Eros' Angels (Sparks of Darkness Part One)

12: The Flight of Andrea

Andrea watched in awe as Eros flew. Eros was a better flier than any other angel she'd ever seen. He looked like he was floating, not flying. His wings barely beat at all, even though they were the tiniest Andrea'd ever seen.

Andrea slowly patted her own wings. Her feathers felt soft against her hands, and the sight of them was surreal. She still couldn't completely wrap her mind around the fact she actually had wings. She was learning to finally fly.

Eros descended to the ground, graceful from thousands of years of practice. "Do you remember your pre-flight exercises?" he questioned the four of them.

Andrea just nodded.

Eros made it seem easy, but it wasn't as simple as it looked. Andrea beat her wings as hard as she could, but she couldn't seem to get any lift out of them. Nobody was going anywhere.

Andrea did once manage to get of the ground, but lost her concentration in shock and fell flat on her face. Austin snickered at her, and when she got up she went to kick him, he just jumped away, still laughing.

"You have to try and feel the air currents, and then try and make yourself as light as possible. Balance your weight," Eros was saying. Once again, it was easier said than done.

Andrea moved out of the line in an attempt to find some more space. Everybody was beating air around with their wings and making it even more difficult to get off the ground.

Andrea didn't even realize she was in the air at first.

She wasn't very high, maybe a few metres off the ground. She almost fell back to terra firma, but managed to gain back a wobbly balance. She began to laugh when she found she was actually in the air.

Flying was a hard feeling to describe. If you think of being stuck on a flying fox, but without the harness, and instead, you're lying on air. Now imagine bobbing slowly, like you're deep in the ocean. In fact, when Andrea closed her eyes, it felt like she was floating on a calm sea, up and down, up and down.

Initially, it was hard to control where she was going. She was focusing on leaning, forward, backward or sideways, to try and control her direction when Mallory rose into the air, soon followed by Austin. After a few minutes, Zoe too was floating above the ground.

It was hard not to crash into anybody else, especially when there was barely any light. Except for a near miss between Austin and Zoe, they managed to avoid each other fairly well, Andrea thought.

It felt good to be in the open skies.