On the first day he received his wings, his parents were ecstatic. Beautiful black slee feathers and a long arch shape, his mother described them as gorgeous. His father would tell me that they were a blessing.
To Dan, it was a curse.
When he started his first flight lesson, at age 8, he couldn't even get off the ground. They told him he was just a late bloomer, his wings would work eventually. Others would say that he just needed to try a bit harder and trust himself to fly.
He got older and everyone around him was off the ground. The words 'late bloomer' were traded for 'freak' and 'unnatural'. You could even hear the adults in Dan's small block whispering about the 'screwed up Daniel kid' and 'how lucky they were to have Adriana', Adriana being Dan's older sister.
He could hear every word, every whisper sounding like a lion's roar in his ear. He cried himself to sleep, praying that when he woke up his wings would miraculously start to work.
They never did.
So Dan left, he left the world he didn't belong to. He joined a new one, one farther away than his home, a world he had only read about in his studies.
Earth.
He covered his wings, gave himself a last name, and started going to a university in a city named London, where the accents were similar to the ones from his home.
He restarted his life and was finally happy.
When Phil Lester entered his life, everything started to go wrong.
