Chapter Text
For several long, agonizing minutes, David watched the Terryan fly into the night air. Though her newly sprouted wings resembled those of a dragonfly, her snake-like body and feline face were not unlike some depictions of a tatzelwurm. Her serpentine form seemed to wrap around the auroras before fading into them completely. Those striking eyes bore into his soul long after she was gone, and her voice still echoed around his mind:
"You can live or you can fly. It's all up to you."
The first winds of autumn blew past the cliff side, chilling his face and ears. So many beautiful colors shifted and bloomed about the sky, vibrant greens and yellows laced with strains of blue and magenta. Such wonderful colors he'd always dreamed of but had never known. He stopped reaching toward them. There was only one way he could experience them now.
David staggered forward and spread his arms, closing his eyes to let the wind blow his coily hair back and forth. This close to the edge, one determined breeze could send him falling over. But he need only keep the neon rose in his breast pocket from flying away. Of all the things he was about to leave behind, he wanted to keep that with him.
He breathed in a long sigh of contentment and relief before lighting one last cigarette. Blowing out a puff of smoke, he tapped the cigarette, letting the ashes fall over the cliff. Then David Adams fell in after them.
The only problem was that he didn't stop falling. Shouldn't he have hit the ground by now? For that matter, shouldn't he be feeling the fall itself? A sickening nausea, or the sensation of the world passing him by? And, most importantly, since when was there water at the bottom of Warner's Peak?!
Before he could process where the water had come from or why it was glowing, he fell through it and into a completely different world. Although he kept descending, his body now felt weightless, and colors surrounded him unlike anything he'd seen before. He could barely absorb what was going on around him, but his brain could at least perceive the colors waving and flickering like candlelight.
The auroras paled in comparison to this sight. Floating shadows of black, blazing infernos of red and orange, glowing mandalas of violet, and soaring wings of beautiful byzantine blue spiraled around his vision. Although this world felt infinitely more vast and impossible than the sky he'd just fallen through, those colors he longed for somehow felt closer than ever before, like he could just reach out his hand and grab them.
David did just that. And instead of escaping his grasp, they reached back to him. He took them into his hand and clutched them against his heart until they shone throughout his entire body. The blinding light burned into his back then spread out across his sides, and he opened his eyes to find he had a pair of wings! Wings formed by flames blazing with every color of the rainbow he knew, something so familiar yet no less breathtaking.
At some point during his fall, he realized he wasn't falling at all: he was flying! Somehow the world had tilted around him, or maybe he tilted it. But now he was soaring through it, his wispy wings carrying him through the haze and fog. Though he couldn't tell if the fog was around him or in his head. He thought maybe he'd ingested a really insane dose, but he'd never had trips this extravagant, nor could he remember taking something before this.
Then again, he couldn't really remember anything from before this, whatever "this" was.
Whatever "before" was.
Stars twinkled in and out of existence, and getting close to one he could see they were made up of glowing blue threads. Every now and then they shot sparking rays across the sky, and he pushed his hand through one as he flew beside it. This made it emit a blurry image of a woman and a small boy floating in space. The ray dissipated entirely, so David flew over to try out another one. This time the image was of a man running after a monster. The next ray showed a woman wielding a spear riding a dragon. David flew upwards to follow the last ray in this field of stars, the waves coming off his hand revealing a man in glasses wielding a rapier.
The ray faded just like the others, and there were no more of those strange stars in front of him. He tried to twist back around to get one last glimpse of them but ended up losing his momentum and plummeting. Tumbling and turning through the air, he managed to flap his wings and get himself airborne again. It was okay; he could worry about those interesting people later. The environment ahead was still entirely new, and he had all the time in the world to explore it.
David flapped his wonderful wings and shot forward like a bullet. Time to see what these bad boys could do!
A flock of Terryans flew about 5th Level Metaspace, gazing in awe at the many colorful and dream-like wonders that passed them by. Normally their kind would stick to the 3rd and 4th Levels during their flight, but Aurora longed for something more vibrant and alive. Considering how easy it was to find a flock and join them, it seemed she wasn't the only one. Still, she couldn't take her mind off that human she met at Warner's Peak, the one who yearned for the same colors she did, and yet would never know them.
He had stumbled about in exhaustion like a man at the end of his rope, desperate for her to tell him what would be waiting on the other side and if it would be worth it. She couldn't answer that. She certainly had no right to tell him that what he sought for wasn't possible. That humans can't fly; at least, not in a way that matters.
Aurora looked back at her wings, opalescent and shimmering. Even though time and events seemed to wrap and cascade around each other like a fluid here, she could sense she was almost at the end of her flight. Falling in 5th Level space would certainly be interesting. Maybe she wouldn't die at all, or maybe it'd be worse than death. But in her mind it was worth it.
A figure came into view in the corner of her eye. Odd creatures would commonly be seen soaring and floating through this Level, some wondrous, some disturbing, most near-incomprehensible. But this one was odd in its normalcy, a simple humanoid silhouette with wings, not unlike depictions of angels in Renaissance art. Her flock paid no mind as she flew away to get a closer look, and she gasped at what she saw.
The human from the cliff side noticed her too, his look of surprise quickly replaced by joy. He waved at her, though he lost balance as he did, and had to regain his flying motion after falling a few feet.
And the thing that was keeping him afloat?
Flames. Rainbow flames that glimmered and gleamed even more brilliant than the auroras back on Earth, taking on just vague enough wing shapes that pushing himself through Metaspace was a piece of cake.
Aurora could hardly believe this was the same human she'd met at that cliff. This one was floating in dreams of unbridled ecstasy, bursting with life and color and joy that almost erased every shred of the tears and desperation she'd seen back there. She smiled back at him, overjoyed that he could finally experience what her people could, welcoming the uncertainty of what it meant for a human to do this and the endless possibilities that came with it. He was so young and new in his flight, and since she was coming to the end of hers, she was delighted to teach him a few tricks she'd picked up before she would fall.
Their wings were vastly different but still functioned similarly enough for them to exchange techniques. Such as the way she would use the tips of her wings to aim while steering, and the way she would move her front legs separately from her shoulder blades to remind herself to stay balanced when having to move her limbs. In no time at all, he was able to spin through the air in any direction and keep his balance. Aurora eventually found some solid, red structures that overlapped and intertwined like spider webs, where David could practice taking off, landing, and jumping. He wasted no time in running up and down the structures at 90 degree angles, jumping from platform to platform, and even falling towards one at high speed and swooping back up through the air at the very last second he would've hit it.
After some time of treating the webs like their own personal playground, they flew away and up into the air as fast as they could. They passed through storms of consciousness and nebulae of emotions, leaving trails of smoke and stardust behind them as they spun around each other in their airborne dance of reckless abandon. For just this moment of time, in this little pocket of sublimity, the colors Aurora and David had longed for their whole lives finally belonged to them.
But she knew one day they'd have to let go and fall. Or, at least, she did. Maybe David never had to come down, and maybe that was enough for her.
Aurora smiled softly as she watched David in his fit of exhilarated laughter, content as her wings dissipated into gleams of light and her body dropped. The last thing she saw before she closed her eyes was the obsidian black thundercloud she plummeted towards. David's cries fell on deaf ears. She had been prepared for this moment since her birth, and now she only hoped he wouldn't shed any tears for her.
But the death she'd risked and accepted never came. In the darkness, David's arms and wings wrapped around her, shielding her from the storm. They fell through the other side, and as soon as he reoriented himself he shot back up into the sky, all the while cradling her like a child.
Aurora looked up at him, at his eyes that held all the sadness, pity, and concern anyone has ever had for her. She tilted her head, unsure what to do, as she'd spent so long anticipating the fall that she'd never thought about whether or not she actually wanted to live after the flight.
After a long, silent pause, Aurora smiled and nuzzled David's neck, leaning into his warm hands as he pet her fur.