Flight School: Prey

Waking Sleep

What are things?

Why do we care?

But Io felt for that moment just how much he truly cared;

And how he couldn't bear to just let things go.

The bird in his cage was getting loud and impatient—as if it would break free any moment; and Io did just what it willed him to do.

Perhaps he finally realized that it was this will that he had been killing; suppressing and restraining—chaining it to the ground and locking it up—

Yes.

Yes, it was him—

Just how many times had he locked it up again, and again?

And in the end;

After all this darkness and monsters—

He had the key.

He did what he had to do; he felt it unlock.

The door of the cage swung open, a soft creak that was music to his ears—and then his wings appeared.

How he spread them, he did not know. How the eyes, the ones on the ground and the one in the sky saw him—it mattered not for he was light and he could fly.

And then Io had ended the nightmare as a dream.

It felt like one—to him, very much so—for it was the repeat of the dream that he had saw time and again.

Someone was standing at the finish; a silhouette so dark, he simply could not make out.

Was it a friend—

Or a foe?

Io

did not know.

_________________________________

"It's late, dear. You should get going before its past curfew."

"I know."