The girl had climbed all the way to the top of the lonely and deteriorating cement building, surrounded by nothing but dried-up wheat fields for miles and miles, and now sat on the roof, dangling her feet off of the edge. Her car – candy-red, bright, and obtrusive – was parked below.

There was no indecision in her features. From the way she sat, she could have just as easily been perched on a chair at home, not three hundred or so feet off the ground. She just looked a little bit melancholy as she looked out at the indifferent world, the sky covered by brooding gray clouds. The wind tugged at her long hair, which was the same dirty-blond to tan shade as the morose grasses, as though it was urging her on. Taking one long, final look about, she pushed off.

She kept her eyes open, but she did not see me.

A moment later, she was soaring.

When her fall was halted, she gasped, startled. Her heart was racing, fluttering, and alive like a hummingbird's wing. Her gentle brown eyes opened wide, and she hung in mid-air. She could feel them, but thought that it couldn't possibly be true, that it must be some dying hallucination. When she turned her head, she saw the wings.

They were a shimmering snow-white, reflecting the little stray light that hung in the air that afternoon. Large, and powerful, and beautiful, with wonderfully soft feathers that she stroked again and again when she landed. They did not simply reflect light, but they illuminated the ground and air, infusing it with gentle light. She could hardly believe it, but they were there. As real as the earth beneath her feet, as real as the chill breeze biting into her, as real as the cool cement had been.

Taking a deep breath, she did what was most natural, and pushed off once more – from the ground into the air, this time.

A single flap, another, and then a delicious rhythm flowed into her bones. They were her wings, and all else was forgotten. As she flew up and up, into the clouds, the cool mist brushing past her lightly, through cottony gray conglomerates, up and up till she broke out high above the ground into blinding, gold, and deliciously warm light, she could not recall having felt this way for months, for years, really. A giddy laugh escaped her. Above the clouds, bathed in the sky's unforgettable azure, above all cares and worries. An endless landscape of exquisite white palaces and sculptures, more magnificent than any human architecture, stretched out before her as she flew onwards. Looking down, she could now spot, between drifting behemoths of clouds, patches of rolling emerald hills, waving softly in the wind, stitched by pale roads and silver rivers to deeper green forests and little red-roofed houses. She could see jeweled lakes and ponds spangled across that cloth, and her own home, too. Her wings stretched out and out, vibrating, until she felt that she could enclose all of that postcard vision. She dove, whooping and yelling with excitement, then swooped up again in a smooth, wide arch. She kept going, sailing onwards over the coastline, where white sands and crumbling gray rocks met the frothing turquoise ocean. Beyond, even farther, loomed mountains, in yet more mysterious shades of night-sky blue, cloaked in forests. A flock of snow geese enveloped her, and she moved through the air as a part of a whole. Her wings, her wings! Now, she let her companions, turned to meet the wind. Going up, even higher than before! The glorious sun drifted down, the clouds were tinted with hints of autumnal light, crimson and orange. She flew on, into the sunset, as the sky dimmed and relaxed into lilac and pink. Only when the last, glowing rim had vanished, did she turn back.

Alighting softly on the ground, she touched the tip of a feather again. From above, even that building had looked picturesque. She could see where plants and trees were taking back the cement and metal rubble, taking back the fields. Her car had looked just right. Upon spotting it, she was reminded of everything else, and gave a quiet cry of dismay. But then, she felt her wings again, recalled her flight. Recalled the hidden beauty of the places she called home, the realization above the clouds that she could feel again.

Turning, she saw me, and her face showed wonder and amazement once more. Stepping forward, I reached out and placed my hands on her shoulders. “I have to take the wings back now... I'm sorry, it's the way this works. You don't really have to give them back. But we give them wings, all of them, and we only have this pair. So – may I?”

Stepping away, she looked up at the sky. A few diamond-stars had appeared now, speckling the deep blue dome, and she felt the feathers again, felt the longing of the wings to fly again. And she thought about why she had come here.

She came back to me.

“Yes...”

It was quick, painless. She felt like any other human now, but she could still remember what it had been like.

“Can I help, someday?”

I turned back; I had been about to leave. “Someday? Yes... Remember, though – there's more than one way to give them wings.”

And there I left her, standing by her new car. She no longer looked quite so sad, though – it was hard to tell in the dim half-light, but I thought I could see a smile, and a glow in her eyes that hadn't been there before.

As I went away, I heard the car rev up and drive away from the building.