Archive of Our Own

Liberating are the heavens.

And after all, why shouldn’t they be? For what, pray tell, is more freeing than the winds themselves. Vaulted ceilings of changing skies and constellations would live eternal as Alfred’s chapel, his choir the billowing gusts through leaves, his bell the pealing thunder of a spring storm, the very stars mere embellishments upon the walls. Untethered like a wisp of cirrus on a blue morning was where he aspired to be.

Dressed in his darkest clothes Alfred pressed against the wooden slats of the town’s houses. He ducked his head to keep his unnatural eyeshine out of sight from the night watch as one of them drew close, orange lanternlight bobbing steadily. The young boy tried to walk on his toes lest the clack of heel on stone gave him away. Alfred was determined to make it to the crest of hills outside the quiet town, far from tavern voices and revealing light. Releasing a breath he hadn’t realized he’d held; Alfred sprinted the moment the watchman disappeared around a street corner. Quicker he had always run when there was no sun, no eye of any divine to watch him. Further he ran from the warm lights of home and into the velvet embrace of night. Chilling breeze licked at the boy’s heels and appeared to propel him. He only stopped once he surmounted a grassy knoll, immediately letting himself fall back into the prickly green carpet below. Wide oceans met the dense ether above and Alfred smiled to himself. Pictures played out in the silver inkblots above better than any manuscript or chart could hope to achieve. Here he would stay until God’s judging rays turned that sacred blue into gray.

Empires rise and fall, such is the cycle of those fiercely burning suns as the Earth turns so. Humans come and go; such is the view of a creature often untouched by time. How quickly Alfred had tried to move from the shadow of those before him and form an empire of his own. Where better to start than his own open plains, he had decided among the voices of others. Young and boundless energy flowed just as waves of green prairie and amber wheat lulled like rhythmic seas. Glorious loneliness in the face of discovery. Glorious kinship in his only friend upon the ceaseless landscape. Free of eyes and voices altogether as he made rapid progress.

A horse was all Alfred needed. There was no rush here. Freely he flitted from frontier town to rolling hilltops upon wishful wings of his own feather and four sturdy legs of companionship. He would scale the cliffs and bathe in the creeks if he so pleased. Several times a day he would check the position of the sun as it manipulated his cool shadow. Only the sun had such a privilege. Cotton clouds streaked the safe blanket above his head and the boy, now barely a man, pressed onward. How Alfred had scoffed when last he’d talked with his brother. Mathieu was still under their father’s thumb. Alfred had begged – rather, demanded – that Mathieu come with him and escape since he was so seemingly bent against joining his brother in excellent independence. His brother had refused. No one ever gave Mathieu credit for being stubborn when it suited him. Well, it was Mathieu’s loss, Alfred thought as he watched the heavens morph in real-time. Dusty hills covered in scrub broke the horizon, framing a lone mesquite tree in relief upon a backdrop of soft lavender and orange sky. Pink limned long clouds, outstretched fingers over the landscape. The only hand Alfred cared to hold. The first glimmers of early evening stars were the only audience the rowdy teen cared to entertain, for the moon was gone, and would be for two days. Whooping and spurring his horse into motion down across the sparse scrub, Alfred performed for the theater above him without reservation.

Flight, oh, wondrous flight. To leave the ground and soar. Had Alfred not dreamt of flight since childhood? Hours he had spent observing birds in their twists and spirals, butterflies in graceful meandering, and the sharp snaps of the rare bat to his home. Imagining the world buoyed up by wings of his own fed him like no other. If Icarus had flown too close to the sun, well, Alfred would show him how it should be done. To float, to fly, to fall. And how reluctantly would Alfred remember the three words Arthur had impressed upon him for years: onward, ever upward. He would show them and make those words his. Onward, ever upward. That was how it had been. That was how it must be.

Alfred’s lungs stung with cold air. He would not trade this feeling for all the warmest summers his home had to offer. The muffled sound of the engine in front of him, the whirring of a propeller, the glare of bright light against his canopy. Music, sweet music. Loosing a laugh of pure joy into the tight space he only pushed his aircraft further, harder, higher. Resistance came as the plane could no longer climb, a weightless sensation stalling Alfred in the endless stratosphere. He tipped the control stick and hung there, waiting for gravity to enact her oppressive law upon his being. Like clockwork she came for them both and Alfred kicked his aircraft into a controlled spiral. White light flared off his wings as he spun back toward Earth. Slowly the duo turned their noses down. Gloved hands perilously left the joystick to pet the marvel of engineering that the young man controlled. His protective glasses swirled with ribbons of blue and white, pure as a spring and real as his own flesh. This was where he belonged. Alfred’s heart shrieked, racing as he regained control of his trajectory and watched the solid ground speed toward him. Pulling hard on the stick, he once again felt a moment of weightless bliss when the plane around him strained against momentum and pitched skyward once more. Though his energy was stretched, he brought his steadfast steed into a wide barrel roll before straightening out low. Euphoria bloomed through the young man’s body and only then did he perceive the harsh reprimand coming through his radio. Alfred didn’t care, he only wanted more.

Humanity soon sought ever higher reaches and Alfred lived for it. No longer could mere flight satisfy the curiosity of hundreds, thousands, millions. Longing for the celestial had never left any of them. How often Alfred had seen stories of the sidereal, the yearning for things beyond reach. That yearning was one of his own. Onward, ever upward, past the clouds, the atmosphere, and even the Earth herself. Curiosity drove him like incessant spirits. What more was out there? And who could stop him if he tried to jump for it? Why wouldn’t anyone want to see it?

Tears had welled in the man’s eyes the first time he saw the Earth from three hundred kilometers up. Alfred would never admit it, but he had cried at seeing their patchwork marble from so far away and looking so uncharacteristically peaceful. That NASA had selected him for the astronaut candidate program was already a miracle for him. The fact that he had passed to be allowed onboard Columbia for this mission, STS-55 or D-2, was downright mystical. Seven other crew members sat aboard the Space Shuttle, two of them German astronauts from the ESA. Alfred’s seat was mid-deck beside them. Their goal was to reach Spacelab for experiments and – what Alfred was even more excited for – the testing of the SAREX II radio system. Average civilians would be allowed to speak to them from miles away as they touched the stars. Experiments were cool and all – and the American was riding high on the thrill of anticipation and discovery, there was no mistake of that – but knowing that he could speak to someone from the edge of the vast universe might just cause him to burst. Truly weightless, what a feeling! Seeing a storm swirl above the Earth with such a view compared to nothing else. Coming back to land had saddened Alfred more than he wanted to let show. The things he would do to go back again.

Liberating are the heavens. Alfred had experienced them firsthand. And why shouldn’t they be? Being alone in the sky was more freeing than anything he’d felt before. The space to be himself without thought, to become lost in too much thought, and the space to simply see unbidden, with no judgment or nattering voices that weren’t his own. He had run past the winds, flown higher than the thunder, and seen the stars with his own eyes. Justified was he in believing in their unchained opportunity. And dare he would fly ever higher.