First Fly
Maybe she's a little bitter, but she's also a little broken.
The wind causes her hair to fly behind her, dark, dancing waves, and it feels quite liberating. Flying isn't what it used to be - a passion and a hobby. It's something like a getaway now, she supposes.
When she's up in the sky, her feet aren't touching the ground and she isn't quite connected to her problems. Right now, everything except for her and her broom and the sky are insignificant little ants on the ground, but she knows and fears that they get bigger when her feet brush the ground.
When her feet touch the ground, the combination lock she sets on her mind is unraveled, and her fears and her nightmares, they're back again. Her feet dig into the soft grass when she walks, and every time the soles of her shoe make a footprint in the muddy grass, it reminds her of every footstep she takes and he doesn't.
She's painting how she feels when she dives and curves and turns in the air, like her body is a paintbrush and the sky is her canvas.
The sun is setting in the horizon, and it's getting hard to see. Cho weaves around the stands of the Quidditch Pitch once more, before landing and dismounting smoothly. She's walking off of the Pitch as quickly as she can when a voice interrupts her.
"Sunset is the perfect time for many things. The sky is full of them. I've never been to the sky."
It's a girl with long, wispy blonde hair that she recognizes faintly. Luna Lovegood.
I've never been to the sky. Cho deduces the meaning quickly. "You've never been flying, have you?"
"Never. Well, I've never been taught. Perhaps you could teach me?"
Cho is shocked at the girl's lighthearted but forward tone; no one talks to her as if she real and living anymore. They all talk to her as if she's an apparition, a ghost. Since he's been gone. But this girl has just gone and talked to her as if she's someone to talk to instead of someone who is needed to be pulled apart and figured out, like it is numbers instead of matters of the heart.
"I was just going inside," Cho says bitterly, so bitterly you can practically taste it, but she's been craving actual human contact so bad that it's hard to get the words out. She knows she's lying to herself.
"Ah," says Luna, lingering on the words and drawing it out on her tongue. "Sunset is one of the most magical times of day, you know."
"I will. I'll teach you," Cho says faintly, toying with her lip.
"Lovely," said Luna, so lightly Cho thought it would just pick up with the wind and float away. "I've always wanted to see orions, the beauties of the skies, they say."
"Pardon?"
Luna just smiles as the wind catches her hair.
"Here," says Cho, passing the broom to her gently. Cho guided the girl onto it. She's oddly firm but breakable at the same time; she has a wispy look to her, like one day the wind will blow too hard and she'll be gone, but when Cho touches her waist and shifts her so she sits properly on the broom, she seems so very unbreakable. Like you could throw anything at her and it will bounce off.
When she's sitting properly on the broom, feet still touching the ground, she still has a dreamy look on her face.
"Just kick off gently," Cho instructs quietly. "Keep steady. Don't move around too much."
Luna smiles. "Like a Thestral."
Cho doesn't know what that is, but she nods. "Yes. Exactly like that."
Luna kicks off, hovering half a foot from the ground. She removes her shoes, and her feet are bare and dangling in mid air.
Cho stands, and Luna hovers, for a moment. Cho thinks; this girl is a complete mystery. She's very direct but also in her own sort of world. Perhaps her own sort of daydream.
"Orions," she says, kicking her feet gently and breaking the silence. Cho looks up at her. "The wonders of the sunset sky. They only come out when the bright, the good, has gone away, and they leave before the dark, and the bad, come. They are life-changing to see, I've hear."
Cho is still, but then speaks. "Life-changing, I guess. They would be neither good nor bad, yes? They would be the grey amidst the black and the white."
"It's never as simple as that," Luna says lightly, staring up to the sky with a love reflecting in her eyes and reaching toward the stars. "There is always something bad about someone good and something good about someone bad. We are all very, very grey."
a/n - so yeah. Big Sis Lil Sis Comp - check out my little sister Teddy's (teddylupin-snape) fic! I used the pairing, the word, the phrase, the lyric, the emotion, and the item (in a metaphorical sense). Wordcount: 805. Admittedly, not some of my best work.