Welcome to Gaia! ::

As I child, I realized that all I wanted was to be able to fly. I soon discovered that, for this to happen, I would need wings. When it became evident that I would not grow them, despite the spark of hope ignited from my bony shoulderblades, I knew I would have to make my own. My arms alone weren't sufficient, no matter how hard I flapped or how high I jumped. Shortly thereafter I discovered that paper was as useless as gluing feathers to my arms. Cloth, although creating a pleasingly dramatic effect, was also out of the question. So why were birds clever enough to grow their own lovely pair of wings when all of my efforts were in vain? I would have asked them, but whenever I drew near they would take off. Unwilling to share their secrets, mocking me in my failures. That same year, my mother brought home a pair of cockatiels. I asked them what their secret was.

They wouldn't say.

And so I dreamt. Little toy birds soared the four-foot skies when guided by my hands, & dragons soon after. My sister & I would act out vivid & complicated stories, then leave the toys behind to put on breezy fabric & sometimes feathered masks. Our strong cloth wings carried us far beyond the clouds. My sister soon outgrew this.
It took me, the eldest, three more years.
And so I grew to love windstorms - if I closed my eyes & held out my arms, I could pretend I was flying, even without my sister's help. The wind would cling to my arms & dance through my hair.

In my teenage years, I discovered that I could draw. I could now fly from my mind to the pencil in my hand, without rules or limitations. Enormous & detailed, these new wings carried their owners past reality.

But not me.

I had rules.

My art was praised, awarded, requested. People asked me how I learned. I didn't. It had always been there. They asked me how I came up with what I drew. It was a simple task, involving the transfer of thought through pencil & onto paper. Confused, they called me talented. But I was never talented.

Just thoughtful.

When I became involved in music, I discovered that I could send thoughts & dreams flying off a bow. But like everything else, the satisfaction died as I realized that it was all just a desperate & innacurate imitation of the real thing. No matter how much I played, no matter how much I drew or visualized or imagined or even thought, nothing would change the reality of it all. But I did not accept it.

I only became ambitious.

In later years someone opened my eyes to an alternative. An exchange of services. I would become the equivilent of a dog for the next great American warlord to come along. While that was happening, much larger & more experienced dogs who had accepted their fates barked orders at me & tried to teach me how to keep myself alive. In return for my services, the big dogs would give me wings & a lisence saying I had the right to use them. So I took the deal, which at the time seemed far too good to pass up.

And they gave me wings. I felt the adrenaline & motion I had always imagined, the increased awareness of being thousands of feet above everyone else. Like a dragon, I spat fire at anyone who dared to cross my path, while the sun glinted off my metallic back. My wings were controlled by my arms, although not the way I had visualized as a child, & I could wheel & soar & dive faster than anything. The only thing missing was the wind. It should have been clinging to my arms & dancing through my hair. But I could only hear the wind, desperately trying to reach me only to be pushed aside by the roaring, steely skin that spat fire & wasn't really mine. But I managed to convince myself that this was the closest I would ever come, so I sat back, satisfied. I turned the wheel & pushed the pedals that controlled my wings, which weren't really mine at all.

But this is the problem with flying. Thinking that you can go no higher, you spend all of your time looking at an accomplishment measured in distance from the ground without once bothering to look up. Spending all of your time watching other plummet to the ground, reveling in the fact that your wings were stronger. Faster. Superior. Never thinking that a wise old dragon might have soared far above you launch fire at your wings. Only then do those wings falter. Only then does your metal skin break, letting you fall to the ground you had left so far behind, the wind clinging to your arms & dancing through your hair.

~Camille Fleming