. Andon attached a blank slip of paper to the bird's good leg and tossed the pigeon into the air. Then she sent the flock on to the next roof and went back for the serpent.
Andon was good for her word, catching two sparrows for the snake that it swallowed almost one right after the other in its haste to sate its hunger. Then as it lay limp, drowsy from its plump belly, Andon set to work on its wing.
It was a clean break, infinitely better than a shatter, and would heal well enough as long as the beast didn't break the splint and rested hard for some weeks. Andon explained this to the serpent when it woke and it nodded to show it understood. Then it asked if it could stay with Andon till it was healed.
After some thought, Andon agreed. On the condition that the snake did not go after any of their pigeons.

"You are being idiotic. Do it again, and this time, do it right."
"Stewpid biddy," Andon muttered under her breath in her thick West Wall accent. Obridandis reared upright, flaring her hood wings.
"What was that?" the serpent snapped.
"Nothing. Look, I'm doing it right, see? Alright?" Andon drew the symbols in the air exactly as the book depicted, the vivid red light of her magic sparking and curling out from within her fingertip, the bone and veins underneath faintly visible.
"Better. Not perfect. But not idiotic."
Andon scowled as she completed the spell. A small chorus of tiny trumpets sounded and golden songbirds exploded from the symbols she'd drawn. Simple results from a spell of complicated symbols. That was today's goal, perfecting Andon's spell scribing technique. According to Obridandis, she'd gotten sloppy with confidence in the past few weeks. According to Andon, she was fourteen years old, and shouldn't have to worry that much about such a trivial thing for a long time. Not until the University entrance exam, anyway, which was several years away.
They'd been on the rooftop for three straight hours, and Andon was hungry and cramped from sitting in the same position for so long.
"Lunch?" she suggested hopefully. Obridandus swayed slightly, her tongue flickering thoughtfully. Her hood wings retracted.
"...Fine. Make it quick."
Andon dashed off across the rooftops, leaping easily from one to the next, darting and twisting agilely to avoid dips and holes and slippery shingles. It was week's end, Endsday, when the tamed birds of the city spent the day in their eyrie so the roof dancers could have a rest. Most of the city was in fact having a rest, and was out and about in the market, either to spend any extra earnings on pretty things or just look at pretty things to save extra earnings for. Serious buying, such as food and clothing, would be done the day after, on Essensday.
As Andon neared the market, she paused, steadying herself against a chimney, and cocked her head to listen.
The wind was singing.
The hums, chirps, and whistles of dozens of other roof dancers were lifted high on the pre-noon breeze, joining together in a single, aimless melody. Usually the calls of roofdancers possessed specific meanings, coming together to form almost a whole entire language. Stormy skies, and directions, West-up-North, East-down-South, were just a few of the more common phrases. But today, known words were meant to be taken without meaning, casting definition aside for the pure sound. Down in the market, the tune would be lost in the hustle and bustle of kiosks and shopkeepers hawking their wares, the chatter of tatis and the humming of the lower damos voices. The roof dancers only sang like this every Endsday, the only time the signals were to be taken as meaningless. It was an unspoken rule among them that otherwise the almost-language was to be used only when needed. The only songs that had meaning today were roofdancers' whistle-names.
Andon darted around a particularly large, crumbling chimney, skidded to a halt an inch from a stone gutter, then dropped to grab on to it with her fingers, swung herself forcefully to the right, released, and dropped several feet to grab onto the pipe below.
She easily slid the rest of the way down to the ground and darted out of the alley
and into the bustling marketplace.
A series of low, humming notes reached her ears, and Andon replied with several short trilling high notes. A name for a name, exchanging positions with a fellow roofdancer.
"Andon!" The fourteen year old whirled whirled to see her friend Kaurot waving at her through the crowd. They both wriggled their way through the thronging masses to catch hands so they wouldn't be separated.
"Where to for lunch?" Kaurot asked, his impish face grinning, ruddy and smudged with dirt. Kaurot's face was always smudged with dirt. Andon's was always smudged with slightly more than his.
"Piper's sugar buns," she said, her mouth already watering. "Then some of Donno's fried fish chips, and then Kitto's sweet pips!"
"Sounds like a plan," Kaurot said excitedly. "Race you!"
Andon's hand shot out and she shoved him before he could shove her. She darted off into the crowd, his yells of indignation fading rapidly behind her.
It didn't take Andon long to maneuver the crowd of market day, and she had soon beat Kaurot well and good. She tested her money pouch as she approached the stall, trying to decide whether Piper's sugar buns were worth the halfpence today, or if she would have to steal them instead. She hadn't shown herself to Piper yet, so she had time to decide. The faded patch of scar tissue on her neck itched, like it always did when she was nervous.
Andon was just about to sneak around into the stall's blindspot when she felt a hand settle lightly, but firmly, on her shoulder. Startled, Andon yelped and jerked away, but the hand held fast. She relaxed, though, when the owner of the hand uttered a soft, genteel chuckle.
"Steady on there, young Andon. Planning to nick out of poor Piper's stock again? You know she needs the ha'penny just as much as you."
Andon flushed and looked up into the lovely face of Annonnio, one of the loveliest men Andon had ever known, and was sure she would ever know. His long, sheer blonde hair fell in sleek, trim waves down the front of his torso. Somehow he never tangled it in the intricate folds and embroidery of the expensive kiotos he always wore.
"Reck'n ah need it a b't more'n she do," Andon muttered sulkily. Annonnio laughed, a sound like little bells.
"I won't argue with you. Come on, love, I'll buy you your sweet."
"An' Kaurot too!" Andon said hurriedly.
"Ye damned roight, 'an' Kaurot too!'" Kaurot exclaimed as he shrugged his way free of the tarp of the cart he'd crawled under. Annonnio laughed again. Andon was beginning to notice, more and more in the past year, that Annonnio's laugh sent little shivers through her. "Bloody bollhock'n cheater you are."
"Sugar buns all around," Annonnio said, smiling.
"Sounds like someone had good business all last night," Kaurot muttered to Andon as Annonnio proceeded ahead of them to the stall.
Red hot anger burst through Andon's veins, and she punched Kaurot smack in the face. He fell hard on his arse, and gaped up at her in astonishment. Andon stared down at him, a good deal shocked herself. She'd never hit him so hard before, and not in the face.
"Th' divvil wozzat fo'?" Kaurot demanded, recovering quickly and leaping back to his feet.
"Jus'--jus' dinnae talk about An'io lie' thaht," Andon snapped, clenching her fists again.
"Why oughtn' I? Issa truth, sure an' sure! You know that. We knowed it since that time you said we ought 'o take a look at what An'io does wot dresses him so fine--"
"I dinnae care! Jis--jis dinnae say things like that, or ah thump you round again!" Andon demanded, shoving her face into Kaurot's. They glared hard at each other for a long, stiff moment, until finally Kaurot sulkily lowered his eyes and looked away. His left eye, where Andon's fist had landed, was already swelling up.
"Come now, what are you two little ones bickering about now?" Annonnio asked, returning with their buns. "Andon, I've seen you pop Kaurot one before, but never that hard."
"I'm nay so lit'le anymore, An'io," Andon said hurriedly. "Hailit Eltlen say I'm right hanssome jus' th'other day!" She was telling a good bit of truth. Two years prior she'd only come up to Annonnio's hip. Now her head was nearly level with his chest, and she was still growing like a weed.
"I'm sure he did, Andon," Annonnio said in amusement. "He's taken quite a fancy to you, I hear. All you Rensley kits are growing up so fast, these days. Along with me, now, let's find somewhere we can sit and enjoy these buns in peace."
"'Cor, bollyhocks, and fell-dogs walkin'," Kaurot hissed as they fell in behind Annonnio. "You've gone an' took bloody fancy t' th' town's prettiest whore!"

At the end of the market day, Kaurot went home with a broken nose to compliment his black eye. His mother was furious. Meanwhile, Andon had something else entirely to deal with, and potentially even less pleasant than a furious West Wall matriarch.

^be sure to interject near the beginning with training under Obri that she's making Andon learn proper "dialogue" so she doesn't talk like she comes from a slum. Even though she does.