He was all sharpness—the soft baby curves of the cheeks and chin replaced with angles, jutting and harsh, hollowed cheeks prominent. He was skinny—a concentration-camp-starvation kind of thin, with bones that could snap with a well-aimed kick and a frailty usually reserved for hunch-backed octogenarians, the kind of fragility that makes one seem able to be toppled by a light breeze. His face was pockmarked, gnawed by disease; his jaw was lined with scars and craters that were reminders of his cruel lifestyle. His every day was spent in the confines of a filthy cage; his every moment was spent trying to reach out and grab freedom but becoming tangled in the unforgiving black steel that encompassed him. There would be no freedom for him: he was a mutant, with avian DNA spliced into his veins, an experiment treated like an animal by his captors—the scientists.

The wings grew out of his back like curving blades—tawny and speckled, all lightness and feathers, overlapping and joining in a tiled sail. They, too, pushed against the bars of the cage, but to no avail—the wings, now matted and mangled after seven years of this prison, longed to fly, but longing was a dream, an idea—reality crushed fantasies like that. The closest he ever came was watching the flight of the hawks.

They were beautiful creatures, with wings like his, meant to soar on high thermals and swim through the clouds. Every day, he would drag himself into a crouched position and focus his scar-surrounded eyes on the arcing wonders, watching them spinning and dipping in the air that was supposed to be his. And they were symbols of the life he wished he had.

He would stare at the swooping birds with a passionate hope, feeling as if he could taste the clouds they were circling and feel the dives they were executing. They were his one comfort—his hawks of hope, the birds that gave his miserable existence a scrap of meaning.

Their flight was his flight; when they soared, his heart went with them.


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