Sapphire: Silence! Return to your duties at once!
Servant: Yes, princess. Forgive me, princess. [walks away]
Diamond: [stunned] Sapphire, you've — you've changed!
Sapphire: [beat] So have you.
Flight: The Tale of Two Sisters is a Coming of Age/drama Web Comic about winged cats who live on an island. The prologue was posted on Scratch April 7, 2018 and is about thirty chapters long with the last chapter having come out October 7, 2020.
The story starts with the birth and young childhood of the eponymous sisters, Diamond and Sapphire, as they're growing up and playing together in the palace. Then, their mother, Queen Citrine, chooses Sapphire as the heir to the throne in a special choosing ceremony. This upsets Diamond because it means she no longer has an actual rank in their Fantastic Caste System. When she's sitting in her room after the ceremony, Lilac, a friendly healer, comes to her offers to make Diamond her apprentice, which she accepts. Lilac doesn't live at the palace, so Diamond moves out to live with her in a small village. This leaves Sapphire in the palace, learning how to be a ruler from their strict father, King Garnet.
The majority of the story is about how growing up in these very different living situations affect the sisters and their relationship with each other. The story follows them all the way through their young adult years, and gets somewhat darker towards the end.
The first chapter can be found here.
Five additional comics came out afterward provide more background to different aspects of the world, the characters, and the characters' relationships. They take place at different times before, after, or within the story. Some of them have more of a Slice of Life feel, but be aware, they may contain late-arrival spoilers:
Alone: Backstory for one of the main villans.
Melody: Sapphire and her mate take a break from work to play music.
Quiet: Backstory from when Garnet was a child.
Friendship: Diamond hangs out with two of her friends.
Sisters: Citrine as (presumably) a teenager spends time with her sister and parents; their mother tells them a story.
The author also published a Christmas special that takes place some time before the events of the story, a small illustrated explanation on certain worldbuilding information that was later taken down, and a place for readers to ask the characters questions right here.
Flight: A Tale of Two Sisters contains examples of:
- Aerith and Bob: Most cats on the island are named after plants, animals, or other natural things (think Lilac, Catfish, and Dusk, respectively), but the royal family are all named after gemstones, so Diamond and Zircon caused this when moving away from the palace.
- Usually, this trope is defied within the royal family when a cat marries into it by having their name changed to that of a gemstone.
- Robin is the main exception, having married Garnet's father without having her name changed.
- Actually, the palace could be considered an example because all the servants and guards who live there have the same naming pattern as all the fishers.
- Usually, this trope is defied within the royal family when a cat marries into it by having their name changed to that of a gemstone.
- Almost Kiss: After Lilac and Parsley watch a sunset, they start to get close, but then Diamond interrupts because she wants Lilac to come meet some cats she'd just made friends with.
- Cinderella Plot: The story Citrine's mother tells her daughters in Sisters is this; it was slightly modified to better fit the world of Flight.
- Evil Wears Black: If fur color is treated as clothing, this trope is zigzaged. Garnet and Citrine play it straight between the two of them, with Garnet being dark gray and strict while Citrine is softer and a pale cream color. The colors reverse for their daughters: Sapphire is white, but got more of Garnet's strictness due to her upbringing, while black-spotted Diamond is more friendly and kind. Then, we get Inkberry and Garnet's brother Zircon, both of whom are straight black cats and villains.
- Fantastic Caste System: There are technically six classes: the royalty at the top, the healers as a close second, then the palace guards, then the servants, the fishers are at the very bottom, and then there are the shadows, who don't have a place in the hierarchy and are any members of the royal family who are not currently ruling or chosen to be an heir. Some movement between different classes is possible: guards and servants can marry into the royal family, fishers can become servants or guards note , and shadows seem to be able to join any class below royalty.
- Happily Married: Sapphire and Emerald end up this way.
- Also Parsley and Lilac, after they finally get married.
- Love at First Sight: The method royalty use to choose partners in this world seems to rely on this trope if they haven't been paying attention to the palace servants: appropriately-aged servants in the palace line up so the prince or princess can look at them and choose a mate out of one of them. Due to this custom, this happened to Garnet and Citrine, and later Sapphire and Emerald.
- Love Triangle: Dusk loves Diamond, but so does
Catfish, while Diamond thinks of both of them as friends. However, Dusk and Catfish seem to be pretty good friends with each other and there isn't any real conflict over who Diamond should end up with. - Meaningful Name: Sapphire is fairly cold, which is a trait associated with actual sapphires in real life.
- Meaningful Rename: When Fern married into the royal family and got renamed Emerald, it is implied that he had actually become royalty, and Sapphire expected him to act as such.
- Citrine technically had this twice: once when she got married and changed her commoner name to Citrine and then after she dies, she insists her family use her first name, Columbine.
- Official Couple: There are three of them:
- Citrine and Garnet
- Sapphire and Emerald, starting around halfway through,
- And Lilac and Parsley become one, too.
- Poor Communication Kills: Double-subverted. When Diamond accidentally arrives very late to Sapphire's wedding, Sapphire takes it as a sign she didn't care and intentionally avoids looking Diamond's way. Sapphire does send her Lady-In-Waiting to request a private meeting with Diamond, but this was only after it had started raining and Diamond had left the palace to go back to the cottage she'd been living in.
- Vertebrate with Extra Limbs: Every cat above a certain age fits the "four limbs plus wings" variety of this trope.
- "What Now?" Ending: Lilac and Parsely are still missing and Diamond leaves the island to go find them, and right after making up with Sapphire, too. This also means that Sapphire and Emerald have to rule the island on their own and the island is left without any known healers. This ending is justified since this was initially meant to be a prequel to a different story.
