flying // short story

You’ve always wanted to escape your everyday life.

Admit it. You go from one day to the next, through the motions of your life, working, talking, laughing, sleeping, living, but every now and then, every once in a while, in those small rare moments when life comes to a halt and silence falls and your mind wanders, you catch yourself staring out of the window at the iron-coloured, overcast sky, and dreaming of something different. Something new. Something other.

You dream…

Of warm sunlight on your skin. Of air rushing against your face. Of a turquoise, diamond-tipped sea spread underneath your feet and an endless sapphire sky above you as you fly. You dream of flying. You dream of weightlessness. You dream of a euphoric, soaring rebellion.

You dream of freedom.

What if your dreams could become a reality? What if you could actually make it there, to that open sky, to that beautiful sparkling sea of your fantasies?

What if I told you that you could truly fly?

You wouldn’t believe me, of course. You’d think there was no way; that you’re trapped in your world and there’s no way out. But you’d be wrong. You can escape. And it’s easier than you might think.

All you have to do is dream.

So, go on: close your eyes. Imagine it. Dream of it.

Go on…

And suddenly –

You’re there.

See? It was that easy.

You feel the warm grainy sand shifting underneath your webbed feet. You feel the hot rays of the midday sun beating down on your back. You feel the cool sea breeze ruffling the feathers on your wings – wings? Yes! You stretch them out as far as they will go, beating them back and forth in joy, feeling the resistance of the wind as they move, feeling your toes lifting up from the sand as you rise, a euphoria unlike anything you’ve ever felt before filling your heart as the possibilities open up before your eyes.

Wings mean flight.

Flight means freedom.

You drop back down to the sand and take in the idyllic landscape you suddenly find yourself in. Miles and miles of perfect cream-coloured sand spread in a massive crescent shape around you, forming a beautiful cove framed by towering chalk-white cliffs. In front of you, the unending teal sea whispers softly against the shore, and above, the dazzling azure sky is so pure and clear that you feel like you’re drowning in it as you look up.

You flap your wings, hard this time, exhilaration rushing through your veins as your feet leave the sand properly and you rise up, up, up into the flawless sky; up, up, up, shooting towards the blinding midday sun; up, up, up, the landscape underneath you shrinking and shrinking, getting smaller and smaller by the millisecond, almost dizzying as you look down.

You come to a halt, hovering above the miniature beach and the miniature cliffs and the miniature waves breaking on the shore. You take in a deep breath of pure, clean, gloriously unpolluted air; then, with a scream of pure joy, you let yourself plummet down, down, down, down towards the sea; down, down, down, your wings arched behind you; down, down, down, the wind thundering against your ears in a deafening roar, the glittering water rushing up to meet you, faster, faster, faster, faster, out of control,

faster faster faster faster

completely out of control

faster faster faster faster faster faster

you’re going to crash –

And then, mere seconds before you would have plunged into the sea, you change the angle of your wings and swoop up in a breath-taking arch and flap your wings and pick up speed again, heading forward this time, forward towards the horizon, forward into infinity, letting out another wild cry of joy as you rocket forward and the jewel-tipped sea flashes mere inches beneath you in a dizzying blur.

You zoom ahead, feeling the chilly sea breeze whip against the feathers of your wings, almost blinded by the brightness of the sun reflecting off the waves. You spot a shoal of silver fish darting by just beneath the surface of the ocean; instinctively, you plunge down and grab one in your beak, swallowing it whole before continuing on your journey.

Forward, forward, forward –

Faster and faster and faster and faster –

The world is a glittering blur –

Faster faster faster –

The wind –

The sun –

The speed –

The joy –

You’ve never felt more alive.

But inevitably, you come to a halt. You stop beating your wings, stretching them out instead to slow to a gentle glide. You’re very far from shore by now. Out here, the ocean looks like a midnight sky: inky dark blue with flashes of silver glimmering and glinting like stars. Breezy white clouds have come in over the horizon, muting the brightness of the sun. Now that you’ve paused, you suddenly realise how tired you are – you’re out of breath; your wing joints ache. And you still need to make it all the way back to shore.

It’s time to go.

With heavy disappointment in your chest, you wheel around and start making your way back to the beach. Still, your journey isn’t over, not quite yet: still time to rally up the energy to put on another burst of speed and swoop up into the sky, turning a few wild loop-the-loops as you go, dazzled by whirl of colour as you turn: the pale blue sky, then the golden rays of the setting sun turning the ocean a beautiful copper, then blue again, over and over again.

Soon, too soon, far too soon, the sea underneath your feet turns into ivory sand, and you swoop in to land on the bank. You stretch out your wings and walk a few shuffling steps along the beach. You’re bone tired, and you’ve never felt happier in all your life. All you want is to do everything all over again.

Still, as you sit on the beach and watch the glowing orange sun set over the horizon, you find yourself longing for home. You’re hungry, and you start to crave a nice warm meal; something more satisfying than that cold fish you ate before. Now that evening is drawing in, the ocean breeze is getting uncomfortably cold and cutting, and you think longingly of your warm bed. But there is no warm meal here, and there is no bed. The life of a seagull has many upsides, but you suppose it has its downsides, as well.

Perhaps it’s better to leave the flying to the seagulls, you think, as the sun finally lowers behind the horizon and the sky starts to turn indigo. Perhaps humans were never meant to fly. Perhaps humans were meant to find joy in other, more earthly things than swooping over the ocean.

Perhaps the whole point of human life, the ultimate goal of our very existence, is to find this feeling of utter freedom and pure euphoria as we make our way along the rough path of life.

Still, as you slowly come back to your body, you know that you’ll never forget this experience. You know that whenever things get tough, you can always escape to this moment, to this feeling of weightlessness and unrestraint and rebellion. To the beauty of that landscape and the beauty of that feeling inside your heart.

And maybe, if you look out of the window during these hard times, you might see the white feather of a seagull drifting slowly down from the sky in front of you, just to remind you of that feeling of wild happiness that you felt as you flew; to remind you that it is possible for you to feel like that once more in the future.

In fact, if you happen to look out of the window, you might just see one gently spiralling down right now.

Maybe.

Maybe not.

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Hi hello no I'm not dead (tho you'd be forgiven for thinking so). (Do I even have any followers left on here? It's been so long.) This is just a lil' something I started writing for school and ended up writing for me. The idea is that the reader feels like they're the main character of this story; they're the ones who turn leave their body and live this dream.

I suppose, in a way -- if I've done my job right as a writer, of course -- by reading this story, the reader really does leave their body; they really do live the dream.



That's the magic of writing.




Thoughts?





>>Andrea