The sky seemed endless today. Not every day did the sky seem to stretch on into eternity, but today as Sterling flew faster, the sky seemed to dance out of her reach and tease Sterling into flying dangerously higher. The brush of cold wind warned Sterling that she was already too high for her own good. She felt the constriction on her lungs as they were deprived of air, but still she reached into the stars, determined to touch all of them.

            Then she faulted and her altitude slipped fast. Sterling was plunging to the ground with no regrets on her mind. Sterling let the air whip past her and she angled her body and tucked her wings into her body to increase the speed and danger. Sterling imagined the people far below who were bound to the earth looking at the sight of Sterling falling. She fantasized about what they would say, words of praise and words of admiration. They would call her a falling angel and they would tell sing songs of joy as an angel graced their land.

Sterling opened her eyes and leveled her body out; she watched the patchwork of Earth come closer to embrace her. She opened her wings and with a sharp tug, Sterling was flying again. She swooped and dived and cart wheeled around the clouds, and then eventually landed on the hard ground again. With her naked feet on the ground Sterling immediately felt the urge to jump up and join the birds in flight.

“Sterling!” A voice behind her yelled sounded taken aback. “What the hell were you doing? Do you want to kill yourself? Do you want the humans to find you? Someone could have seen you! Sterling are you crazy? What—“

“Just shut up.” Sterling interrupted. “What does it matter anymore, Ramada?” Sterling swiveled to face her accuser.

“Don’t act like this again, Sterling.” Ramada begged. Her ivory eyes pleading more than her words. “Please remember what could happen. The consequences—“

“Ugg. Yeah, yeah…the humans will kill us all.” Sterling recited with an air of sarcasm. “The humans will expose us and our kind will die out…Yeah, that’s all text book crap. I could kill any human who gets in my way.”