Can you remember being born? Seeing the world for the very first time and crying because it is frightening and cold?
I do.
In fact, I still have nightmares about it.
My birth was... Well I think it is safe to say that it is still the scariest thing I have ever experienced.
I too was frightened when I was born. Not because I saw strange creatures around me that I did not recognise, or that I’d lost the gentle thumping of my mother’s heart. It wasn’t even because I had been ripped from the gentle warmth I had spent my first months on the planet in, but because I thought I had been born to die. That I was to be denied my chance of ever seeing what everything in that new world looked or felt like.
In the dead of night, when the old day passes on the torch to the next, that’s when I was born. Back then the night’s sky was mostly empty, devoid of all the shimmering memories we placed there. Do you remember?
I was born... in the sky.
Are you afraid of heights?
I ask because I... I am. Does that make me weak? Or childish?
My very first memory is the feeling of falling, of opening my eyes and seeing only fields, mountains, clouds, and lakes below me, though I did not think of them as such then. I was born from the moon, going to a new place. I could have been excited, elated! And yet, though I knew little, I felt that meeting those fields would be the end of me.
I did not plan to give up without a fight, of course. I kicked with every one of my legs, thrashed about with my head and, fruitlessly and irregularly, flapped with a set of too small wings to hold my frame aloft. Most of all, though, I cried. I cried because I felt something had been taken from me without my ever having a chance to savour it. I remember the hot tears rolling from my eyes, up to my horn, to finally lose their grip and be lost in the air above me.
Panic is a strange thing, and it makes one do strange things. I screamed, and cried, and shouted my unrecognisable wails every which way as I tumbled towards the ground, nearing the spare clouds that drifted around lazily, indifferent to my plight.
It made me angry. Angry, and sad. If I had been able to at that tender age, I would have cursed the moon from whence I came for abandoning me. Cursed the clouds and the trees for not listening to my pleas, and cursed the ground for being the instrument of my demise.
That’s when I saw you.
I know I’m not much of a poet, matron saint of the arts though I may be, but the first time I saw you I thought you were the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. An angel of mercy speeding towards me on a golden chariot.
The next moment was a cruel one, though I know now that there was no other way. Just as I thought I had been saved and my cries answered, you swerved down and I thought you had abandoned me as well.
Resignation too is a strange thing. Though my eyes were still leaking, and my... well my everything was sore and tired from the ruckus I had made on my way down, I closed my eyes and simply... waited. Waited for the end I was sure everything I had known in my short life abandoned me to.
Then I started slowing down, impacting on something soft only moments later. I hadn’t hit as hard as I thought I would have, and I wasn’t dead. The shock of that set me crying again. Gone was the acceptance I’d had in my situation, and fear was the only thing that spilled back into the void left behind.
I opened my eyes, and saw your back, elation joined fear in my heart, although it was quickly pushed out when everything shook. I thought the entire world was shaking because it was angry at what had happened, but looking back on it, perhaps it was your dealing with some obstacle, or perhaps you simply flew into a tree.
I suppose it doesn’t matter, I was safe though I felt anything but. My sobbing only got louder which was only exacerbated when you spoke. “Don’t cry, please? You’re okay now!” I remember you were yelling so loudly it only made me more scared, and the strange sensation of your beating wings didn’t help any.
I remember feeling afraid I would have to live through the entire experience again when you banked so hard I could see the ground from my relative safety on your back. It had become another thing I was afraid of losing so I closed my eyes and curled in on myself, struggling to stay as close to you as I could.
I am sorry I kicked as hard as I did.
The landing was one of the things I missed, pressed into your back as I was. Only after several minutes without anything moving did I dare look up again.
Seeing you looking back at me wasn’t what I was expecting. I do not really know what I was expecting but I think it was something, or someone beautiful and graceful. You looked at me with worry, blood and exhaustion marring your face, like you had broken down mountains and forests... given your everything to get to me in time.
...Did you?
My expectation of your voice was similarly off the mark. With my only reference being the yelling from earlier I was expecting something similar. When you looked away from me I blubbered something incomprehensible, trying to keep you close. You turned back quickly, wearing a smile rather than the worry from before. The rest was still there, but that smile, combined with your soft melodious voice made me feel safe for the first time in my life.
“Shhhh, shhh... Dry your tears little one, you are safe now.”
When you put me down on the ground I cried again. Above all else, I did not want you to leave me. A fear that was put to rest when you put a wing around me. I remember thinking how big, and soft, and warm it was.
I remember being excited, and tired, and a thousand things more. But no longer was I scared, because it felt like you could protect me from everything.
My earliest memories end with a yawn, and snuggling into your side, though the nightmare is cruel and makes me go through it all again when I do finally fall asleep once more.
So I have to ask you this...
Can I sleep with you tonight sister?
“Of course you can, Lulu. I will always be here for you.”
Always?
“Always.”
Author's Note
3 AM and I can't sleep.
An idea forms when I take a shower.
This is the result. I hope you enjoyed it.
(Does anyone think this needs a sad tag?)
