Living For The City

I sat up and looked around excited, having just seen a grand oak tree materialize in front of me with its twisted branches radiating out of its trunk as with the roots. But my eagerness to find a home in the oak tree shrank, for I found nothing in my surroundings had changed.

I had been dreaming.

Every inch of my view was the same endlessly lonely sprawl of glass figures, metal waste, and crumbling concrete. The air was hot and thick with soot. I stood up on the concrete boulder I was sleeping on and began to walk along it, still hoping to suddenly see the oak from my dream. But when I walked, a tight clicking sound made me stop . I looked down to see the bottoms of my feet now matched the solid concrete I walked on. Nervously, I started to walk forward again, but the bottoms of my feet were now numb. The numbness grew up over my toes and started towards my ankle. Looking down again, I could see the gray concrete reach my shins. My heart began to beat harder in my chest and my eyes widened with cold fear.

“What on Earth?” I screeched.

The concrete, now rising up my shins, slowed me. The movement in my lower joints stiffened. I was working hard to lift my legs. I wanted to make a break for it, but they were much too heavy. I stopped a few feet from where I was asleep just a few moments ago and tried again with all my fragile strength to lift myself up and away. Flapping my wings, I struggled to lift off the ground but just when I was about to give up, I felt something tug. With a final pop, I did it. I broke away from my lower half and rose up into the hot wind. Once a part of me, now my legs and feet were camouflaged with the stone world below. Tears started to fall as I flew away unable to distinguish the feet I had just been dreaming about clutching an old oak’s branch.

The blurry tears dropping over my cheeks might have been the reason why the distorted glare I saw in the sky ahead of me didn’t seem strange. I realized much too late that I was flying straight into something solid. I crashed into a glass-like structure with such force that my vision went blank for a small moment as I fell onto a hard cold floor. Shaking my head and resetting my eyes, I took in the clear walls that surrounded me. The glare of the sun pierced my eyes, and my forehead ached. The shattered hole I had created before, disappeared. I was trapped in some sort of glass cube suspended in the sky. It glittered with the sunlight, and I admit, I thought it was in a way, pretty. The rainbows cast through the glass brushed across the cheek.

I couldn’t understand why it was up there, hidden in plain sight among the thick clouds. I was alone and trapped, but I didn’t bother to scream for help. I wasn’t exactly afraid, and it was clear no one was around who would really hear me anyways. Clouds continued on their way without a glance of me sitting motionless in the glass cage. It was a good thing I didn’t use up my breath to scream because I saw no holes and felt no air. The walls, clear but solid, didn't close around me, but the air within it took me by the waist and neck and began to strangle me. Panic filled me then. My breath was a strained whisper, but the voice in my head screamed and pleaded with me to get up and find a way out.

My chest twisted and my heart started to scratch my lungs. The fear of never reaching that air outside, sprouted out of my chest and wanted to bang on the thick glass. However gray and hot the air, the wind still carried me through. But the thought of never reaching that damning sky again, terrified me more than anything. With the rest of my energy, I straightened my shoulders, looked towards the direction I entered from, and with a wave of relief saw the beginnings of a thin crack in the glass. Suppressing the choking that threatened to gag me, I flew as hard as I could aiming for the fissure. I heard the crash and felt triumph as I drew in a great breath of hot air and then craze as I watched my body split into bits. 

“This is an awful game.”, I croaked as the pieces of me fell back towards the dreaded concrete realm I had escaped. It felt like that had been days ago when my legs solidified with the concrete and popped off my body, but it was only a few hours ago. The sun was still high in the sky, though not much sunlight got past the thick clouds. 

The wind blew the severed parts of me in multiple directions. I could see my head tumble in the wind feet away from me. With a gust of wind I drifted further away like a seed, towards what looked like a field of metal. I could see the sway of chains draped on steel bars and wondered if even without the direct sunlight, if they’d be warm to touch. I floated down and lodged fixed in place among the metal scraps. Attempting to scramble out, chains reached out and tangled around me. All I could do was lay there broken, sliced, and separated from myself. I could not move, but it didn't matter. I had nowhere to go. 

I watched the faded sun fall across my face and finally hide behind the horizon. I watched the sky and wind turn to dark blue then black. I watched tiny specks of white appear sprinkled across it. There were no voices or sounds of someone coming to put me back together. There was only the light sway and jingle of chains hanging from concrete blocks a few feet to my right. My eyes remained fixed up and I looked on. Unbelievable that only hours ago, I dreamt of resting in that oak tree. A dream so distant now, yet maybe still be possible. I gazed longingly at that black sky and dark hot wind through the glass figures, concrete structures and metal scrap, imagining myself there. 

Suddenly, the black sky with its white specks moved. It wasn’t a shift, but more of a ruffle. The outlines of feathers emerged within the stars. A sight never noticed before. I stared, eyes wide and curious. The feathers shifted again, sending gusts of wind across the land. More than a trick of the stars' glimmers, this, I knew, was the wing of something greater. A creature bigger than my eyes could see but there nonetheless.