When Wings Burn

3 | HARPER

When I wake, I want to think that it was a dream. All of it – the man, the moonlight, the strange communication – brushed away as nothing but an illusion of my warped imagination. I lie awake for a moment, romanticizing the idea. It could have been a dream. How many times have I dreamt of cool night air and strangers I do not know and have never before seen? The man may have simply been another character, fictionalized in my mind while my body slept. A glimmer of sunrise reaches through my bedroom window, passing over my eyes. I squint and reach up, left palm under my neck, trying to delay an oncoming headache. My eyes closed, I can see his silhouette. The tall man, his laughter at the predicament evident. Who is he? In the safety of my mind I revel on the way his shoulders rose and fell, how his hands slipped into his pockets. Fleetingly, I wonder how he would look lying next to me asleep, breathing, his chest rising and falling with the morning air.

I jerk up, eyes open. What are you doing, I wonder frantically. We're trained against this. We cannot even romanticize things we do not know for sure. I don't know who or what he is, only that he was breaking the law and he was okay with that. He can never be seen with me, in my dreams, my mind, anything. I cannot think of someone who will potentially endanger my mother and myself.

I get out of bed and rush to the bathroom, splashing tepid water on my face. When I look up into the tainted mirror, my reflection gazes back at me, blue eyes, suntanned skin, an odd scattering of freckles over my nose and a discerning furrow between my eyebrows. I look the same. Of course I do. Nothing has happened. Nothing has happened, nothing has happened. I repeat this to myself as I dress. My fingers are quick to fumble and I grit my teeth. Nothing has happened. I try my hardest not to think of the unknown stranger while I prepare myself for the day. I've never been quite so captivated with something I did not know. I've spent my life being told such things did not matter, and I remind myself this regularly. Anything extraordinary, it is not worth my time. But now, today, I cannot hold the memories back from my puzzled mind. I want to know who he was and why he was there. I want to see what his hair feels like and know the true colour of his eyes. It is all wrong and terrible and my mother would be horrified to know my thoughts. But an urge stronger than anything I have previously known is pushing me. I don't know how I've been so placid previously, allowing strange happenings to flit across my vision without so much as a question. How can I let this go? The stranger has awoken a strength I didn't know I possessed and it worries me. Rebellion, I think it is. Humans will kill those who rebel. I always thought those who acted out were stupid. How could they not withhold themselves? Restrain their actions? Shut their mouths? But I understand now. There is a fire under my skin and I don't care what the government or what my mother even, thinks of this. I must know who he is. I'm tired of playing by the rules.