First Tastes of the Sky pv lottie & cece

Flight was all too unfamiliar to Archer Duncan.

So he would make it familiar. Through practice, training, and whatever blood, sweat, and tears this world would force him to sacrifice. He did not realise his skill for it would come naturally, as if he were a stray leaf seeking respite in the sky after particularly strong winds, being blown up without a shred of effort from his part.

He had not known, that when he had taken to a rickety school broom, one that seemed as if it would serve him no purpose other than hurtling him up into the sky, he would fly with it as smoothly as he did. He soared past the fog, the clouds, until he was above it all. This world, this life, what awaited him in the future. A true taste of freedom, as long as his gut could take it.

He had flown before, but those odd times had never been for himself. He was younger, during his first year of mandatory classes, just into his second year with faux Quiddtich games, and into his third year with a full hand of recklessness. Now that fourth year was almost knocking at his door, he had different goals. He did not aim to build a persona of a Quiddtich player or broom racer, did not aim to show off new skills and half an abdomen of control he did not have, did not aim even to woo one of captains he was particularly fond of — although that would have been an added bonus, no doubt. Merely, he sought for more. He flew with steadiness, as if his body was half-bird already. No headache crept up on him. No dizziness. No vertigo. Merely the gentle acceptance that he was soaring through skies this high, and new possibilities were on the horizon line.

Flying, to Archer, had now become the only way to detach himself from what chained him down to the ground. Expectations, comments, opinions, and whatever else the world chose to sling at him. He could be free of the history that tied him to his past, to the melancholy he so often wallowed in, to the sadness that seized him and put him into a cage he had grown comfortable in. To him, it was his own taste of the teenage rebellion so many of his peers highly praised. This was not a rebellion against parents, physics, societal conventions, or even humanity itself. To him, this was a sheer and utter rebellion against himself. And he was glorious in savouring it.

Archer’s snuck a glance down at the grounds below, and for the first time flying, he did not feel the bile rising up to his throat as he lowered his gaze to the distant earth. His eyes trailed through the wisps of fog, landing on bodies he could not care less about, manoeuvring through the skies below him or walking upon the ground as if they were lowly peasants. They gathered and crowded, and Archer almost felt disgusted at the mechanical way they moved. Sheep, all flocking together towards slaughter.

Yet one amongst them — her wool must have been black in the way she stood out, and Archer spoke that with love rather than malice. Through the fog and via exaggerated squinting, Archer’s eyes fell on a familiar figure. Hers sparkled like marinated olives under the sun, glinting with juice still dripping off their round flesh. Their gazes met, ever so briefly, before he turned his broom around and in swift display of fluid skill, swept down into a landing just by her side. Wind would ripple through her shirt, and he would offer her the ghost of a smile, just barely playing on his lips.

When matters of romance were at hand… at least he had a motive to outperform himself.

He winked, and to anyone else, it might have just been a passing twitch. His words were soft, oddly nostalgic in their reminiscence, “Remember when I told you, those three years ago, sat in the Great Hall, that I never thought I could fly?”

A gentle laugh escaped him, and his gaze was drawn far into the distant skies, as if he was already envisioning the next time he would take to them. He could not bear the confines of this human body no longer, the flight only achieved via an unwieldy tool, the inauthentic promises of soaring through the skies — he longed for emancipation form this form. The next time he dived off a cliff, he would not be meeting the water’s embrace with a shout of adrenaline, but flapping his wings up towards the clouds with one, singular call of the goshawk.

He returned his eyes to her, resting tenderly over her features. “I suppose things always change, do they not?”

@Charlotte Winfield, @Cecilia Merrick | banner by Adeline Spinks