Wings of Theseus

The Crash

"I've existed for a very long time kids. I don't remember everything since the start of my existence but I remember events that marked me.

I wasn't always good at flying. The first few years when I did I was clumsy and slow, as you'd expect. But the taste of freedom, touching the clouds, holding the entire sky in your palm, it's worth getting a few bruises and failing a bunch of landings for that."

"Who taught you how to fly?" Tommy asks curiously.

"I taught myself. I started by climbing big trees and gliding from branch to branch. Then, when I got the hang of that, I'd find cliffs above water or sea and glide off them, landing in water and swimming to shore. It wasn't ideal: Wet wings won't take flight. But it worked at the time.

I learned how to take flight by myself pretty quickly: Once my wings grew stronger, I could easily lift myself off the ground. I grew better and better at flying over the years but it would still be long until I will have mastered it.

I'd fly all of the time, to get food, help people, get to places, or just to have fun. Sometimes I'd fly for hours or even days to get to far away places. My longest flight lasted three days with little rest: I flied over a sea, barely finding anywhere to land and rest: I found an island half way through but nothing more after."

"Why would you fly for so long?"

"A great king had called for me. He promised me diamonds, gold, piles pf riches, anything I could ever want if I were to deliver an important message for him to a far away land, over the sea."

"And what did you ask for?" Tommy asks with wonder. 

"I received my gold and diamonds, but that's a story for another time.

Now, when I was still a youngling I did not have such strength and resistance to fly or glide for hours uninterrupted: this however never stopped me from testing my limits. One day, I was gliding over a wheat field: I had been flying for hours and was terribly tired, but my stubbornness prevented me from landing: I was afraid that once I landed I would not have enough energy to take flight again, but in hindsight, resting for a while wouldn't had been so bad. 

I was so tired I almost dozed off while gliding. When I realised I was falling asleep, I freaked out and woke myself up: But in doing so, I lost my balance for just a second.

That second was more then enough to disorient me: I found myself not managing to get a hang of what's up and what's down and soon enough I was falling from the Skys.

Now you might not know this but when you are dying, or when you think you will die, time seems to be flowing a million times slower, and yet, it's still to fast for you to react. I remember thinking 'is this how I'll go? Did I live my whole life up until this point, did I learn to take flight just to crash?"

"And how did you take flight again? How did you recover from the fall?" Wilbur asks.

"I didn't. I crashed."