Laputa

I would be a bird! Seeing the sky, standing at the edge of the cliff and feeling how effortless it would be to take a little hop and flap and glide and soar...

I took up hang gliding because of that, and am proud to train under the wing of the best human master gliders. Not because I'm sick of the ground, mind you, the ground's plenty nice too, even if just being stuck on the terrain is a little droll... but I miss the sky. I miss flying.

But you might ask, the sky is always there, how can you miss it?

I confess, I don't miss looking at the sky. There's plenty of sky-looking to go around. But I do miss touching it, being caressed by it, being a part of it. Being a part of the wind, separate and yet the same entity, we danced together.

Do you know how slow being a human seems in comparison? Waffling along the ground, these legs barely bumble into a run, and it's so much work. Flapping's hard work too, when that's necessary, but the speed of flight, once an everyday occurrence as a bird... as a human, it's breathtaking, even dizzying, and so far out of reach. The sensation of momentum, of movement, smooth, fluid and inexorable, small darts or long journeys alike, of ground rushing past underneath, trees once fields away zooming to my wingtips and past...

But even the speed, doesn't compare with the moment of rejoining the sky, the land spinning and falling away beneath as I circle a tight thermal, feeling every puff and stream of warm air in my feathers. The land opening up to the horizon on all sides. Freedom.