Taking Nature Inland

by DynamicEquilibrium115

Prelude to taking flight

He stops on the edge to ready himself, stretching wings reaching outward to their apex, front and back limbs shifted intensely pushing up mounds of soft loam, muscles and tendons sliding against one another until slowly falling back in place to match a rested position. Now comes the mental preparation, a time where one forgets their physical limits to embrace deeper consciousness, I should know, I have also stood on that edge, the top of heaven's staircase. Up here there are no clouds, they rest below waiting to swallow the courageous diver, thick ominous plumes that turn away the hardiest flyers, countless resolves left decimated. Hooves stuck on the flat lip, the decision is not yet made.

The events that transpire here could take some time. Years, centuries could pass and no conclusion reached. The white sea will shift and rage on like an unrelenting storm but it will not be known to the likes of us. The top layer gives a pleasant feeling but such emotions are swept away by the frightening realization of what could lie below. Cumulonimbus monsters waiting to strike or vast tornadoes, hurricanes, a typhoon, the above has no such knowledge, looking down beckons any daredevil before they realize it’s too late to pull up.

The landing will also be graceless, no currents or soft footholds of water vapour will offer a speed bump to the descending traveller as they plummet faster and faster till the orbed ground of Gaia meets them. Even with our wings and skills of navigating the sky one could not hope to heave themselves from the gaping maw of clouds, we are hopelessly suited to lower altitudes, and vaguely, mnemonically high flyers but never both at once. It is those who choose to go higher that reach the heavens, where Celestia’s charity kindly greets and caresses our feeble bodies, where one’s thoughts of the below vanish entirely.

Eventually he leaps, legs and wings outstretched, his face forward as the purchase of the earth is left behind. I watch as he falls keeping a slow velocity as if savouring the moments before true test of ability begins. I catch the acceleration and the last sight is that of another body disappearing into the void. The one perfect, reckless moment, from which there is no turning back.