I invent a new species from an old image: Sphinxes, those mythic creatures with the body of a lion and the head of a man or woman. There are male and female sphinxes, the females being much more dangerous than the males. The males are all stolid and dignified, but some of the females can wreak great havoc if they are in the mood. Some of the females sphinxes -- but almost never males -- grow wings like birds and are able to fly.

My sphinxes live on small islands in the middle of a huge ocean. Between the different islands they use boats, but to leave them for the wide world, they need to grow wings. Life on the island is quiet and patently harmless. Most sphinxes are farmers or fishers or artisans that make useful and beautiful things; they stay on the ground, take over the lives of their parents when the time comes, have children of their own, and are content. The islands are fertile and life is bountiful.

The peace is only disturbed by the gangs of young girls who roam over the islands and pester the grown-ups, play tricks, throw soap powder into fountains, sneak rum into the lemonade, and generally make a nuisance out of themselves. Most of them stop roaming when they grow up, find themselves someone and settle down, but very few stay restless all their lives. After a few years, the tricks of their companions might seem slightly childish to them, and they will start hearing rumours of a gang of grown-up sphinx females who have special powers, and they will go and find them. Of course, the way to them is long and arduous and fraught with peril.

When they find them, they realise that they are none other than the winged sphinxes, the select and secretive elite they have sometimes glimpsed from afar, the ones that are able to leave and that do all the business in the outside world for the people who have to stay on the ground. They will resent them for a while and believe they have been tricked into a sort of army or order, but then they will start believing the winged sphinxes how much fun it all is, and they will begin their training in earnest.

In a secret and crowning ceremony, different for each sphinx who takes this path, they will sprout their own wings from the potential of wings that is within them all, by the willpower to bring them into the actual world. No two pairs of wings are ever the same, and they are all colourful and overwhelmingly beautiful.

Now, the female sphinxes can fly over the sea to the big continents where the humans live and do some real mischief. They are charming, beautiful with their women's faces and breast, their deadly animal bodies and their huge angels' wings. Humans love them and welcome them, although they play tricks and cheat and often break things with their boisterous energy.

However, if a human falls in love with a particular sphinx, she will most likely be fatal to him, for no human can possibly withstand a sphinx when her passion is roused; she is likely to tear him apart. The few that survive, battered and broken, tell of the most overwhelming experience of their lives, despite the heavy price they had to pay, so some other fool will try it again later.

The sphinxes don't want to kill those humans; they are really just good-natured and fun-loving: Each winged sphinx in that situation believes she can control herself, and later on deeply regrets over the bloody shreds that she couldn't.

She will be very sorry and ashamed and try to make secret amends to the family of the young man she has torn up (she's much too ashamed ever to show her face again to them), and if he survived, she'll secretly care for him for the rest of his life, as she feels responsible for the state he's in.

It is extremely rare for a winged sphinx to have children of her own, as most male sphinxes are terribly afraid of the disorder and chaos they bring, but if one of them has a baby, it will be born winged. Getting the little featherless wing stubs out of the mother without the tiny bones breaking is a major bother and the source of great anxiety, of course. The sons of the winged sphinxes, extremely rare, are the only male sphinxes ever to fly and to see the outside world.