featherborn | Returning to Land

Returning to Land

The eagle circles one final time over the trees, wings stretched to their full. Freedom at its best. There is a slow spiralling dissent onto a tree in the middle of the forest. Moments later the eagle vanishes, and there is blond woman sitting in its place. Katya settles down on the study branch, swinging her legs while she reaches for the backpack she left there earlier.

She ties her hair back and slides the old faithful baseball down shading her face. Well, back to be landlocked for another day or so. She rips open a Mars bar with her teeth and toasts the skies and spits the wrapper to the ground cursing her employers at the circus.

If she could have her way, she would live in the forest where she could fly every day and ignore the rest of the world.

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It's not for him to tell her what will happen, what is even now happening while she is up here with him. What she shouldn't be around for.

"Things will change," he tells her. "And change is hard. But I can't tell you the hows and whys. Those are for you to discover on your own."

Another kid, less down trodden might have questioned it further but Julie knows better than to push things. "Okay," she says quietly. "I will be okay. I always am." Sometimes through sheer force of willpower.

"Suppose....will I ever see you again?"

"You might. For as long as you need me to be I'll be but a whisper away. I will be there even though you might not always see me." He means what he says. He's involved himself now, and so he won't just abandon things.

"Thank you," she whispers and brings a hand to wipe a tear away before it can fall. "I am not crying," she says adamantly. A trick she employs, a mantra almost to keep herself in check "I'm not. ...it's just.....you understand. You aren't asking stupid questions."

"Hey... It's not a bad thing, to cry." There's a small, comforting smile on his face as he reaches out and gently brushes a thumb over her cheek. "Sometimes it's even good to."

She is unable to meet his eyes. Tears are bad, they are weak, they make mum angrier. They make things worse. His gesture is so like her dad that it makes her choke on her words for a moment.

"Not going to waste tears on ...on..." and she can't even say her mum's name, afraid she will know even though she is way down below.

The angel hums in quiet agreement. "No, don't waste them. But I think you deserve to spend them on yourself, when you need to."

He remembers this, oh how he remembers this. Clenching his jaws until they hurt, stay quiet must stay quiet, don't cry. Years after, when he was growing up in a different place, he'd often thought he'd wished that someone would have told him that it was okay to cry.

She draws her knees up to her chest. "Why?" she whispers. "They just bring more pain." And she can't handle anymore, she really can't. It is part of the reason she came along so easily, anything, anything is better than this.

She digs a finger into the burn. "I can't....it's...."

He takes her hand and gently but firmly pries her fingers away from the burnmark. He doesn't say anything else, not now. Now he knows that tears can ease and shorten the pain, but preaching won't make her see that.

No one has stopped her so gently. She looks up into the warm, understanding eyes and despite all she's said, she bursts into tears. "Sorry. I'll be good, I promise. I will stop in a minute. Just don't .....hurt me.....please."

Just as gently as he stopped her he pulls her close to him, to hold and rock her as she cries. "I won't harm you," he murmurs soothingly. "There's nothing you need to fear here." As he speaks he lets his wings arch forward and around them, as if creating a protective barrier around them.

"It's alright to cry."

After a few attempts to check it, there is a storm of tears. The wing is better than a blanket fort. She is trembling from the force of the tears when they finally dry up. With the back of her hands she scrubs at her eyes, and oddly, as the angel had said it would, she feels a little better.

"Why do you understand so well?" she whispers.

Why? Because he's been there. He's been her, in a way. But that is too much to tell now. Too much information to lay on such a young mind, who carries so much already.

"That is a story for perhaps another time."

I is also about time to bring her back. She can't stay up here with him. He'll at least make sure she sleeps, though. She will need it, with what she will wake up to.

The tears have worn her out and it won't take much for her to fall asleep. "Okay," she says quietly. There probably won't be another time unless she's desperate will there? Dimly she's got some sense that angels can't just hang around and probably have other people to look after.

"I...am not going to be able to tell anyone about this am I?"

"There won't be anyone to stop you if you decide to talk about it, but..." He gives her a bit of a sad smile that really does fill in the rest of the sentence. Who would believe her? And, for so many reasons, he can't and won't reveal himself.

"They'd just think me odder." She sighs and shuts her eyes. "Thank you....for this.... Katya's nice but she's a woman." And she doesn't know when the fun circus performer might turn on her.

"She is. That doesn't make her better or worse than anyone else." Though this too he understands. For him it was men who seemed more frightening.

He tightens his hold in a hug briefly. "It's time we go back now."

She hugs him back, what else could she do? He's the nicest person she's met outside of her dad. "I wish tonight could go on forever," she confides. But it can't. She sits up and gathers herself.

No cracks. She must be strong in the flat.

"But I am as ready as I will ever be."

At that his hold tighten again. The cloud under then gradually loses its solidity and he lets them float down through it until they are in the clear air again where he spreads his wings and sets the course back.

He doesn't bring her to the same window, but rather to that of her bedroom. During the slow descent the child had fallen asleep and Casper sees no reason to wake her. It's better, this way. So he brings them in, not through the window as such but rather through it, as well as the wall. Things like glass and bricks and plaster isn't of any consequence.

Moving gently to not wake her he pulls the blankets back and puts her to bed, tucking her in. "I'm but a whisper away," he assures her sleeping form, brushing her bangs from her closed eyes. Then, with no more than a rustle of wings, he's gone.

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Returning to Land

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