Two
The air tastes dry and empty and feels cold- colder when she moves quickly over the gritty stuff beneath her feet or through the almost-not-there stuff around the rest of her. Flying is fun, even though it's colder and not just cold. She loves it.
Sometimes she crashes into things. And though it rarely hurts- and heals quickly when it does- she never really knows what she's crashing into. She just knows that it is brittle and either cold or sometimes not-quite-cold and wet and smelly, and that the wet, smelly ones make her sad for reasons she does not understand. (What's worse is that she sometimes feels she should eat them, especially the wet ones, even though she isn't hungry- and she wonders what hunger is, that the thought of it makes her so scared- and her body feels weighed down with emotions she can't identify beyond sad.)
Sometimes, she feels something swelling in her and wonders what it is. When the swelling lasts, she flies fast, fast, fast. When it stops, she falls on not-quite-cold, wet ground.
Sometimes, she wishes that someone would fly with her. (She never knows what the feeling is, or what it means, only that it has something to do with sad and makes "colder" feel "freezing.") When this happens she walks, because it means that the flying is making her sad. Even though not flying makes her sad too.
She doesn't like sad.
Word Count: 240. Posted:2/11/17