Flight
It's a beautiful day. The sky is a pale blue that looks like it came from a box of watercolors, and the air is warm. Birds sing in the trees and bees hum around the bright flowers. There's not a cloud in the sky, and you're in a large meadow surrounded by trees. There isn't another person in ten miles, and you know that the long hike you've made to this secluded spot is well worth it.
You turn to the broom you laid on the ground a moment ago when you surveyed the area. "Up!" you yell confidently, and the broom leaps into your hands. You mount carefully, just as you have been taught, and take a deep breath in preparation. Then you push off from the ground the way you did when you were five and played on the see-saws in the park. Like on the see-saws, you begin to rise into the air. But unlike them, you continue to rise, five, ten, twenty feet off the ground. Thirty feet up, you stop your ascent and get a good grip on the broom. Then you try a few simple turns, getting warmed up for a real flight.
Without realizing it, you have gained altitude and are now far above the ground. You see the pack you left on the ground. It's very small against the brilliant green of the grass. Suddenly you are overcome by a desire to climb higher and higher. You point the tip of your broom at the sky and climb, climb, climb, as if you would be a modern Icarus and fly too near the sun.
You pull out of your climb and point the nose of the broom at the ground. The wind whips your face as you plummet toward the ground, and you scream with delight just as you would on a roller coaster. Ten feet above the ground, you pull up sharply and whip down the length of the meadow. You make turns that would be lazy if you weren't making them at seventy miles an hour. This is the best feeling in the world, you tell yourself, and of course you're right. You spiral upwards until once again the ground lies out below you like a map. You see a passing hawk and shout a challenge, feeling that you are monarch of the air, not he. But the bird ignores you and glides along his way.
And then, suddenly, you rise so high that you can see miles below. You remember that your instructor cautioned against looking down from this height, but you feel invulnerable, as if you could fly without the broom. Below are meadows and forests. Off a few miles are the yellow-gold squares of farm fields, and a curvy blue line indicates a river. Far, far off you see the glint of metal and know it for a city. Although you live there and have often enjoyed walking its streets, now you feel that such a place is too crude, too stifling, and you condemn it in your thoughts to oblivion.
You hardly realize that time passes, until suddenly it's evening. The crickets are starting to sing and the sun is sinking low in the west. Reluctantly, you descend to earth. When your feet touch the ground, you almost cry out with disappointment. To be once more a land-bound creature, when for a few precious hours you were free of the constraints of earth, a being of air and light, it is almost more than you can bear.
But bear it you must. You comfort yourself with the sandwiches and butterbeer that you had the foresight to bring, and remind yourself that you will fly again, very soon. And then you pick up your pack, put your broom over your shoulder, and start to hike back to civilization.
Kind of an odd point of view, not really a story at all… this is a scene that came into my head and I wanted to share. What do you think?
By the way, 'Eilonwy' is from the Chronicles of Prydain by Lloyd Alexander. And I've never been to the boards at the UHPFC