Fly Free: A LGBTQ story.

Chapter One

I sigh, my head in my hands as I listen to the village teacher drabble on about nonsense. I lay my head on the table, most of my body hidden by my oversized hoodie, my toes curling into the dirt floor.

I hear a loud book fall to the ground and I snap up, looking around in shock.

"Huh? Wha?" I ask, my eyes darting.

"Mr. Thomas, what is the answer to number seven?" I hear the voice of my teacher ask. I look around the room to see her directly behind me. I yelp in shock as my wings flare and hear the covered snickers and giggles from my classmates.

"I ask again, Mr. Thomas, what is the answer to number seven?"

I hear whispers saying, "he doesn't know." "he wasn't paying attention."

Without looking, I already know it's Luca's "friends". I flip them off and shoot a glare their way and they immediately shut up. Looking back to the board, I scan the question.

My lucky day, it's my least favorite class, even if it's the one I excel in most, "Human Culture". I study the question.

It reads, "In the human civilization of the United States of America, how many states are there and what are their capitals?"

Come on. We learned this in fifth grade. We're in eleventh now.

I scoff and read off all of the capitals and states. When would we ever need to know about human culture? They don't know about us or care.

"Hmph, well, Mr. Thomas, you correctly identified them all, but I saw what you did to Mr. Adams. I expect a two-page essay explaining why that is not acceptable."

The snickers return and I look at Luca again, a sad look on his face as his "friends" push him and mock me.

Luca is African-American, one eye silver an the other gold, a heavier body type, and beautiful gold and blue wings.

As I study him, he looks back to me. I blush and look down to my desk once more.

 "Alright, school's over!"

I grab my satchel, full of all my school books and supplies and place is around my neck, the bag hitting against my hip.

Hurriedly, I rush out and get out of the schoolhouse, a building made of hardened mud, stones, and straw. It's the oldest building in our town and has none of the supplies the homes now have, such as microwaves and microscopes stole by the Seekers.

The Seekers are a group of Flightlings who hide their wings with human backpacks and large clothes and sneak into human civilizations and bring back supplies and information.

My closest friend, Reese, joined them last year, at age sixteen.

At sixteen, you are considered an adult, and allowed to have jobs, but, if you are like me, you can choose to stay at school for a higher education, like the Flightling version of college.

Reese was supposed to arrive home from a mission to the human capital, Washington D.C. He had told me before that he was to arrive when I left school.

I arrive home. It's nothing special, just a stone home with wood floors, one story, four rooms. My parent had left me the house when they...yeah.

We were and I now am lower class citizens, with less ability to own land or businesses, unlike Luca's and Reese's family.

Reese's family are rich and powerful, but they kicked him out two years ago, for he came out as homosexual. That isn't a respected thing here. Reese moved in with me, and he left the next year. We are still very close, maybe closer than normal friends...

An hour later, I have finished writing it and am boredly walking around my house, my wings arched.

My wings are colored a deep grey, with royal purple tips. They stretch to be about seven feet long at the longest.

Reese has cardinal wings, deep red with light gold tips at the ends. His are about nine feet long.

He's almost a foot taller than me normally, so I understand why. I'm petite, at five foot, four inches, while he and Luca are close in height, at around six foot, three inches respectably.

Yeah, they used to tease me all the time before...

All of a sudden, I hear the front door slam open and shut loudly, and loud panting breaths. I creep to the door, to see Reese standing there in a panicked state.

"Reese? Wh-" I begin to ask him, but he rushes towards me and claps his hand over my mouth.

I bite his hand and he pulls back, wincing.

"What is happening?"

He looks around frantically, fear in his eyes, an uncommon occurrence.

"They found us."

My eyes widen.

"Who, Reese? Who?"

He looks back at me, his eyes welling with tears.

He falls to the ground, crying," It's my fault. We were trying to walk home, our wings were hidden then, when I flew ahead to check if anyone was following us. A group of people wearing human military uniforms saw me and began chasing me. I called out to the others, and they dropped all of our finds and tried to fly away, but they-they..."

He broke down crying.

"What did the people do, Reese?"

He looks back up to me, his usually perfectly coiffed brunette hair now fallen on his face, his sparkling blue eyes now bloodshot.

"They shot them. With these darts. I don't think they're dead, but they made them fall faint and all the men took them. Took them all, Hayden. All of them. Only seven of us came back, out of the fifty of us, but the humans were following us up the mountain. The others are going to the council, but we all need to evacuate."

I open my mouth to speak when gunshots are heard and the screaming begins.

We look to each other in fear and run into a supply closet, as we don't have time to gather materials and escape the town.

Our breaths are shallow and I press up to him in fear, so close, I can hear his heart beating frantically.

When we hear the front door swing open. I hold my breath, as I hear footsteps running around my house, and begin to get farther away. The front door squeaks as I adjust my foot and hear a loud snap.

Almost frozen in fear, I look back to see I had stepped on a childhood toy, and it had broke under my foot.

I squeezed my eyes shut as the footsteps returned, coming closer and closer.

I open my eyes as the door slams open, and I see the eyes of Luca.

"Come on, Hayden, Reese, " he says to us, fear apparent in his voice. Us three used to be close friends, but...something happened between me and him and Luca's parent's found out, and made him abandon us as friends. This was around the time when my parents passed away.

We all run out of my home, my eyes focused on his wings, the colors light and navy blues mixing together perfectly with the deep gold. I tear my gaze away and force myself to not look at them.

I hear a yell, "GET THEM!"

I look back to see men with guns pointed at us.

I scream to Reese and Luca, "GET DOWN!"

Reese and Luca looked at me in fear, but then they saw as the guns shot darts at me.

I scream in pain as one hits my arm, the other my neck. I fall faint onto the ground, staring into the sky. My last sight before everything went black was a man in black with a gun in his hand crouching in front of me.