Flight School: Prey

Waking Sleep

A/N: I was sure I hadn't intended this chapter to have five thousand words ;_; but I hope you enjoy.

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Being shot wasn't how Io felt it would be. It wasn't like the movies (he did recall his father renting one to watch on their shabby-looking tele back home in the village), there was no deafening bang of the gun; no shudder of pain as life escaped in the form of wispy trails—a freed soul; no. There was—for all intents and purposes—nothing.

Was there even a bullet?

After all, the sparrow felt nothing lodged in his chest. It was sort of light, before he began to think that his imagination had gotten the better of him and he had, out of sheer dream and will, grown a pair of wings.

Io was sure he hadn't jerked from the impact of the bullet—had there been one at all—and he felt instead...the most peculiar feeling of being sucked into a void.

He remembered the pistol and its black eye;

How it fixed its gaze at him, empty—

As if light would never reach the complete darkness that it held;

How many souls had it stolen?

It wasn't like the movies at all. His blood failed to splatter across the earth in the form of sacred rain or a gorgeous red carpet; no, it didn't splatter at all. He wondered what was that spilled.

And it wasn't like Death at all—but he could feel it.

Feel as if something had just scraped the surface of his cage, skeletal fingers—their nails—clinked against the bars of it; soft, demanding.

That was when Io realized that something was going to reach in.

To steal.

To crush and to destroy before it could be made anew—

Must all things come to an end?

The boy felt his fear before it was stolen and he felt as if he heard, for the first time, the strongest beat of the bird's wings inside his cage.

How loud; and frighteningly so.

After all, aren't we afraid of the monsters that we hide?

And it seemed to scare the grasping fingers of Death from the cage. They froze; as if repelled. The beat was so loud and it was getting louder, and stronger—

If we were to keep creating new things, do things still come to an end?