Early January 2014:

Since all of the angels had manifested their wings, things had been a bit... Well everyone was a bitch lately. At least that's how it seemed to Jo.

Castiel had been sulking off in the shadows, which tended to make Dean pretty irritable. Gabriel ran his stupid mouth off even more constantly than before and complained about anything remotely inconvenient and nearly threw a temper tantrum when Sam accidentally stepped on one of his wings. (Bless that beast's oversized frame, but damn if he wasn't a klutz.) This had somehow led to Gabriel batting Sam in the face with his wings whenever he felt like it, which led to Sam being in a really pissy mood.

Ana snapped at people a bit more but she was surprisingly alright. Maybe, since she'd experienced falling before, she was alright with this. Better in comparison.

Jo did not even bother to see how Lucifer and Michael (Adam? Never quite understood that bit) were doing. She didn't really feel like dealing with those two... beings.

The main issue with the angels bitching about, though, was that they didn't know how to use their wings so they had to hitch rides on the backs of motorbikes and truck beds now. Apparently, and Jo could've told any one of them this, there was a huge difference between warping the universe around yourself (like a goddamn starship) and using flesh-and-blood appendages to lift you up.

They'd been practicing somewhat but none of 'em really had the hang of it yet.

Luckily Jo had Ana, since they were both girls and blah blah blah. Long story short, she was just glad she didn't have to deal with Gabe. Or the other Archangels. Felt bad for Garth having to teach those creepy sons of bitches how to flap right.

Anyhow.

Today they were doing some more practice—Jo cheering halfheartedly with a couple of books on birds laying nearby, a boom box playing some top 25 CD, sun shining weak and greenish through the thick haze above. She didn't have to wear a gasmask out here but she did need a surgical mask. Air was technically breathable but a strange kinda thick, and she didn't wanna end up dying of cancer or something.

She sighed. "Good job Ana!" Weakly threw her fist in the air. Ana smiled at her, somewhat pleased with herself. She'd managed to get like... two inches off the ground. For a coupla minutes too. But that really wasn't great transport. Jo flipped through her book and found a page on falcons and a section on birds that were fast and small. She glanced over it briefly, and lingered on the picture of a duck hawk. The long, narrow, bow-shaped wings meant for fast flight. She looked up with a realization. Castiel and Ana had wings like that—completely different from Gabe's wings, which were huge and wide and slotted like an eagle's.

So clearly the lower angels were meant for speed and not soaring. "Hey, An, c'mere." Jo flapped her hand at Ana. "Look at this." She pressed the book into Ana's hands, and pointed to the falcon's picture, and the diagram explaining wing types. They flipped around through the book and found a section on aerial locomotion based on wing shape and size.

From what Jo could tell, the shape of Ana's wings was like a falcon's wings, but with a higher aspect ratio which meant they were a lot longer than they were wide, and were best for high speed flight and some intense gliding, like an albatross. Whereas the Archangels' wings had a somewhat lower ratio so they were broad and long, with slotted pinions, and were well suited for soaring for long distances. In birds, for the most part, these wing types required slightly different takeoffs—either type would allow flight from a drop-off but it seemed falcons could get into the air pretty easily from the ground, albatross required long running starts, and eagles also needed a ledge, or a good headwind to pull them into the air, due to the shape and size of their wings.

Since all of the angels had relatively large wings, it seemed likely that they would all need to jump from some kind of height to get airborne, especially considering how much denser they were than birds.

Theoretically, if Ana leapt from somewhere higher up instead of trying to jump straight into the air, it would be a lot easier for her to get flying. A running start wouldn't work as well due to the length of her wings, unless she was running on a wall or something, but she could possibly get into a glide if she were able to run and then jump off of something high off of the ground.

Or if she hitched a ride on a moving object and jumped off that.

"Hey, I've got an idea..."

Jo explained her idea.

Ana agreed.

So there they were—Jo speeding down the highway on her Yamaha, her braid trailing out from underneath her helmet, with Ana clinging to her back as she angled her wings experimentally. They approached the part of the road that started to turn down—a steep hill—and as Jo throttled forward, Anael's fingers loosened just barely on her shoulders.

Ana snapped her wings open just as the road dropped down in a sharp decline, and she was gliding. She flapped tentatively and nearly flipped over but after a few seconds of awkward wriggling and maneuvering she had figured out how to stay relatively straight and airborne, using her legs to help steer instead of dangling them strangely, pulling her arms in close and tucking them against her stomach. She fluttered curiously up higher, and found herself turning into an updraft, spiraling higher. She pulled free and swept down somewhat. She was already growing tired—using muscles she hadn't used before and expending a great deal of energy. She reached up to make sure her helmet was on straight, then looked down and made her move.

Diving was absolutely terrifying.

But exhilarating.

The wind battered at her clothes and any bare skin it could find, and the stomach lurched when she flicked her wings out to slow her descent and then spread them wide when that didn't work, and through a back-and-forth closing-and-opening of her wings she got lower and lower to the ground, and when she was near enough she just let her wings snap shut and tumbled to the dirt, knees shaky.

Ana tossed her helmet to the ground, watching its slick black get obscured by thick dust, as she sank to sit beside the highway, heart beating fast.

Jo ran up with a whoop. "That was amazing An!" She tackled Anael to her back on the dry ground with a breathless laugh. "I've never seen anything like that!"

"And I've never felt anything like it." Ana's unsteady giggle made Jo climb off her and pull her to stand. Ana smiled at Jo. "I never want to do that again, but at the same time I do." Her eyes wide, she gestured extravagantly at the sky, raising her eyebrows. "I thought I was gonna die but it was... It was... Wow! You know?"

Jo nodded with a grin. "Not really!" She hugged Ana again, with a hard thump on the back, and pulled her back to the dirt bike, grabbing her helmet on the way. She pressed the helmet into Ana's hands and asked, "Was it difficult?"

Climbing onto the bike behind Jo, Ana said, "My back is screaming but once I got the hang of it, it came kind of naturally..." She shoved her helmet back on, and wrapped her arms loosely around Jo's waist, making sure her wings were tucked in as tight as possible as Jo started up the bike.

Jo looked back at her, and even though her face was obscured behind the shield of her helmet, Ana knew she was grinning like a loon.

Ana held tight as the raced up the roads and back to their dusty little settlement in Lebanon.