"The Lioness" by J. lawrence

The night wasn’t warm or cool, but in-between, with a quiet breeze that licked at your legs occasionally, and prompted you to close your eyes, tilt your head back, and just breathe in the universe.

It was an amazing feeling at first, but the longer you stood there, the more the dampness in the air started to make you feel unpleasantly warm and sticky, so John started walking; anything to move. 

“Make a breeze yourself,” he thought,  “don’t wait for one to come.”

His movement was adequate to quench the warmth, so he went along, taking care to notice things he never had before…

The tips of his fingers were pleasantly cool, as were his cheeks and nose. He was on a path in a forest where wisteria vines grew over the trees, obscuring the sun in a leafy green blanket above. They weren’t blooming, but wisteria vines nonetheless, though the answer of how he knew this presently eluded his thoughts. He never considered where he was or why, just took in the place for its elusive beauty.

The path ended in the outskirts of a large planned town. The sun was rising in front of John, shining on the thatched roves of the little clay houses in their neat rows and squares. He saw that the town rose with the land, from where he was to the edge of the sea, which sat majestically between this small city and the great gold sun.

He walked on through the place, its people not yet risen from their beds; streets quiet, stolid, immovably set between buildings. The town seemed solid, strong, and ancient. And at the same time, as he looked at it, John saw it was clean, like new, in use. The thatch wasn’t dull; the bricks weren’t crumbled. But it held a primeval, historic arrogance in style and mindset. It seemed quite alive, though silent, and John had to remind himself as he went on, that towns weren’t living creatures.

There was an octagonal building in the center, boasting a midnight blue flag with a golden lion symbol flapping in the slight wind, the lion’s eye pure sapphire blue.

But he walked on, drawn to the sea, the regal, teal green sea.

The last house finally subsided, and he was left again on a small path, winding toward jade-emerald waters, with a passion in his heart that he never knew he’d had for anything in the world. Suddenly, as the wind blew afresh, John’s senses pricked, heightened. He could smell the dark moist dirt under his feet, and the salt in the air. He breathed in deeply as the breeze came once more, wishing it might lift him off his feet, that he could fling out his arms and ride the currents up to the sun and back down.

He felt like he had wings, and wished to spread them. Could almost feel the straining of ill-used muscles. Could almost feel the cold air washing against him as he beat and strained to touch the fiery orb above. He breathed hard and fast, reaching his hands up over his head, almost lunging off the dark turgid cliff that separated land from sea.

Then he saw his friend behind him. Saw her before he even turned. Sensed her presence, heard her company.

She was singing a beautiful, tuneless song. There was no melody in her voice, no musicality of any sort but noise. It rang through the air as sharp at the same time and as subtle as anything could be. It was more of a scream of joy than a song.

And as it rang out through the silence, John contracted its elation. He threw back his head and laughed out loud, and the sound echoed in his ears and intermingled with her yell. And together, they created a cacophonous euphoric discord, more satisfying than any other sensation John could ever recall experiencing.

With that, the wishing of wings came back, and with an animal ferocity he wanted to fly. So it came as a shock when wings erupted from his friend’s back, arching toward the heavens. They were golden and shining, like her winding corkscrew hair, which fell in elegant tresses down her back, bare of clothing because her shirt back was low with the need to wield her wings.

Her electric sapphire blue eyes were glazed as she stared at the sky, thrusting up her arms as John had done earlier. And all of a sudden, he could see through her eyes as well as he could see through his own. The images overlapped and tangled, and he focused on her sight as she pushed off the side of the cliff the way any runner would start a race: powerful legs exploding with force. She was out over the ocean in seconds, hundreds of feet above the water, level with the cliff, and then she rose. The beating wings were tired and tense, but adrenaline pushed them further, and she went higher, and higher still, and John went with her.

They raced toward the heavens, trying to beat fatigue, but it was useless. The air was thin and their lungs burned; John’s friend’s, and his with hers. The wings beat faster and faster, but they were rising no longer, rather dropping slowly, however determined to escape the ground forever.

The golden-thatched houses were specks, and the trees were toothpicks. The sun was a golden orb, bigger than John had ever seen it, though he wasn’t really there.

A deep sense of loss flooded them as they realized she could go no higher. It was the depression that comes after anything great, and she let them fall, no longer bothering to use her wings, rendering them useless, three hundred feet of air between her and the angry sea and nothing to slow them. Then the depression went away, and was again replaced by elation, as the air threatened to rip her limbs from her chest, and she fell steadily faster.

Three hundred entire feet, what a trip! She fell faster and faster, flying past John, tearing through the air, twisting and turning in a terrible beautiful dance not unlike that dissonant song. It was the joy that mattered, the falling, the freedom.

There were fifty feet left, and she pulled back on her wings. Momentum ripped out pockets of feathers, and tore tissue with hisses and cracks that were audible even amidst the noise of rushing air and the sea. But she held fast, spraining muscles and pulling ligaments, tendons, whatever could be pulled.

She was slowing. Then dropped again. Ten feet left and she tucked in her wings and dove into the cold blue-green ocean.

John gasped. He could feel the icy frozen waters on his skin, though they weren’t, and the feeling tore him away from the eyes of his friend, even when the pain in his back from great strain had not. He stood on the edge of the cliff; perilously close to the edge, and looked down, breathing hard, gasping for breath. The water showed no sign that she had ever breached its freezing surface.

Now that he was separate from her, the beauty of the world around John seemed to dull. The colors drifted around the corners of his vision, swirling away whenever he turned to see them. The memory of the place was still vaguely there, but darkness smothered all John’s senses and he couldn’t see it.

He slowly drifted back to his own world, his own bed, struggling all the way, wanting to remain on the tall yellow cliffs, or under the green-leafed blanket of wisteria vines…

His deep gasping breath slowed and he opened his sleep-heavy eyes in the darkness, just in time for the alarm clock to ring him awake.

He turned it off, and rolled over on his side, willing himself to fall back to sleep. John wanted that world of his friend, the world of perfection, where humans had wings and flew through the cold morning air…

She struggled against the current, the ripping, tearing waves.

The sight of her was muddled in his mind. He tried to see clearer. He tried to call her name,

“Chaya!” but his tongue felt heavy.

Her slight body was being thrown about with the will of the waves, even as she struggled so hard against them. John tried to move closer, to help her out of the water, but his limbs felt heavy, leaden.

She was pulling against the waves harder than they were pulling her, and she thrashed her way to the bottom of the cliffs, clinging to jagged yellow boulders. She closed her eyes in exhaustion, just holding the rocks, and John once again tried to move closer, and once again, no success. He felt his bed under his body, the pillow, heard the clock go off again… Half awake, half dreaming?

He watched worriedly as she gathered one last burst of energy and heaved onto a small ledge, wings turned up.

They were broken and mangled, torn and twisted, from the fantastic brake she’d pulled off during flight. She was asleep on the rocks in utter exhaustion, blood dripping over golden feathers, into golden hair.