The Soulmate Curse

CARNATIONS (for friendship)

Willingly jumping out of an airplane without a parachute was as disconcerting as it should be.

Finn's stomach rolled a little bit more violently than it did when she'd go out skydiving with her friends. As always, she wondered if this was how it felt to fall in love. She couldn't help being curious. All the women in the Darrow line were destined to find their soulmate and fall in love. It was their curse, passed down from her grandmother since the 1990s. It hadn't happened to Finn yet, but it was only a matter of time. A ticking time bomb whose clicks mirrored her heart beats. That's how she thought about it. One day, the beats would skip, her stomach would drop, and her fate would be sealed. Until then, however, she forced herself to focus on the task at hand – falling out of the sky as gracefully as she could.

The sky was electric blue, not a single cloud in sight. The sun bounced off her cousins' neon-coloured wing suits below and around her. Keira, one of her older cousins, had the words 'Bride to Be' embossed on the back of her hot pink suit. The rest of them had classic, rambunctious bride's maid monikers on their variety of neon suits, from the 'Maid of Dishonour', 'Bad Influence', 'Single AF' and Finn's own 'L'il Diva'. She was the youngest of the bunch at fifteen, but they treated her like a grownup. All Darrow women were destined to grow up into heartbreak and it was never sugarcoated. They were prepared for it from a young age.

Free falling must have been labelled thusly for how freeing one felt hurtling through the sky with nothing holding them back. After a few seconds of falling, Finn spread her arms and watched the others do the same. The 4D printed fabric of their wing suits came alive once they'd hit the right altitude. What a sight! The twelve suits transformed from a somewhat gaudy pair of overalls into a rigid frame with giant wings sprouting out of them. They span wider than their arms' length. The wings were designed with feather-like protrusions that looked like those of a large bird, like the albatross. The biomimicking feathers stabilised them as they glided down to the ground, but the wings couldn't be flapped like a bird's. Not yet anyway. Maybe in a few years. Finn suddenly couldn't wait until that was possible.

The city lay beneath them, an ethereal grid of roads, buildings, green spaces, and surging crowds of people. Some people would catch a glimpse of them, but they were already out of sight, hidden behind tall buildings, when they turned to look up. Finn loved this city. She was looking forward to living there in a few years when she moved out to work at her favourite Think Tank. She smiled at the thought. They flew past the city limits and towards the quiet cluster of suburbs, where Finn and her family lived. And where the wedding venue was. It was an intricate pattern of houses flanked by urban gardens that fed them and the city. Finn's mum would show her pictures of how all these gardens were once just lawns, but she still couldn't understand how people in the past could be so wasteful. Plus, the eclectic shapes and patterns of the gardens and garden accessories made the place seem more like humans lived there, not robots.

They landed one after another, with Finn being the first. As soon as she hit the ground, the wings closed behind her. She unzipped the overalls and gracefully walked out of them just as her assigned helper grabbed the suit and another handed her a bouquet of flowers. All twelve ladies followed suit with Keira, the bride, coming in last, flanked by her eleven closest girlfriends. Keira's mother came over and hugged her before walking her down the aisle. Underneath the wing suits, the maids were dressed in gorgeous short floral sundresses while Keira was in a beautiful, ankle length wedding dress with a lacy bodice and circular skirt. They were all barefoot, discarding their shoes upon landing, to earth and ground themselves. They walked down the aisle to loud cheers towards Lance who's pride in and love for Keira was clear in that sun bright smile.

"What did you think about your first wingsuit drop?" one of the cousins asked Finn when they finally settled around the altar.

"I'm still shaking," said Finn, holding out her trembling right hand. "I don't know if I'll ever get used to diving without a chute."