Winged Culture :: {Wonder}

There is a bird in her heart and it has Their wings. Its body is a pebble that you could skip across a stream and on it make a wish that wouldn’t come true. Its little voice is screaming at the top of its ladybird lungs to get out of its pulsing cage, and in its panicked frenzy it bangs against her septum, then to the vena carva, then back towards the aorta. It is so scared, this wild little creature, with its wings decorated with all the spells in the world, that it can do nothing but fly back and forth in Floréal’s chest. And yet, it is too little. It can do nothing but make her mildly uncomfortable, and oh-so-aware that a little bit of Them is in her.

She doesn’t know how she feels about this. On one hand, it is what she’s always wanted. She’s spent her whole life trying to be as close as possible to Them, after all. But now it is almost as if They are too close for comfort. It is not as if They have chosen to be inside of her, after all. She is not sure if These wings are lost or stolen, but certainly, they do not belong in her, or their noise would not be burning her ears with such ferocity.

She knows the face on the TV screen, and as she looks to the wide-eyed, pale faces of her family members, she realizes who is missing. They are all here, crammed into their low ceilinged parlour. All, except Gypsy and Pyrian. That’s the face she recognizes – Gypsy, fighting against some jewel coloured, glittering creature, bigger than any animal Floréal has ever seen. And behind her, behind her little sister, whose pixelated face looks so similar to her own, is that faint golden glow Floréal knows better than any of her relatives. It is the glow of one of Them.

And it is missing its wings.

Textbook obvious, mouth sagging, breaths thunderous, she pulls herself to her feet. The room glides from underneath her, and the familial jeweled eyes follow her out of the little house.

There’s a flick knife in a hollow in the silver beech in their postage stamp of an overgrown garden. She doesn’t know how it got there but she knows that the blade is a wheezy breath of silver and the handle feels like something she has control over. Here, she has to be clever. How can she get a beast out of her heart without damaging its wings? For that is all she needs, the wings, so they can be given back to their owner, and so her sister can get out of that arena alive.

And so she starts to chip away at her chest; so she can set free the bird caged in her heart.