ultima

It was the reason birds flew into windowpanes. Not ignorance, not foolishness. Not a shortcoming of a bird’s own making, for birds were such careful builders. It was only the world’s love of struggle. 

Perhaps a hundred times she had seen the tiny bodies littered around the Edge, chests pulsing frantically, the eyes glinting, wild, before falling flat and still. Talkative jays. Clever magpies. She had as many prayers for them as she did dread of the walls that bound them, even as the sky lurched above. But she had seen swallows skittering across the greenhouse roof, too, or very narrowly missing the ragged parapets of the wall, and that was what she felt then: the impact as her brittle bones struck the glass and buckled; the gravity of another defeat; but more than that, the realization that this time, she could nearly see over. 

“I hope you find your way.”

Next time. That was her smile carried, greenstick fractures, aching chest, and all. (Next time, whether this was a dream or not, we will be better. We will.) 

“And I you,” she said. (It was a promise worth keeping.)

He’d already turned away by then, something flashing through his face so quickly she thought she might have imagined it. Perhaps he was a dream, after all; she felt very much like she was reaching for the end of one, trying vainly to remember what a moment ago had been so vivid. (He felt like water to her. Water on the surface was placid and cool, but if you were very quiet and very thoughtful you could sense it: underneath, it was rippling and thriving and almost violent with life. Ultima, who had child’s eyes that missed many things but caught others in their golden nets, thought she might have seen that in him.) 

Eventually she contented herself with the wondering, her golden gaze drifting from the line of his cheek and out to the meadow ahead. It’s late, she thought, connecting the unfamiliar stars, staring back at the moon as it peeked through a veil of clouds. How long had they been here, talking? A few minutes? A few hours? She thought to ask (Where will you go now? Where is your road taking you?), and then held her tongue again; there was something tenuous hanging in the air between them, and if she said the wrong thing, she feared it might break.

So breathing out, the girl pushed herself to her feet, wings splayed for balance as the blood rushed to support her stiltish legs, gone numb with cold and worry. Immediately – It’s late, I have to be going, it was a pleasure to meet you – a wealth of niceties to draw the night to a close. Lingering a moment, though, she decided again that she dare not. (That was the thing with dreams. Because they were like you, of you, they understood even when nothing was spoken.) 

Tossing the hair from her face, she took one wobbling step, then another, stronger, and vanished back towards the treeline. Back to bed. Back to routine. 

Back to try the glass, again.

(Goodbye.)