Tiny Tales | ✔️

21-The Flight

I was just another face in the crowd.

I swallowed everything I was served.

I carefully observed and skillfully imitated the people around me.

I dutifully respected the genetic material I'd been composed of.

That went on for quite a long time, if I may say.

Everything changed on that fateful day.

I was in the classroom, sitting at my favourite spot, next to the window, listening to a soporific lecture.

The teacher was droning on and about the laws of physics and the foundations of logic our world was built upon.

To my mind, human life and decisions we made along its measly duration had nothing to do with logic.

It has always been and it always will be about letting it go.

Plunging into the uncertain with a no-ifs-ands-or-buts certainty.

We were meant to embrace the improbable. 

Why, after all, our very existence in this universe was a gargantuan improbability.

And then... 

Just as I thought of that...

Suitable conditions were created.

The sun lingered on the horizon for a while more, curiously watching my restlessness.

The up-till-then prisoner of the gravitational dogma, aka-me, was now leisurely blinking at one warm, long autumnal afternoon. 

I flashed a catlike grin.

Ideal for the flight.

At least, according to the excited conspiratorial whispers of the swallows that zoomed around my pointy ears.

They had already packed the summer heat under their wings and, as we were friends, they politely invited me to go with them on the longest journey.

I said yes, of course.

I stood up from my seat and nonchalantly stepped upon the windowsill, completely disregarding the "oohs" and "ahhs" of the studious onlookers.

I jumped.

I graciously flapped my pale, swanlike arms, instantaneously ascending into the air alongside the swallows.

To my surprise, flying seemed so easy.

Like falling asleep.

I was somehow able to glide effortlessly, sustained by gentle caresses of air currents.

I looked up.

The swallows danced above the sun.

The marionette was now free of her earthly bounds.

Unconfined, unhampered and unimpeded, I was looming up up and away, ever increasing my speed.

An instant humanoid commotion ensued.

Everyone I knew magically showed up out of nowhere to, apparently, impede my advances.

"Where the hell do you think you're going?" My mother bellowed.

"Where are you off to, love?" A curious tone of my father's voice reached me.

"Oh, don't you worry about a thing! She has chosen wisely. She is accompanied by Hirundinidae, you see, a family of passerine birds found around the world on all continents, including occasionally in Antarctica. They are highly adapted to aerial feeding, if I might add, and your daughter will be just fine with them." My biology teacher was explaining the situation to my exasperated parent pair.

"We knew she had her head in the clouds!" My 'friends' sneered and pressed their heads closer together, whispering and pointing at my floating form.

"That brat was always very stubborn, indeed." The next-door neighbour seemed to be looking forward to my potential fall.

"Hey, um... Have a nice flight!" An unknown, cute bespectacled boy waved at me, blushing fiercely.

"You can't fight the gravitational pull, silly girl!" I heard a science teacher yell from down below.

"Did you even explain the theory of relativity to her?" The headmaster was now having a staring contest with the physics teacher.

"I tried! I swear on me Mum, I did, just now! She didn't want to listen, headmaster! She just... jumped out of the window in the middle of the lesson and... khm...flew away..." The physics teacher muttered the last two words between her teeth.

"Quickly now. Throw this Greek mythology book at her. It tells the tale of what transpired with Icarus, who flew too close to the sun." The literature teacher proposed after some pondering.

Those were the magic words, right there, that made me stop and think of the consequences.

I always did have a soft spot for eccentric men.

The light blue heavy tome was catapulted at me from someone's skilful hand and sure enough, it found its target.

Down there, everyone clapped, congratulated the young literature teacher and hugged him, as my powerless body began its plummeting descent.

I landed onto the hard, cold ground with a thud, rubbing a sore bump on my head.

I got back on my feet immediately, of course.

I stared back up, longingly, but I knew, deep down, that my arms would no longer carry me to the sky ever again.

The gulp of swallows was now nothing but a V-shaped black speck on the horizon. 

They were veering away towards the spellbinding sunset, forever out of my reach.

My first fall.

***
A/N: Music theme song: Stereophonics: "Innocent."