I was twelve when I first saw the lady in white fly. Oh how so graceful she looked up there in the sky. I just waited there, watching her wings shine in the moonlight. Oh so pretty was she the lady in white.
“Please come down, I’d like to talk.” I said loudly, in case she couldn’t hear me from up there in the clouds.
“Why don’t you come on up and join me” she sang back. Oh how so pretty was the sound of her voice. Only tulip petals falling in the water could have made such simple noise.
“I can’t; I’ve always been so terrified of heights.” That was the simple truth. Much higher the fall might be from such a lovely place as the sky.
“Why so?” She asked gently.
“Because I don’t have wings” and it was the truth. How was I supposed to fly without them?
“You don’t need wings to fly” she said simply.
Oh such a liar she was the lady in white. She was pretty indeed, but that didn’t make it right.
“Then why do you have them?” Here. That should make her stop saying such nonsense about humans who could fly without wings. It was like saying you could walk without legs or love without a heart.
“Because I earned them” she swung her wings around and jumped through the sky. I watched her twirl and twirl until I got dizzy. Oh how so graceful was she, the lady in white.
“How did you do such thing?” I knew it was impossible… My mother had said so when I’d once tried to jump from my bedroom window and fly. “Elizabeth; humans cannot fly. We eat and walk and talk but we’ll never have our place up in the sky”
“I told myself I could fly; and then I did…” Then, just as suddenly as she’d appeared, she disappeared. Through the sparkly night; there weren’t any wings or any lady in sight.
Oh such a liar was she, the lady in white.
I knew she’d come back one day, she couldn’t stay away for long. Although the sky was indeed a beautiful place, it was no place to stay forever. So I kept roaming around the streets, giving and taking misery from those around me. Maybe that was how the lady in white had earned her wings. Maybe being human was how I would earn mine.
But even so, what would I do up there in the sky? Oh never would I be as graceful as the lady in white.
Then one day, as I was crying alone near the river where the fish come up and kiss the water; I heard a terrible sound. Right I’d been all along; the fall from the sky was enough to break off your wings.
And her wings the lady in white had lost when she’d fallen.
She started crying, and there was nothing I could do. Angels and humans were not from the same world.
“Please don’t cry” was all I said, because it was all I could think to say.
But oh so softly did she continue on weeping the woman in white.
There in her hands, lay the broken wings. The ones who moments ago, had made her fly.
Oh so pretty was she when she cried the woman in white.
“Why don’t you fly back up?” I asked.
“Because I have no wings” she murmured. Her voice had changed and the air smelled of defeat instead of rose buds. Hope, that was what rose buds smelled like.
“You don’t need wings to fly” I said simply. Because if the woman in white had been lying that day, it still was the prettiest lie I’d ever wanted to believe.
She didn’t say anything, she just stayed there. Was she now glued to earth my lady in white?
And I started crying then, crying for the wings we’d both never have. And as my tears hit the floor, feathers they became. And from those feathers, two sets of wings were born.
I stopped crying, and so did the lady in white. She smiled up at me and music came out of her mouth: “Now I think you’ve earned you own pair…”
She took my hand and flapped her wings. I had no choice but to follow the path the flowers had drawn through the clouds.
And up in the sky I found my place, following the lady in white’s pace. Oh how so pretty a place was the sky and how so brightly the stars shined at night.
Oh how so lucky was I to be up there, dancing with the lady in white.