It’s the end of an era: the saurians who had been the dominant predator on Earth are dying out due to a mysterious sickness and through the machinations of all the other beasts, who have made a pact to exterminate this common threat by destroying any saurian eggs they find. About twenty years before Darkwing begins, however, a small group of chiropters who reject the pact and go to live on a secluded island as conscientious objectors.
As our story begins, the young chiropter Dusk is about to make his first leap into the air. He’s a weak newborn, strangely built, and instinctively he wants to flap his sails like wings. As he grows up with his father Icaron, the leader of the island colony, his impulsive sister Sylph, and the rest of his family, Dusk is subjected to a great deal of pressure to conform or risk being shunned by his community. But Dusk is not like the others. Whereas in the story, the chiropters are a sort of pre-bat species (I immediately imagined them looking like sugar-gliders, though later in the book there are illustrations which contradict my mental image), Dusk is a true bat, with the ability to “see” in the dark and, much to the fear and confusion of the rest of his people, to fly.
