Disclaimer: I do not own anything, execpt for Katie. And her parents. And my plot. But that's it.
True Freedom
Fourteen-year-old Katie is running through her family's fields. The wind from her speed sends her long black hair streaming behind her.
Her joy with running can be heard in her laughter.
It only takes two minutes to go from one end of the property to the other and back again.
Katie zigzags through the corn and fallow fields, her feet seemingly only touching the ground every third, fourth, fifth step.
Now she's jumping. She goes up, up three feet into the air before coming back down.
Every time she jumps, Katie goes a little higher into the air, a little father between her feet touching the ground.
Before she knows it, she is staying in the air for almost a whole field, ten feet in the air.
Katie lands on the top of a silo and stops. With her ever-increasing enhanced vision, she can see the house with the barn next to it.
She backs up to the edge farthest from the house, and takes a running jump. She's now soaring in the air. It feels like she is defying gravity. Her left foot touches the top of the roof of her home and she bounces onto the top of the barn and crashes through it. As Katie prepares to crash-land, she crosses her arm and covers her head.
But instead of feeling the floor of the barn floor, Katie feels nothing.
Slowly she pulls her hands away from her face and opens her eyes.
And stares at the floor, barely a foot below her.
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Before That Day, I loved to run. I had just started experimenting with jumping while running. It was maybe a month before That Day that I first learned what it felt like to hang in the air. I was running and my feet were just barely touching the ground.
So I jumped. High.
It felt like I belonged up in the sky.
But I couldn't figure out how to stay.
I mean, not that I knew I would be able to. Stay in the air, I mean.
And it wasn't that I felt totally out of place. I had my friends, like Maddie and Jean, and I was fairly popular with the kids whose parents let them continue school after eighth grade. Although I was the only 'farm' kid who was still in school. But that was because I loved learning. I couldn't get enough of school.
And I read everything in sight. I absorbed it.
But getting back on track, with nothing between me and the ground but a few feet of air was… indescribable.
And after That Day, I jumped and jumped until I did it again. Hovering in the air above the ground.
A month later, I woke up two feet above my bed. I remember the dream I was having just before I woke up because I had had the same one every night since I first jumped up.
I dreamt I was flying above the clouds, under the bright, friendly sun. Then I would 'lie' on my back and soak up the sunlight. I felt at peace.
When I woke up enough to comprehend that I was floating, I fell onto my bed and broke it.
That afternoon, after school, I attempted to float up instead of a running jump.
Two hours and many, many falls later, I was in the air.
Even before I had total control of my movements (it took several weeks to just 'maneuver' left or right, much less go very high), was exhilarating.
It was true, total, and complete freedom.
A/N: Okay, so I used the scene from SR. I thought it was an awsome scene, and honestly, I couldn't think of a better way to introduce the power of flight. All of this is background. Sooner or later will come some action, but not yet.