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The Secret of Flight

Short Story by Ginny Stoner | nworeporter.com

Images by Ginny Stoner | nworeporter.com

It started with a series of dreams.  Each one had a different cast and plot:  There was a party of Goth witches; there was a neighborhood soiree; there were skits filled with people I knew but had never met, and some I didn't recognize at all.  But all of the dreams had one thing in common:  I was learning how to fly.       

Yes, I had flown before, in many dreams over the years, fantastic and sometimes reckless soaring adventures.  But in those dreams, the flights just happened, and when it was over, I had no idea how I did it.

The new dreams were teaching me the secret of flight.  I observed, I experimented, and sometimes I got a few hints on how to do it, but mostly, I was just left on my own to figure it out.  

Eventually, I had a revelation: flying required a particular state of mind.  No magic spells, ceremonies, or mystical symbols of power could help me.  The only way to do it was to find that state of mind, and remember how to get there.     

I'm still learning.  Usually, I float more than fly, and I can't always stay in the air for long.  I suspect that perfection of the technique may take a lifetime.    

First, I focus on the conviction that it's possible to fly.  Some would call that a nonsensical leap of faith, but I have already flown many times before, so I know for a fact that it’s possible.

Then, I focus on the sensation of levitation and weightlessness.  After I've captured the sensation, I push my mind into it.  "Push" is not exactly the right word, but there is no word that exactly fits.  It’s like a push of the mind upward, and out into that state of weightlessness.

I know it's' a meager description, but it’s all I have so far.

~~~

Late one night, as I was standing on the front porch, smoking a cigarette, watching the moonless darkness, my dreamtime flight lessons came to mind.  It seemed like a good night for a waking test flight.  

I didn’t really expect anything to happen, but if it did, I was ready.  I stepped into the cockpit and hovered.  I still felt the weight of my body, and my feet on the ground, but I imagined I didn’t.  

After a few minutes, I saw a strange spinning ball of white light in the distance.  It moved toward me at great speed -- or I toward it, I'm not sure which -- until it was very close.  

It was spinning at hypersonic speed, but I could see its internal structure clearly, as if I were perceiving it outside of time.  It was a perfect circle of eight brilliant blue rods, tipped with red.  It radiated pure white light as it spun.

It seemed to fill my entire line of vision, but somehow I knew it was actually the size of an atom, or even smaller.  It was, without a doubt, the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. 

Awestruck, I watched it morph into a different and even more beautiful shape: two perfect circles of luminous pink filaments, spinning toward one another.  Perpetual motion came to mind -- I was convinced this structure possessed it.  My eyes locked on it, trying to commit every detail to memory. 

I strained to see all of its intricate workings.  I was stunned when it magnified the parts of itself I was focusing on, as if in response to my thoughts.  It was conscious.  It was reading my mind.  It was trying to help me understand it.     

It magnified its pink filaments thousands of times, revealing a structure like tree branches.  It showed me a close-up of the inner workings of the core -- it was dark space, surrounded by a single pink thread attached at various points.  Somehow, I knew the core of each circle contained the potential to create an exact replication of the whole. 

How did I know that?  Was I making it up, imagining it?  Was this entity somehow psychically explaining itself to me?       

I wanted to see it morph from one form to the other again -- it had happened too fast the first time.  It spun away, disappearing through the trees.  In a moment it came back in its first form, the circle of brilliant blue rods.  It hovered in front of me, as if to ask “ready?”, then morphed again, more slowly this time, into twin circles of spinning pink filament.

What was this strange entity that could read my mind?

Finally, I pulled myself out of my flight trance, drained from the intensity of it.  I wanted to draw it on paper, before I forgot all the details.  I knew I could never come closed to capturing the incredible beauty of this luminous entity.  The drawing you see here is, at best, a pathetic facsimile.

~~~

I don’t know where I traveled on that first waking flight, but I have gone back, several times.     

I have met other entities like the first one, each with its own unique beauty and design, all possessing the same inner luminosity, consciousness, and the ability to perceive and respond to my thoughts.

I wonder if anyone knows what these entities are, or where they come from.

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