Short-line filler: I wish I could run as well as the flock can. (It's all because of my utter lack of stamina, really.)

You were born to run.

You don't really know why, just that you're fast and that you're strong and that you're good at it. The coaches at school say "stamina." The kids on the track team say "freak." He just says "run."

Sometimes, when it's quiet, you can hear Him whispering to you: "Run, kid, run." It's when you're sitting in class, or watching TV with your mom, or reading the newspaper with your dad that He's the loudest. He wants you to get up and just fly away, to run until you can't anymore. You don't want to, not all the time. Sometimes you want to stay grounded, to wait and let life live itself. You don't want to be ahead of the crowd—you just want to be a part of it.

He doesn't want that for you, though, and most of the time His voice is stronger. So when you're sitting in class, or watching TV with you mom, or reading the newspaper with your dad, you make excuses. Things like "Can I use the bathroom?" or "I've got homework." or "Good night." Then you slip away like a shadow—you were always good at going unnoticed when you wanted—and you run, just like He tells you.

It feels amazing, how your feet pound across the grass so fast you're almost flying. The wind is yelling in your ears and you can't feel anything but the earth and sky and the blood in your legs. You're strong and powerful, and most-definitely not the loner kid who sits in the back of the class, a head taller than all the others because you've got giant DNA. Or, that's what your dad used to joke when you were little. He and your mother are so short, and they used to laugh, back before the fights and the yelling, that you were an accident; you used to be normal-sized, but when you were in your mom's belly He decided that you should be tall, and so you were. If He wanted you to be tall, then He must have wanted you to be fast, too. He must have seen the fighting before it happened, and wanted you to be prepared. He made you fast so you could fly away from the bad things. He made you fast so you could be free.

But that's the escape artist in you talking. You don't really want those things. You're fine on the ground, without wings. You're fine stuck in this tiny town with no way out. You're fine, really.

But you're not.

Sometimes, you just want to scream. Like in those crowded hallways in school, or the tiny elevators to your dad's office, or your closet-of-a-bedroom, where it's just you and the walls and no air. You have trouble breathing and you see stars, and every time you close your eyes all you see is whitewhitewhite.

That's the most disconcerting part. You don't know why the white scares you, but it does. That, and doctors' offices. It's the weareonlyascleanaswesmell antiseptic and the needle. The anticeptic makes you think of how well it can disguise the metallic smell of blood, and just looking at a needle makes you break out into goosebumps—you can feel the pricks like fire, all over your skin.

Those times, His voice doesn't comfort you. His "run, kid, run" turns into a threat, and you want to scream until he's outoutOUT of your head! Those times, you run to get away from yourself. And those times, it never, ever works.

There's a place you like to visit, sometimes, when you can't run because you're stuck in your head and His voice won't stop chanting in your ears. It's silly, but there's a tree house in the forest behind your neighborhood. It's abandoned and falling apart, and no one has gone within half a mile of it for years, but it's your favorite spot. In that forest, the animals talk and chirp and chatter, and the leaves rustle and sing, and his voice is drowned out by the natural magic of it all. You sit on the edge of your tree house—really no more than a board nailed to a branch—and swing your legs and listen. You're safe in your little hide-away, and when the wind is strong enough and coming through the forest from the right direction, you close your eyes and imagine you're actually flying. It doesn't work, not like running does, but during those times it's the best thing you could ever ask for.

Except, maybe, someone to share it with.

You've been on your own for forever. Your height and your running prevented you from making friends when you were little, and now that groups have been made and alliances formed, you're set in your ways. Or stuck.

That's why the track team is so nice. No one argues with the best runner the school has, especially when track has become the only thing your school can be proud of. Your football team is pathetic, your soccer fields are swamped, and your baseball team can't even hold their own against the little league. But because of you, and because you run like something is after you—or like stopping means more pain than anyone can ever imagine—the track team has become a beacon in the dark.

He likes to whisper to you after a meet, when you're on top of the world. "Run, kid, run." All you want to do is celebrate with your cheering, laughing, smiling teammates—they're not really your friends; it's only because you're so fast—but he's pushing you to run more, after you pushed your body to its limits and stretched yourself as thin as you could go. He still wants you to keep going, and he's getting louder. So you break away, laughing and pretending that everything is fine. You do a victory lap, and then another, and then another. Your coach tells you to stop and your teammates try to grab you, but the wind is in your ears and there are tears in your eyes. You're flying blind and you can't see where you're going, or when you should stop.

Most of the time, you're still running when everyone leaves and the fun has ended. Most of the time, you're still running when the sun sets. Most of the time, no one is there to catch you.

Until someone does.

They are on the other team, and they are easily as good, as strong, as fast as you. They tie you every race, every time you try to outpace them or outrun them or outbreathe them or outfly them. You can't get ahead, and for once your team isn't looking at you with stars in their eyes. For once, you are just a freak who doesn't stop running. No one even knows why you are there, anyway; you don't have any friends and you are actually kind of scary.

Your team loses that meet, because on the last race you just start crying and you can't stop. You don't even know why you're crying, only that the whispers are punching you in the back and your legs feel like lead and you can hardly get your lungs to work. And, if you aren't good at running, you aren't good at anything. If you can't run, then you can't fly, and then you can't be free.

If you aren't a runner… you aren't anything.

And so you are crying, and on the very last turn of the 800 meter you trip—a pathetic little stumble, really, and you keep going right after—but it gives the other runner a chance to get one step ahead, and it costs you the meet.

No one is cheering or laughing or smiling now. They're all looking at you like you're the scum on their running shoes, like you don't belong, you never did, and you should just leave, if you know what's good for you. His whispers—"run, kid, run"—are empowering, now, and you take back to the track before anyone can stop you. No one cares anymore, and your teammates—but never your friends—begin to trickle away, back to their deadbeat bus and their worthless school and their middle-of-no-where town. Your parents aren't at this meet, so they aren't there to stop you. No one is, and you just keep running.

Twice around the track, three times, five, eight, twelve. You've gone four-and-a-half miles on another school's track, and no one is stopping you. No one is even there, after hours, on a Saturday. No one but you and the lead in your legs and the pillows in your lungs and the sand in your mouth. You can't feel anything anymore, not even the wind.

You don't even know why you're running.

That's when they show up—the runner from the other school. You're turning the corner, the same corner where you stumbled and everything went wrong, and suddenly their arms are there and you aren't flying forward but in a sort of arc, and you're both tangled on the newly-refurbished track.

"You're going to kill yourself," they say, gentle as the breeze that floats through your forest by your tree house. "Please," a whisper, "don't do that."

The pain finally catches up with you, then, and everything bursts into flames. You're screaming and bawling and falling apart at the seams, but that runner is there, holding you still, whispering. Their whispers—"shh, shh, it'll be okay"—are not like His. Their whispers are taking your pieces and stitching them back together. Their whispers are slowing the wheezing and softening the burns, and their arms are holding you still. You're being rocked like a child who has just woken up from a nightmare.

As the rocking slows and the arms loosen, you realize something. For the first time, His whispers have stopped. He's not in your head anymore. He's gone.

You're free.

And you've got the world at your fingertips.

The runner gives you a water bottle, and you drain it. The next one handed to you goes the same way, and the next, and it isn't until half-way through the fourth that you spit back a mouthful and reject the thing. You're so wasted that your legs have turned to rubber and your insides to mush. You flop back onto the track, letting your limbs land where they may and simply watching the clouds.

"You know," the runner says, lying down next to you and turning to face the sky, "if you're quiet, it's almost like you're flying."

You both hold your breath, listening to the whistle of the wind through the bleachers and across the grass and right up to you. It's a spectacular, organic sound, and as you watch the clouds bob by overhead, you can imagine it. For a moment, you are flying, and you couldn't be happier.

You grab the runner's hand. "Thank you," you say, your first words in a while.

They smile, squeeze your hand back, and return their eyes to the sky. You do, too, and it isn't even a heartbeat before you're lost in the wind and the sky and the clouds, and by God, you're flying…

Because you finally get it. You weren't born to run—it was his whispers that were making you do that; his whispers and your willingness to listen to those whispers. And without those whispers, you can finally hear the truth, and the sky is simply screaming it.

"Fly, kid, fly."

Author's Note: Raw and rough and mostly unedited and kinda fast. Sentence fragments are intentional and used with purpose (if excessively). This could be anyone in the flock, really. It just has to be a pair that is close-enough in age to be in high school together. (Because, me being me, I had in mind a specific pair, and they are most-definitely in high school. In my mind, at least.) But the runner's gender is supposed to be ambiguous. As is the narrator's.

Hopefully you liked?

Anyway, I did this on an earlier fanfic and I like the idea: tell me what you're thinking RIGHT NOW. Err, what this fanfic has made you think and/or feel. Think of it as the fic-aftertaste. Also, who can you see the runner/narrator as?

Reviews are lovely, and—this isn't even a bribe, but an honest fact—the nice/thoughtful ones make me want to write until I can't stop.

Lots of Love,

Lea