Fly

Chapter 3

As I drew near the city, the clouds seemed to follow me down through the air, becoming fog and giving the sparkling windows and street lights an eerie glow, which got dimmer and dimmer as the fog thickened.

I flapped every once in awhile, but mostly glided on the thick air, leaving a stream of fine drops of water as they trailed off my wings and the end of my tail. The water felt strange on my scales, somehow heavier, but not as wet. The rain hitting the membranes of my wings sounded like tiny pebbles hitting a drum. Every downstroke caused my spine to arch outwards, acting as a counter to the upswing so that I could keep my head level. Every upstroke caused the opposite, making my hindlegs drop several feet, tail whipping up and down to counter the affect on my balance. I kept my legs tucked in for the most part, though occasionally flicked one out to assist in steering or balancing. It all came completely naturally to me, and I enjoyed being able to move three-dimensionally without limits.

Once I had passed over the border between water and land, both the temperature and the wind changed. It got colder, and the cushions of warmth that had flowed up from the surface of the waves disappeared, replaced by a cool draft coming from behind me, pushing me forward. I drifted toward the maze of lights, a shadow in the clouds. Suddenly, I was among them.

The strange glow surrounded me, reflecting off of surfaces and bouncing off of the inside of ever tiny drop of moisture in the air, creating an almost daylight affect, and making it nearly impossible to tell whether I was about to run into anything or not. I began to flap harder, gaining altitude until the glow faded a bit below me. I somehow still knew which direction I was heading, and also in general how fast I was traveling, so I could tell fairly accurately where I was. I tried to fly a little faster through the dense fog, wings thrashing the air heavily as I pedaled forward.

PAIN

A loud SNAP echoed strangely through the fog, accompanied by a blast of sound so high and shrill that my ears rang. I could hear glass shattering from the windows of the buildings all around me, including the one that was suddenly very close to me on my right. I couldn't see it previously, because nearly all the lights in it were off.

I raised my wings for another flap and - I supposed the only word for it would be 'staggered' - in midair, suddenly noticing the tip of my right wing was broken clean in two, with almost a foot of bone just dangling off the end uselessly. It took me another moment to realize what had happened; I had flown too close to the edge of the building's roof in the darkness, and had slammed the end of my wing against it on the downstroke. The sound had been my own scream, a supersonic blast that had blown away a good swath of fog from in front of me. As I fluttered down, the slightest ripple of air that moved my injured wing sent fire and lightning down every nerve, jolting me whenever I shifted my weight.

I tried to glide slowly and swoop up a little to slow my landing, but at the last second, my wing crumpled, and I had to swerve and crash into the ground in order to keep from slamming into my injured side. I tried to whimper from my tangled pile of limbs where I had thrown myself against the side of a building, but ended up coughing instead. My throat felt raw from the sheer power of the sound it had transmitted, like a blast from the world's loudest trumpet.

Slowly, I collected myself, using the concrete wall next to me for balance. I gathered my feet under me, balancing with my long tail, and carefully brought my injured wing forward for inspection, while folding the other along my spine. I had acquired a few more nicks and bruises on the way down, but my worst injury by far was the tip of my wing, which was limp and lifeless as a soggy piece of paper.

I knew I couldn't stay out in the open street. There wasn't a ton of light from the street lamps, but even considering the fog, someone would eventually spot me. I closed my eyes, imagining my old human body, wishing I had it back. That this was all a dream and I'd wake up safe and uninjured in my hotel bed, and we'd all laugh about my weird dream and blame it on the food, or the mattresses or something...

Searing pain ripped through the end of my wing, nearly as bad as the first time. The muscles of my entire body spasmed, jerking my head down until my muzzle nearly hit the sidewalk. My eyes flew open, then nearly shut again as I squinted into a brilliant glare of white light, flickering like a thousand suns through water as it churned around me in a funnel. Wherever the light touched me, it seemed to pass through me, taking scales and claws and leaving behind skin and nails. I felt the strange hot-and-cold sensation that I had at the beach, but it was no longer as intense, or as painful. My finger/wingtip hurt terribly for a few more seconds, while I gritted my rapidly-reshaping teeth, and then subsided completely as I flexed my hand, which was now whole, and showed no sign of being broken just a few moments before. Abruptly, the column of light sucked straight down into the ground, like liquid through a straw, and was gone, leaving me standing on a dark, strange street in Chicago, human, shivering....

...and completely naked.