"The Moment you doubt whether you can fly, you cease forever to be able to do it."
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Acacia Yung-Cooper is a disgruntled, divorced 41-year-old woman whose life was turned upside down fourteen years ago by the loss of her daughter. That's when Odys...
Flight feels like being a leaf falling from a tree. It's being a pendulum hung from the ceiling of the sky, swinging in full hypnosis across the moon. It's like swimming in a velvety blue womb, the voices of the stars reaching in to comfort you when you cry.
It feels that way all while being cold and harsh and ripping at your skin. The freezing air bit and tore my skin, but the pain was a thrilling one. My eyes watered and leaked, but my heart soared, so full of hot, aching life that it could have burst out of me of its own will.
Odysseus floated by on her back, joyfully at ease in her sky. She laughed at the look on my face. "Good fun, isn't it?" she chuckled. "If you spin like this and close your eyes, you can't tell if you're falling or not." She tossed herself into a free-flowing twirl, her arms extended. Childish delight dawned on her face as her body twisted to a stop, rotating in the empty sky.
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The thought of it made my stomach clench. I blinked, seeing only an endless darkness and suddenly the sky was not a cradle but the deck of a rocking ship. I retched, slapping two hands over my mouth.
She didn't notice, still so caught in the joy of confusion. She spun like a gently suspended ballerina in a music box. Her hair, pieces falling loose from its braid, floated close to me like tendrils of a sea creature. I grabbed onto one, desperate for a reference point.
"Odysseus?" I muttered. I squeezed my eyes shut, but that only made it worse. I curled my knees up to my chest and buried my face in between them. I felt like an astronaut in her first space simulation, except, no one would let me out. "I'm going to be sick."
"Oh, don't be such a softie about it," the girl teased. She gave her head a violent shake, freeing her hair from my fingers. "Open your eyes, you aren't even going the right way."
I realized with a sickening jolt that she was floating away from me, a cruel smile illuminating her face. She kicked her legs like a frog in a pond and shot even further into the night, so small and impossible that she might have already been miles away. I couldn't tell. Depth is tough in space.
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"Help me!" I cried. "Come back!"
I hear her chuckle as if through a long tunnel as she tumbled farther away. "Don't panic," her taunting voice advised. "You'll only fall."
