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A Lot Like Home
Sometimes I wake and think who am I? I know I'm in this body, the container I've had all my life, but it doesn't feel right. I realise it's getting older year-on-year, the tell-tale signs of aging and growth, you can't fail but notice them. But me, the inner me, who is that really? How did it come into being? Yes, I know about the birds and the bees and the moment of conception, brains and the minds and human development.... but what if there was another way, another entry into this world of ours?
.........................................................................
"Margarite, please don't ignore me. Eat your meal and stop playing with your brother."
Momma was tetchy today. She'd been hunting in the Great Yonder beyond the Forbidden Cliffs and had only caught three Pancor Buzzbees. We each got one and she was saving the last for Poppa, but he wouldn't emerge for another two cycles yet. I guess she would be hungry today, a mother's sacrifice. Her fur naturally changed colour to her mood and I saw it ripple from pink to red as she got agitated at our play. I gulped down my food and her shade shifted back to opalescent pearl, our natural state.
My young brother never seems to behave as he should, and I like that about him. He's often the distraction I need to keep my mind off my worries, of which I have plenty. School and homework, am I good enough, and will I pass? Do I have time for friends, and what are they saying about me? Will my own wings ever sprout and how will they look? All the usual kids stuff. My species thrive in the air, we are natural born flyers but some like me are late bloomers. They call us the Malborns, those who don't get their wings till they are teenagers. I hate that I am one, and people say it's nothing to be ashamed of, in time enough they will come. But they don't face the whispers behind my back and the giggles or snide comments.Even my own brother Zacharaeus thinks I'm odd as he flies to school each day and I'm having to take the school bus with the other "losers".
But that morning, sat on the bus watching my little bro fly happily away and my Momma waving her goodbyes from the nest window, it felt wronger than usual. I can't explain it, even the sun was a freaky shade of yellow not pink and the clouds were matting together. I'm a bit of a cloud officianado. We once did a school project on telling the weather by clouds, and I ever since learned to hone those skills. These blue and green cumulus types signify ominous change, and if I didn't have calculus, and didn't need the credit so bad, I would have probably feined sickness and stopped home. But as it was, I looked at my brother disappearing behind the cloud bank with the others on the school run and shuddered. It just felt like an off day.
When the great fork of white lightning struck the bus on my side, it ripped a hole six foot wide in the side of the vehicle. Three classmates got sindged badly, but I was the only casualty. There was no log taken of names, it was only a school bus, but my parents rang the school when they heard it on the Twittertube news. It was confirmed I was the only casualty. Nothing left of me but a dark green ooze, a residue left behind on an otherwise scorched black seat. I'd totally disappeared, presumed obliterated. Funnily enough my seat belt was untouched, a bit like one of those awful scenes where you see something survived after a self-combustion. I was gone and my parents would mourn me, and in our world my brother would become instantly an only child.
"Oh hell, that hurts!" For the briefest moment I felt this excruciating pain as the bolt hit me...and then from the blackness I felt nothing. I was a consciousness floating seemingly in a tunnel of thousands of lights, falling over and over. I remember thinking to myself, "how am I moving I cannot fly?" But the more I was travelling the harder it got for me to remember. I recall my little webbed feet had got pins and needles, and seeing the fur on my tummy melt away. I was moving at great speed and feeling heavier and heavier. It felt stranger than I'd ever felt before. Even more so than that time Benjo Jonson kissed me in fourth grade for finding his pet Symongo under the floor of the school's old gym.
Then bang 💥. I was immersed into a bright light. I could move again. I couldn't remember who I was or anything of my before, but I was alive. I was moving my feet, but they felt strange. I could wiggle my toes but they didn't feel linked anymore. I was colder all of a sudden and my fur was gone, replaced by smooth bare skin a very pale disgusting colour. I was covered in blood and ichor, and wiped down with something rough. I started to say "be careful with that" then they wrapped me up in another so I couldn't move. My words came out as cries, awful sounding howls that distressed even me. But wonder of wonders, before they cocooned me in the blanket I could move these things, they were like wings only skinny. They had these loose bits on the end I could wiggle, and I made fists with them. I was thinking "my wings, my wings! they finally sprouted"...but the memory felt hazy and my mind all fuzzy.
I was passed over in this small, awkward little package to a warm embrace. It felt good, right, comfortable and I had a recollection, a spark of a thought...."Momma"..... but it was fading. I was tired, so very very sleepy. In the warmth and safety of her embrace I fell asleep. And as I did so I recall hearing a low rumbling male voice say,
"Oh she's perfect, so beautiful, our little Margarite."
.... "That's me" I thought, "that's me!"
I was smiling, I was safe, I was home.
© .Garry Saunders
.........................................................................
"Margarite, please don't ignore me. Eat your meal and stop playing with your brother."
Momma was tetchy today. She'd been hunting in the Great Yonder beyond the Forbidden Cliffs and had only caught three Pancor Buzzbees. We each got one and she was saving the last for Poppa, but he wouldn't emerge for another two cycles yet. I guess she would be hungry today, a mother's sacrifice. Her fur naturally changed colour to her mood and I saw it ripple from pink to red as she got agitated at our play. I gulped down my food and her shade shifted back to opalescent pearl, our natural state.
My young brother never seems to behave as he should, and I like that about him. He's often the distraction I need to keep my mind off my worries, of which I have plenty. School and homework, am I good enough, and will I pass? Do I have time for friends, and what are they saying about me? Will my own wings ever sprout and how will they look? All the usual kids stuff. My species thrive in the air, we are natural born flyers but some like me are late bloomers. They call us the Malborns, those who don't get their wings till they are teenagers. I hate that I am one, and people say it's nothing to be ashamed of, in time enough they will come. But they don't face the whispers behind my back and the giggles or snide comments.Even my own brother Zacharaeus thinks I'm odd as he flies to school each day and I'm having to take the school bus with the other "losers".
But that morning, sat on the bus watching my little bro fly happily away and my Momma waving her goodbyes from the nest window, it felt wronger than usual. I can't explain it, even the sun was a freaky shade of yellow not pink and the clouds were matting together. I'm a bit of a cloud officianado. We once did a school project on telling the weather by clouds, and I ever since learned to hone those skills. These blue and green cumulus types signify ominous change, and if I didn't have calculus, and didn't need the credit so bad, I would have probably feined sickness and stopped home. But as it was, I looked at my brother disappearing behind the cloud bank with the others on the school run and shuddered. It just felt like an off day.
When the great fork of white lightning struck the bus on my side, it ripped a hole six foot wide in the side of the vehicle. Three classmates got sindged badly, but I was the only casualty. There was no log taken of names, it was only a school bus, but my parents rang the school when they heard it on the Twittertube news. It was confirmed I was the only casualty. Nothing left of me but a dark green ooze, a residue left behind on an otherwise scorched black seat. I'd totally disappeared, presumed obliterated. Funnily enough my seat belt was untouched, a bit like one of those awful scenes where you see something survived after a self-combustion. I was gone and my parents would mourn me, and in our world my brother would become instantly an only child.
"Oh hell, that hurts!" For the briefest moment I felt this excruciating pain as the bolt hit me...and then from the blackness I felt nothing. I was a consciousness floating seemingly in a tunnel of thousands of lights, falling over and over. I remember thinking to myself, "how am I moving I cannot fly?" But the more I was travelling the harder it got for me to remember. I recall my little webbed feet had got pins and needles, and seeing the fur on my tummy melt away. I was moving at great speed and feeling heavier and heavier. It felt stranger than I'd ever felt before. Even more so than that time Benjo Jonson kissed me in fourth grade for finding his pet Symongo under the floor of the school's old gym.
Then bang 💥. I was immersed into a bright light. I could move again. I couldn't remember who I was or anything of my before, but I was alive. I was moving my feet, but they felt strange. I could wiggle my toes but they didn't feel linked anymore. I was colder all of a sudden and my fur was gone, replaced by smooth bare skin a very pale disgusting colour. I was covered in blood and ichor, and wiped down with something rough. I started to say "be careful with that" then they wrapped me up in another so I couldn't move. My words came out as cries, awful sounding howls that distressed even me. But wonder of wonders, before they cocooned me in the blanket I could move these things, they were like wings only skinny. They had these loose bits on the end I could wiggle, and I made fists with them. I was thinking "my wings, my wings! they finally sprouted"...but the memory felt hazy and my mind all fuzzy.
I was passed over in this small, awkward little package to a warm embrace. It felt good, right, comfortable and I had a recollection, a spark of a thought...."Momma"..... but it was fading. I was tired, so very very sleepy. In the warmth and safety of her embrace I fell asleep. And as I did so I recall hearing a low rumbling male voice say,
"Oh she's perfect, so beautiful, our little Margarite."
.... "That's me" I thought, "that's me!"
I was smiling, I was safe, I was home.
© .Garry Saunders
