Disclaimer: I don't own any of this.


She had fallen out of favor.

None of the lads in Glasgow wanted to court her and none of the lassies wanted to invite her over for tea. Her reputation wasn't that favored among those that knew her.

She had fallen out of grace.

Her mother would never look at her the same way. Not even when her hair grows back or when she was stuffed into a ruffled dress. As far as her mother could tell, she had no daughter to speak of.

She had fallen out of trees.

She had been fussed over when she would fall from the highest branch she could possibly reach. It hurt, but for a little while, she was closer to the sky.

She had fallen on her face.

She had ruined countless dresses from the blood that would gush out of her nose and had lost a few baby teeth when she tripped and fell chasing after Jaspert, but that never stopped her before.

Oh yes, Deryn Sharp had fallen a lot in her short life. Living in the air had steeled her nerves to the fact of falling. She didn't mind it, she actually felt like a bird diving in the air when she would fall—briefly. There was always the landing. The landing part she did mind. It barking hurt and that is why no one saw her jumping off of anything and everything.

But as she sat on the spine of the great air beast, her hand that was meant to be sketching Bovril was instead tracing a name over and over. Again and again. And each time she would have to scratch it out lest someone see it.

Alek. Alek. Alek.

It kept on scrawling and scribbling out.

And she got a sense of falling that she wasn't prepared for. Her steeled nerves turned to raw nerves as butterflies flew in her stomach each time her eyes read through the name.

"Dylan!"

Deryn's head jerked up, pulled out of her reverie and looked in the direction of… Alek. He was beckoning her over with his hand and she faintly heard Bovril's giggles of "Mr. Sharp".

She smiled and closed her sketchpad, with Alek still scratched into her mind and got up to see what that daft prince was up to this time.

She was falling. She was sure of it. She wasn't used to this fall—this fall into his opinion. And she wasn't sure where or when she would land. But she wasn't scared to take the running start and jump because she was pretty sure that when she eventually landed, Alek would be there to catch her.


Written while listening to "Falling" by Florence and the Machine. Hope you like it.

This would've gone under my previous story "Of Coincidences" but ahem… a mishap happened. Where I just got frustrated with decisions of majors and minors and colleges (art and writing basically) and went and deleted any story I had on here (whopping total of 15) and tore down my paintings in my room to try to escape it. It didn't work….

Oh well. Here I am again anyway. And this time, I won't go delete-crazy.