I'll Try Harder

Feel The Wind

"It's the first step, Cal." 

"I know." But hell if it isn't the hardest. 

The rough wind slapped our bodies for the nth time on the tip of the cliff we stood on. We'd been on this skyscraper-high rock since high noon, and now it was nearly sunset. The view was admittedly breathtaking from here, though - the ocean's surface twinkled like a thousand shards of mirrors, with a strong, orange glaze empowering both the skies and the seas. 

Too bad I kept looking at the rocks fathoms below. 

Beside me, Amethie tapped her foot as she checked her wrist. "It's the perfect hour for flight, Cal. The sea breeze is calmest - to the point where it won't fling you back inland, but you gotta hurry if you don't wanna be pushed out to sea by the time it shifts." 

She added with a wink. "Wouldn't wanna be a wet fledgling, would we?" 

"Better than a squished one," I huffed as I stared down, past my boots to the craggly shore below. 

She rolled her eyes. "Oh c'mon, just do what I do." 

Amethie turned and jogged back a few steps from me and the cliff's edge, no worry in tripping despite the height we were in. She stretched - pulling her arms up, and in the same movement unfolding her great, steel-black peregrine wings. It retracted to its full length, lighting the tips of her dark feathers with soft amber hues of the sunset. 

It was hypnotic. 

In a flash, she turned and crouched on her heels, and ran straight for me. I spun as she darted past me and stepped into the open air -great, dark wings wide open behind her. I stared as she held herself in the air in front of me - gliding still in the air as if by magic, in one exact place. And then, in a single flap of her wings, she went off and away. I didn't feel my mouth drop as I watched her smoothly glide in the air - and I thought, this is why the land folk called us angels. 

Her form was a soft, dark blur against the proud, honey-orange of the heavens and the shimmering glow of the waters. Her tiny figure soon looped far right and veered to the left, eventually going into a circle that brought her sailing back to me. 

Ames landed where I backed off to give her space. "See? Just like we practiced." She grinned, wings wide, enveloping me with shadow while the rest of the world blushed of the sun.

 My own small kestrel wings felt- heavier. I guess they noticeably drooped when Ames walked to me, frowning. "Oh- see, now your wings are touching the ground." Her hands soon found my feathers, and she started picking out dust and bits of fluff - remnants of baby feathers. I'm pathetic to her. She already fusses over me like I'm some kid - I had the wings, I had the age, but I couldn't just be as great as them. I couldn't fly. Not like Amethie. "You know you're not supposed to drag them along the dirt like this- Cal?" It was difficult – it took me all my strength to reply. 

"My flying is nonexistent." I hate it. 

"I want to be as great as you." I really, really do. 

"But what if I don't get to fly in the first place?" I'd die. 

I could see the gears grinding inside Ames' head. Her mouth opened and closed, until it settled into a firm line. Her eyes, however, disagreed – they were wide and worried. It seemed like pity. 

There wouldn't be this much pressure if the flying test wasn't near. If that one checkmark that'd ultimately decide if I could stay with everyone, with Ames wasn't a few days away. "I want to be as great as you, Ames. Damn it if I won't be able to do the extremes of what you can - I just want to soar, but I just don't know how." Behind me, the air was fresh and ripping, but it pushed my wings wider apart, facing the open infinite expanse. 

I'd do it now- here. If the winds were shoving me to the skies, then I'd damn well take to the skies. I wonder if it ran in my blood, the blood of most aves – this feeling of responding to the call of the wind as it tore past me, whispering its excitement and hurry while it physically flowed past me from the sea. 

"Cal?" Amethie started as I got up and faced the edge. The sun was lower now, but bright and red and proud nonetheless. Ames had barely gotten through another syllable before I got on my heels and ran off the edge, mind freer than my body from the earth, with wings wider than I'd ever cast them. 

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A bell clanged from a distance as its parent buoy rocked from side to side with each passing wave.

"Boy, you're sure lucky we found your friend here before some other more nippy folk," the shark-toothed siren had said before she swam next to Amethie and laid her elbows on the stern platform, right next to where the avian sat with her legs dangling in the sea. 

They watched as roughly four orange-suited rubins yelled about along the rest of the stern deck, hoisting a very wet Cal from the ocean and onto the platform of the rescue boat, wings a dark rusty brown from being soaked but tucked close underneath him nonetheless. He gasped out his gratitude to the half-deers before his back smacked down on the deck, hopelessly exhausted. 

Through his lids, he saw a shadow rest over him. He blinked, and Ames was right there crouched next to Cal's face. "Did you learn your lesson?" 

"Did I do well?" he groaned out. 

"Not even close. The land breeze flung you out and made you do an overglorified barrel roll before plopping you into the ocean. I told you to jet while the sea breeze still blew inland." She narrowed her eye sat his wings tucked underneath him. "You're lucky you didn't break anything, like your wrist, or your other wrist right here." She prodded a low joint in Cal's wing - which was met with a flinch and an "Ow!" from him. 

Ames smirked. "Pfft, nevermind." 

Seeing her humor - that miniscule smile - set Cal at an ease that settled throughout him. What an ordeal. 

The boat's engine sputtered to life, and so they gave their final thanks to the shark-toothed siren who found Cal and alerted the coast, before she smiled terrifyingly and disappeared into the depths. And as the boat turned and whirred back to the coast, they watched from the deck as the sun succumbed to its timely retreat. 

"So," Cal started, which got her attention pretty quickly. "Same time tomorrow?" And that earned him a smack in the face from one of Ames' steel-black wings. But that wouldn't stop his flight, his jumps. Nothing will, from now on.