Come Fly With Me…

Flightless nestling. Always that name of shame had been his for as long as he could remember. Aaron’s flock jeered at him through the opening among the skeleton of a damaged building. He was only ten then. His black wings quivered in shame, he tried to hide them behind his back…making them smaller and somehow less visible, he hoped. His twisted, twisted wings…how he hated them. Flightless…a disgrace to the flock. His heart cried out in envy as he saw Aaron dive like a hawk he had once seen in a picture book. Fast, sleek, agile…normal. Why couldn’t he be like that? His small fists tore at the midnight wings on his back. Tore out the feathers and threw them away. His bloodied fingers grasped at them, the soft tiny feathers of a nestling that they said would never ever embrace the winds… he cried, the warm salty tears stung the scratches on his back and sides…cried for the life he should have had…

  

Watching the sapphire sky outside the window frames. It was the year 3000 A.A., a post apocalypse world of winged humans. The only survivors of a world that once was. Drake watched as the fleecy white clouds sailed by. His curled himself into a ball, wrapping his arms around his knees and resting his chin on them. The wind whistled through the gaps, ruffling his thick dark hair and midnight wings. It brought bitter memories of how his father had tried to teach him to fly and how he had fallen from the ledge, screaming like a baby until his father swooped down on his golden wings and saved him. Everyone said he should have died then. Drake buried his face in the crook of his arm and willed the voices in his head to go away. His father had been very embarrassed, stalking away as soon as Drake’s tiny feet had touched the ground then. He left him behind as everyone else had left him behind throughout the years. The one person he had thought he could trust. The bitter memories tainted his every dream, turning them into nightmares, the perpetual presence of dark circles under his eyes a testimony to that. Now he lived alone. A life of perpetual silence and in a way…peaceful solitude away from the mocking eyes of the flock.

Shattered wings stained with blood. Red upon coal black feathers. Drake woke up panting, a scream caught in his throat. Subconsciously he fingered his wings, the one thing that had brought him so much pain…but yet he could not bring himself to make an appointment with the Slasher. A storm had darkened the horizon while he had slept. The thin shirt he wore flapped in the wind and against his wings. Screams rang out below him, startling him out of his dream induced stupor. His heart clenched within his chest. A wry smile twisted his lips. His new apartment wasn’t exactly the best of the lot considering that it was directly above the Slasher’s hut. Maybe someday that scream would be from his own lips. A stretcher carrying a prone figure lying on its belly made its way out of the hut. Even from so many stories above he could see bloodied bandages wrapped across its back and the obvious lack of wings. Drake shuddered and moved back within the comforting quarters and sights of his own home. The weight of his wings reminded him of the possible fate that awaited him below.

He woke up in the darkness, the sound of rain thundering down on the sheets of metal that served as a window to his pigeon hole apartment. What was it that had woken him up? Drake rolled over onto his stomach, stretching as he did so. The sound of a knife against a whetstone cut through the pounding of the rain. A scream. Then silence. There seemed to be so many flightless who now frequented the Slasher’s hut. Later he would wonder why he made the trip down to the dreaded path that lead to an unexpected haven. 

The hut was smoky, lit only by a fireplace that illuminated the many wings that hung on the walls. Not as trophies, more as sad reminders of the cruelty of life and the prejudice towards the differences between the flightless and the normal community. A figure sat hunched in a corner, gently handling a pair of wings, dried blood caking its beautiful cream tinted feathers. Drake’s foot scraped against a stool making him gasp in surprise. The figure turned, and for the first time, Drake saw the Slasher. The one whom so many of the flock feared. The one whose walls were decorated with so many bitter memories. The same one who now had tears running down her face for a lost future of her own and many others whose wings she had cut.

With short black hair framing her face in the firelight, she never once looked like someone who would tear the wings off any creature, much less one like herself. Her eyes hardened over as she saw Drake’s deformed wings, tightly folded against his back. Alarmed, Drake took a step back at the coldness in her eyes. “Are you here to take them off as well?” her voice echoed eerily in the silence of the hut. Drake shook his head mutely, wondering what had possessed him to come so far. “Then…why are you here?” she touched the wings in her hands with a hand that showed none of a Slasher’s abilities. They were soft and pale, weak almost. Drake opened his mouth, promptly shutting it again as she rose from her place by the fire. Now that she stood tall against the light, Drake saw something he hadn’t noticed until now. The Slasher was as flightless as he was.

“What do you want here?” she repeated. Drake stood transfixed by the sudden discovery. The Slasher fingered her flame coloured wing almost self consciously. “I…” Drake wet his lips and tried again “I always thought that you were like the flock,”. A short bark of a laugh escape, surprising the both of them. A grimace twisted her lips as she recalled a memory that she had fought so hard to hide and yet was forced to relive every day of her life.

“Sora! Come up here! Come fly with me!” Cho screamed with all the excitement of a nestling who had just learned to fly. Sora scrambled up to the edge of the metal skeleton, spreading her wings to keep her balance as she did so. High up above her, Cho glided along the wind currents, her baby wings still wobbly. Just below, Tenchi swooped and spiraled, always within reach just in case Cho fell. Sora’s heart soared as she watched him fly, his wings confident and his skin sun kissed, a testimony to the time he spent flying in the sun. Up above Cho yelled again, urging her up. Tenchi smiled at her as she climbed into the sky, red wings flashing like fire. Spreading her wings to their full length, she skimmed along the edge of a cloud, playing hide and seek among the cold wet stuff. She could see the top of Tenchi’s head with its trademark black hair pop up just within her reach. Like a hawk she dived, thinking to pounce on him and surprise him. That was the biggest mistake that cost her the only love she knew and years of pain and regret. The black patch moved sideways at the last moment, and suddenly, Sora realized…she was spiraling down too fast…she was out of control.

Bursting from the cover of the clouds she had no time to even scream when she saw the sharp stakes of an unfinished metal skeleton right below her. Her wings paralysed by fear, she barely heard Cho scream her name, barely felt Tenchi swooping down before her – until she saw his face before hers, gasping, blood-spattered. Three inches of sharp metal protruded from his ribs, the wound spurting blood even as his weakening hands held her away from it. He threw her to the side, away from the metal stake, the effort embedding the stake further into himself and tearing Sora’s left wing off in the process. Cho landed clumsily by Sora’s side on the cement landing. The impact from being tossed aside had woken Sora from her shock-induced state. “Tenchi!!!” she screamed. The prone figure told her the truth even before she reached him. His selfless act had saved her but at the cost of his own life…and her ability to ever ride the winds again. The cry that tore itself from her throat was the raw cry of a bird whose mate is lost to the hunter. On the ground a torn red wing lay bleeding…

Was that the same look on his face when he thought of his own flightless wings? Drake wondered. The dark shadows beneath her eyes seemed to mirror his. Sora…she stood there in the firelight, shaking. But there were no tears on her face although he knew that the regret ran deep within her. “Cho committed suicide when they told her I would never fly again. My sister thought that it had been her fault that I had lost it all. Why...why didn’t she remember that she was all I had left? Why did she leave me too? Cho and Tenchi…my butterfly and my angel…” her voice faded away as her head drooped, her hair falling forward like a silk curtain to shield her face, but the words had already cut into Drake’s heart. Didn’t his father think of that too when he left him? Why did he leave his own son out there on the ledge. Never turning back. After all these years and no one from his past had ever come to find him. To tell him that it was alright to come home. To tell him that he was still his son after all. He bowed his head. He had lost it all too the day he ran away. When he looked her in the eyes, they were brimming with unshed tears. But whether they were tears of pain and regret or relief of finally being able to let go of a burden she had carried alone…he never knew.

The hut just below the metal monstrosity Drake used to call home was often frequented by flightless. And no one came out bloodied anymore. No one lost any wings to the blade of the Slasher ever again. The wings that hung on the walls were replaced by a single red wing, its feathers scarred and torn. A symbol of hope and acceptance that still rang with the echo of Cho’s last words on that fateful day. The very words that brought two strangers together and made two outcasts find acceptance in each other. Come fly with me…

~Rei Shiori