Chico was being surprisingly supportive today. Not that it was weird in and of itself, because I can’t really remember him being this happy in a long, long time. Smarmy, yes. Gassy, sure. But this burst of pure joy that radiated from him, coursing through his veins, was something I wasn’t expecting--it was too much like how he was when he was first hatched, so new and so excited and so full of love for him, for me, for us, that it brought me to tears at the time.

I was almost to tears now--but it wasn’t from the beauty of his love. He was being so supportive because now that I had no more responsibilities to mask it, now that I had no more excuses to shunt it with, now that the Birdsong breeze blew warm and new and exciting and there was no more delaying my promise--it was time to learn how to fly.

And I was fucking terrified.
Like, I knew the ground. I knew how solid it was, how it felt like beneath my feet, what it felt like to bust my ass on it and get rug-burn. I was friends with the ground; I could run on it super fast, like, you have no idea. I didn’t have that same relationship with the sky, with its...its wind n shit. And I didn’t have the same relationship with my wings that I did with my legs, who were sturdy and honed for asskicking.

I’d always known my wings were there. They were a part of me as any other piece of me, like my skin or my horn or my ears or my ass. But I’d had no reason to use them, cuz if I wanted to move, I walked; if I wanted to go fast, I could run; if I wanted to climb something extra high that was too steep for feet, then I could zpsnk easily through the air, traveling through the currents of time and shock briefly to get to where I needed to go. I had no reason to leave the familiarity of the ground and tempt that broken neck.

But here I was, my wings…there (zpKing, electrical tentacles reaching out from my shoulders like grotesque, shimmering hands) spread and ready for what was gonna go down. I was running and Chico was running beside me, his own wings outstretched, so I could watch him as he flapped a few times and caught the downdrafts necessary to keep aloft. I ran beside him like that, running full circuits around the clearing we’d found to do this (cuz there ain’t no way I was gonna just let anyone see this potential mess) before, finally, I took a stab at it and flapped for the first time, trying to mimic his motions.

It was fucking horrifying the way I didn’t immediately hit the ground, like my legs and entire body predicted. It threw me off guard and I wobbled from where I was briefly gliding in the air; and I lost my lift and fell back down to earth (where I belonged jeez jeez jeez) and I was able to keep my pace running. But it was weird--it was like breaking the ice and something lifted from my shoulders, some dark dread that was twisting its sticky way into the back of my head. I’d…glided a little. I wasn’t dead.

I kept running that circuit (it was great for cardio). Chico kept demonstrating his take off and I tried again, and this time I stayed in the air for much longer, cuz the panic was much smaller. I kept trying, leaping into the air like a magical fucking woodland creature, feeling myself lift into the air for some moments before being gently let back down by the breeze. The air could be my friend, after all.

If it wanted to.


"In ornare vitae leo eu volutpat."