Waking Dream

They say when you fall in a dream, you never hit the ground. You'll feel the air rush past you, the wind blowing out your ears, but you can rest easy in the knowledge that the impact will never come. It'll feel real in the moment, of course, but once you wake up, you'll clutch at the racing heart in your chest, and you'll have a laugh at the sudden burst of relief.

Except, it never came for me. I felt all of it, alright: the fear, the teeth-clenching trepidation, the blood racing through my body, screaming in its certainty that I had made a mistake. But how could it be a mistake, when I found myself surrounded by the clearest blue sky I had ever seen, pristine white clouds as soft as cotton candy, not so high above me that I had to crane my neck through the window, but below me—and for the first time ever I truly understood that they were clumps of condensation when I felt my hair wet as I plunged through them. Though not for long because soon I left them far behind in my descent, a human-sized hole trailing behind me.

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING!" I heard someone yell from far above, I wasn't sure where. 

A second wave of panic rose up from within. It was a strange feeling. I could remember falling, but there was something different about it. I remembered resigning myself, tranquil in gravity's sure grasp. And yet it was like I had started over, like I had been pulled back to the top only to be dropped once again from an even greater height. I was plummeting towards an ocean, almost glassy in its stillness. I was taken aback that such a beautiful sight could spell my end, but it was about to. This wasn't some video game where falls from great heights could be negated by landing in water. I was about to die.

Just as I was about to reach the water, so close that I could smell the salt and imagine how it would mix with the metallic stench of my blood, I felt a sudden lurch in my gut as I was pulled harshly to the side. I ended up skimming across water's surface like a skipping rock rather than flattening myself on it. It was still painful, like scraping myself with sandpaper, but at least I could still feel anything at all. I finally landed with a big splash that might have been mistaken for a breaching whale from far enough away. I gasped for air as my head surfaced but I knew it wasn't over yet. There was no way I could swim, and even with how calm the waters were, I was bound to still sink.

To my surprise, however, I didn't. Even with my arms and legs completely motionless, I stayed afloat effortlessly. At first, I couldn't figure out what was going on, but then I noticed a kind of buoyancy near my back, as if I had on some kind of pool float. The truth, though, was much stranger. Straining my neck to take a look behind me, what I found was a huge pair of wings covered in white feathers. They adjusted to the waves automatically, occasionally paddling against the water to keep my body upright. It was such a strange sight that my mind simply went blank. Clearly, I thought, I was still dreaming.

Before I could process it any further, another person appeared next to me, head poking out of the water just as mine was. She had wings too, but they were a a soft brown color, just a few shades darker than her hair, which stuck in wet clumps to her face. She must have been the one who saved me. She looked a bit worse for wear than I felt, blood trickling down from one corner of her forehead. It occurred to me that she must have shielded me with her body, taking the brunt of the fall for herself. Despite that, she was the one that swam over to me, concern full in her eyes.

"Are you okay?" she cried. "You're not hurt, are you? What happened? You didn't break anything, right?" She grabbed my arm and lifted it out of the water, prodding it for any signs of damage.

"I'm fine. I don't—" I stopped. The whole situation was strange enough already, but I didn't even recognize my own voice. At first I thought it was just hoarse, but it wasn't just the sound that was different. The way my vocal cords moved, the vibrations it sent up to my skull was all different. And the girl—she looked at me like she was expecting something, but I couldn't understand what.

"I'm okay. You don't have to worry about me," I finally managed. At my words, she shrunk away, eyes fluttering rapidly. She dropped my arm and backed away quickly, blushing furiously all the while in a way that made me feel deeply uncomfortable.

"Are the two of you alright?" said a third voice from above. Looking up, I saw a young boy, his dark-feathered wings beating against the air, his expression yet darker. Each wing was easily twice the length of an arm, bending inwards to pull itself up through the air before stroking powerfully down in repeated motions that allowed him to hover in place. I was so shocked by this sight that I almost didn't recognize his voice as being the same one that had called after me as I fell. 

"Yup, we're fine!" the girl said, grabbing onto my arm again to lift it above the water, this time to show that we were unharmed.

"Goodness," the dark-winged boy sighed. "You really will be the death of me one of these days, brother." In response, the girl merely widened her grin now that the danger had passed.

Despite what I was seeing, however, I no longer doubted how real it all was. The coolness of the water, the rays of light the waves threw up into the sky, the building heat behind my cheeks—it was all too detailed to be the product of a dream. But most of all, when I tried to jerk my arm out of the girl's grasp, I watched as her grip on me broke and, in my surprise, I pulled away a bit too forcefully. She looked a bit hurt but I hardly noticed. 

More than the wings, more than these strangers that seemed to know me, here was something truly miraculous. Winged humans, at least, existed in stories and religion, in the unspoken and therefore undenied spaces of inner thought. But control over my own body had been shot down over and over again by the top-most authorities in the world, telling me to lower my expectations and accept the harsh truth.

Only then did I truly believe I had been granted another life.