Wings

The lunchroom was loud, as always. Me and my friends sitting at our usual table laughing at someone's joke. But I was not paying attention. There was a growing pain on my upper back on either side of my spine. One of my friends seemed to notice something was wrong and raised her eyebrows. I inclined my head towards the back of the cafeteria. I stood and moved towards it slowly. My friend close behind. "Whats up?" she asked when we reached the back of the room. 

"I think they are returning" She looked at me skeptically. 

"What are you talk-" Recognition and dread seemed to battle in her eyes. I nodded slowly. She began shaking her head walking back towards the table full of our friends. Disbelief written all over her face. I made to reach for but a shooting pain shot through me. I screamed, falling to the floor. Now all of the eyes in the room were on me I could feel them. A voice in my head was screaming at me to get up. I pushed myself onto my hands and knees. But as I made to stand up the pain came again and I screamed but managed to stay on my hands and knees my head drooping towards the floor, my hair in my face.

I heard screams but they sounded far away. I heard a voice tell everyone to move out of the way but it was cut off as the wings came shooting out of my back peeling off the flesh that had kept them trapped beneath my skin and I screamed in agony. I couldn't lift my head even as I heard people screaming and yelling in fear of the large, muscled, black wings. Couldn't lift my head as I felt my wings knock over all of the tables in the lunchroom.

I was vaguely aware of everyone leaving the cafeteria. That though I was alone in the room, there were people watching through the small windows in the now closed doors. And as the pain subsided until it was just a faint throbbing, as I took in the huge, powerful black wings that now were folded behind me and touched the floor. I realized that they were back. That I was back. The wings that I had loved and had been taken from me were finally back. The markers of who and what I was.

 So I smiled. A broad smile that I had not seen in a long time because I had been lost and I had been hurt. But at last I was truly healing. So for the first time since I had remembered why I was trapped here, I felt hope.