2024-06-15 - Stirrings of Flight

Mother has had this sequence of thoughts many times before. It usually takes little interest. None of what she is thinking makes sense to it, and so it often turns away and focuses on its efforts to contact the other presences it is so fond of.

This time, however, feels different. Something about it - it, not the dream, this it knows - has changed. Something about these thoughts beyond just Mother's presence is comprehensible now. The wind whipping over hide, wings beating and pushing a body upwards, eyes protected by one of their three lids... The sights and colours mean little to it, and so it focuses little on them. It's all sensations - cold and resistance, the power and exhiliration of moving unrestricted. It jerks and twitches, trying to mimic the movements it feels as well as it can with its underdeveloped body. It is unlike its Mother's in almost every way but it grows, day by day, closer to something that will be able to not only imitate but truly pull off whatever incredible feat this is.

The effort eases. She floats, supported by nothing but the air and her own wings. The strain had been a thrill, but this is so much better. It was simple, instinctive - the minute twitches of her wings to keep herself aloft are barely registered by its young, inexperienced mind. All it knows is the feeling of movement without the exhaustion that follows its own attempts to shift around, a sense of freedom, as much as it can conceptualise something so vague and unfamiliar. It hangs onto this as tightly as it can.

Perhaps it is this enthusiasm, this effort to hold on, that rouses Mother. The floaty feeling vanishes, the wind stills, even the parts it didn't care for are sorely missed as they fizzle out. If it had a voice to cry out with it would have. As it is, it settles back into quiet complacency. Later it will resume trying to talk, but the excitement has exhausted it. It feels, at least for now, that perhaps it is best not to grab onto things too hard.