Rebirth
How long has it been since I've written here? How long since I've cooped myself up inside in one place and put my thoughts into words and put those words outside my head, into something that exists separate from me? My doctor says that I should - he thinks it'll help me "continue relating to my family and social circle," but what does he know? He still thinks that my blood relations are my family, and that my social circle goes to high school. But he also says that it's an "important contribution to science, to watch the effects of the virus on a developing subject." And as much as I'd like to say screw him and science, I guess he's right. Someone somewhere else might be going through this, and they ought to know.
I honestly don't know how long it's been. I don't go to school anymore - I tried for a while, but the desks were too small and my wings blocked the view of everyone behind me. Plus, with the reporters piling up outside and the 'Phage groupies trying to get near enough to me hoping that I'd sneeze on them and turn them into fairies, it was hard for any of the teachers to do their job. I got a letter from the ACLU; apparently they're trying to put together some sort of class action suit to get 'Phage transformees covered by some Disability Act, but I threw it away.
I don't mind, anyway. Reading hurts my eyes and gives me a headache. I'm not made to do this anymore. I can see when my neighbor across the street walks past her window behind the curtains, but focusing in close on something that doesn't move... after more than a few minutes, the strain makes my head throb and the words start to blur and spin. And besides, being inside for so many hours, with the walls pressing in against me and keeping the air so stagnant and still and the ceiling so low that I can feel it threatening over my head and barring the sky from me - after the third time I wound up in the nurse's office having a panic attack in Trigonometry class, I decided it wasn't worth fighting to keep going.
I remember I used to want to be a librarian. I keep telling myself that, trying to hold onto it in my head, before it vanishes in the swirls and eddies of the wind on my hair and under my wings and across my body.
My hair. I cut my hair. It used to be so long, and I was trying to grow it until it was below my waist, but it kept getting in the way in the air. The first time I tried to fly, it was a disaster. Blue jeans pulling and sagging and half pulled off by wind resistance, the ridiculous plaid shirt that my mom had cut wing-holes in torn down both side-seams the first time I actually put my new shoulder muscles to the test, and nearly garroted by my own braid. I tried and tried to figure out ways around it, but no matter what I couldn't make my hair cooperate. So I cut it all off.
I got rid of the jeans and the shirt, too. Stupid fabric, bunching and sagging and tangling, and worst of all getting between me and the currents that I needed to feel. Flying with clothes on is like going out on a lake in a canoe and calling it swimming. Every inch of my body is part of the flight, every motion steers me, and my skin is so awake for the first time in my life, that every touch of the wind against me is like a friend whispering secrets in my ear about the way the whole world works.
My mother cried when she saw me after that flight. I'm not sure why. More and more, I don't understand her. I don't understand any of them.
I think the problem is with my eyes, again. At least, I tell myself that. I look at all of them, stuck down here on the ground, and they just look... wrong. So short, and stubby, and thick, and slow. I try to show them things - the way one leaf dances out of rhythm with the rest of the tree when the air hits it just so, the way reflected sunlight highlights the underside of a wing when someone is circling above you.... I try to talk about how it feels to glide, to be embraced by the air and let it carry you... and they just look at me in that Very Confused And Understanding Way. They can't see, they can't feel, they can't know. Poor blind mice.
Where was I? I came home, hair and shirt and jeans gone, and my mother cried... was it because of my hair, or because I was away so long? I don't know, I can't remember. I know that I tried to listen, but after a few minutes all I heard were syllables, and not words, and I remember realizing that she wasn't my mother anymore. She was my incubator, my host - like a cuckoo's egg I was left in her nest until it was time for me to hatch, but now...
I am the daughter of the wind and the virus, of the earth and the hawk, and I am none of these things. I am not a person, not a 'Phage victim, not a chimera. I am something new.
And it is time for me to leave my nest, and find where I belong....
Are there more? Are they searching like me? I have to find them.
Confused? Look here, here, and here....
I honestly don't know how long it's been. I don't go to school anymore - I tried for a while, but the desks were too small and my wings blocked the view of everyone behind me. Plus, with the reporters piling up outside and the 'Phage groupies trying to get near enough to me hoping that I'd sneeze on them and turn them into fairies, it was hard for any of the teachers to do their job. I got a letter from the ACLU; apparently they're trying to put together some sort of class action suit to get 'Phage transformees covered by some Disability Act, but I threw it away.
I don't mind, anyway. Reading hurts my eyes and gives me a headache. I'm not made to do this anymore. I can see when my neighbor across the street walks past her window behind the curtains, but focusing in close on something that doesn't move... after more than a few minutes, the strain makes my head throb and the words start to blur and spin. And besides, being inside for so many hours, with the walls pressing in against me and keeping the air so stagnant and still and the ceiling so low that I can feel it threatening over my head and barring the sky from me - after the third time I wound up in the nurse's office having a panic attack in Trigonometry class, I decided it wasn't worth fighting to keep going.
I remember I used to want to be a librarian. I keep telling myself that, trying to hold onto it in my head, before it vanishes in the swirls and eddies of the wind on my hair and under my wings and across my body.
My hair. I cut my hair. It used to be so long, and I was trying to grow it until it was below my waist, but it kept getting in the way in the air. The first time I tried to fly, it was a disaster. Blue jeans pulling and sagging and half pulled off by wind resistance, the ridiculous plaid shirt that my mom had cut wing-holes in torn down both side-seams the first time I actually put my new shoulder muscles to the test, and nearly garroted by my own braid. I tried and tried to figure out ways around it, but no matter what I couldn't make my hair cooperate. So I cut it all off.
I got rid of the jeans and the shirt, too. Stupid fabric, bunching and sagging and tangling, and worst of all getting between me and the currents that I needed to feel. Flying with clothes on is like going out on a lake in a canoe and calling it swimming. Every inch of my body is part of the flight, every motion steers me, and my skin is so awake for the first time in my life, that every touch of the wind against me is like a friend whispering secrets in my ear about the way the whole world works.
My mother cried when she saw me after that flight. I'm not sure why. More and more, I don't understand her. I don't understand any of them.
I think the problem is with my eyes, again. At least, I tell myself that. I look at all of them, stuck down here on the ground, and they just look... wrong. So short, and stubby, and thick, and slow. I try to show them things - the way one leaf dances out of rhythm with the rest of the tree when the air hits it just so, the way reflected sunlight highlights the underside of a wing when someone is circling above you.... I try to talk about how it feels to glide, to be embraced by the air and let it carry you... and they just look at me in that Very Confused And Understanding Way. They can't see, they can't feel, they can't know. Poor blind mice.
Where was I? I came home, hair and shirt and jeans gone, and my mother cried... was it because of my hair, or because I was away so long? I don't know, I can't remember. I know that I tried to listen, but after a few minutes all I heard were syllables, and not words, and I remember realizing that she wasn't my mother anymore. She was my incubator, my host - like a cuckoo's egg I was left in her nest until it was time for me to hatch, but now...
I am the daughter of the wind and the virus, of the earth and the hawk, and I am none of these things. I am not a person, not a 'Phage victim, not a chimera. I am something new.
And it is time for me to leave my nest, and find where I belong....
Are there more? Are they searching like me? I have to find them.
Confused? Look here, here, and here....