Sirin Dream
The crosswind quietens and the cumulonimbus clouds beneath seem to cradle the huge aircraft, diminished by their fluffy mass. It is like a child in their embrace…
And so is the man under her spell. Yes, his eyes are open and focused on the instrument panel. His pupils follow the altimeter and the gyroscopic pitch bank. This metal bird with everyone on its board is safe in his hands.
As long as she doesn’t make a mistake.
And she almost wants to. It is like an instinct – an obsession. As if those who have clipped her own wings have put a programme in her brain – to devoid this world of anyone and anything winged.
Her fingers trace down the back of his head with cropped hair, which feel almost like stubble under her skin. They slide further down, between the shoulder blades and then to the right and to the left, following the sweep of the planforms. His wings are detached, cumbersome slabs of metal, which belong to the beast of the airplane, and yet they are part of him. So elegantly integrated that she can understand the envy and the fear of those who have mutilated her.
An insatiable hunger gnaws at her stomach, radiates from the solar plexus and flares in her chest, making her arms almost numb with pain. She could snap his neck with no difficulty. It would end this torture – for both of them.
Instead Sirinea bits into her lower lip and calls onto the remnants of her concentration. At ragged breaths, under the accompaniment of her syncopated heartbeat she presses the inside of her wrist against the nape of his neck. Her wronged feathers must be tickling his skull.
The dream that she streams into him is pushy like the tailwind that is raising behind them. But at this altitude it will only bring them to their destination faster so she should worry solely about making the vision short enough to fit into the time slot.
So she cuts out and swallows herself the bitterest parts of the future which is to come. She keeps to herself the putrid bogs, which are in fact the vats of half-decomposed, liquified corpses. You can still notice an undissolved piece of body if you stare long enough. She only lets him glimpse the grotesque pillars that have once been buildings, all melted together and some – turned into the colossal statues of the invaders.
She hopes to fast forward the next bit – where he is to stand at the edge of a former airfield, with its runaways hidden under the layer of nucleosmic dust and fuselage skeletons piled further up this cemetery. There are trapped pilots – like him – mummifyed by now among the metal remains. Those who refused to surrender, to let go of the skies. And who paid for the right to be who they are. Just like her. For the Angealiens never stop and never forgive. They will never share the heaven with them – humans or magic folk.
Sirinea tastes blood in her mouth – heavy and sour, poisoned by the infection in her clipped wings, the rot the Angealiens have set in them. It is similar to the rust that will be devouring the aircraft wings in the future. When the Creatures of the Other Plane get down to it. So far, their minds have been preoccupied with other things. So far, they have been making puppets out of the beings like herself – those who fly with magic and as such are more dangerous to them. She restrains a cry which is building up inside her. How much she wants to fight them!
The dream she is pouring into the pilot goes out of control – the scenes jumble and jump in time, but they are all so horrendous that it does not matter. No sane mind would want to see logic in them even as they go in order. She senses him shiver under her palm that cradles his skull. But his lips are pursed – he is stronger than many she has dealt with earlier. He is not going to surrender to existential fear, which eventually leads to madness.
By now she sees both for him and for herself. The apocalyptic future is mingling with her memories.
“The skies are ours”, they were whispering into her ear as agony rushed up her every nerve while their thin blades with intricate plaited handles split her feathers, severed some tendons. It should not have been so painful, but it was more than just cutting into her flesh – it was tempering with her very nature. They were killing the bird in her, her free spirit. The virus of their Essence was penetrating her.
With an effort Sirinea blocks the destructive memory and focuses on the present. It takes all her energy to cut and shorten the vision that is streaming into the pilot.
Suddenly she is rewarded by this effort – wheree a moment ago they were watching the threat of the Angealiens, now she can see a steady glow of the pilot’s mind. There is too much going on in her own thoughts, so she is unable to read it properly. But there is something serene in it – some sort of confidence she cannot find the source of.
It seeps into her, changing the pictures in her head. There is still the devastation the Angealiens are going to bring to them – bursting concrete and cities set on fire. But on the edge of this field, the pilot is standing by her side, fighting the war with her on the front line, giving her even more reasons to resist. Giving her hope that her wings can grow back.
Sirinea carefully pulls her wrist away from his head; the rot in her insists on showing the dream to him to the end. She’d love to jerk aside, severe the connection clean, but it can put the pilot into a shock, and she needs him for more than just landing this aircraft safely. She has thought her bird gift – her Sirin gift – has gone for good. And yet she is still capable to see a different future for them. She leans forward, looking him into the face, memorising his features – the round cheeks and the fleshy nose, the clear grey-blue eyes and the tiny scar above brows.
While she still can, she uses her magic and transfers herself to the aircraft’s roof. The freezing air and the wind hit her, pull at the remaining feathers yet simultaneously fill her with the long forgotten feeling of weightlessness. She’s been weakened in those month of serving the Angealiens. But now she is truly ready to fight. She holds on, helping the pilot to navigate while he is slightly confused after the dream. She owes him that. His name she has glimpsed on the badge before disappearing flashes in her mind – Borislav. She has to remember it. She will have to find him after the torture the Angealiens put her through comes to an end. She needs a mnemonic rule to remember it.
As her mind drifts away succumbing to the rot, she feels the plane steadying and starting its decent. She allows the puppeteers to take her away, repeating time and again – fight and fame, fight and fame, fight and fa….
Until they meet again on the battle field.
Written by Nadya Mercik
More:
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Ye and I…
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Phantom Heist
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Switch
From my vantage point I look for any moving shadows, but they are always twigs or bushes, not even a stray cat. When I hear a rustling, I turn one-hundred-eighty degrees, but it’s just a chocolate wrapper carried around by the ecstatic wind, which seems to enjoy the empty streets. I wait and keep looking. They must be somewhere.
#FFA500
Their skin was a terrible orange colour. Still. If they could, they would peel it off and dump into the nearest trash bin.
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