Sky High

"For once man has tasted flight he will forever walk the earth with eyes turned skywards. For there he has been and there he longs to return."
-Leonardo Da Vinci

He wasn't expecting a package, but he wasn't too shocked when he got it, either. He spent a good five minutes just petting the black delivery kitten; she did not seem like a normal kitten to him, but she likewise didn't seem to mind the attention. Plus, he liked cats. Far more than he would typically admit to, though his sappiness by now was likely part of the collective consciousness.

When the kitten scampered off, he opened the package and sat on the concrete base the lighthouse was on, in the sunlight, to see what it was all about.

The aeroplane, just from the blueprint, looked amazing. He had a good mechanical eye; mostly from a life at sea, but also partly from having to improvise so much in Rhy'Din. But even the simple blueprint looked like a heck of a feat -- not because of each mechanical task, but because he had a feeling that there was a lot more that went into flying without natural wings.

Harold sat with it on his lap, and looked up at the sky.

The weather was steadily turning cooler, though some of the days were still warm. Nights were very cool, though, and he knew that he couldn't keep living in a lighthouse until winter set in -- he'd end up sick or worse if he tried. But he still had a little time before he had to start making the hard choices, and so he thought about flying.

He had no desire to fly himself. He found water to be a much more understandable element. But he could imagine the appeal.

Harold looked at the sky, and watched a seagull, alone in the blue on blue expanses. It floated up, catching drafts of air; he thought for a moment about Cinder's aeroplane. Thought for a moment about wings, and the movement of air over them, and how the bird could fly... even about how a machine could fly. He certainly knew it was possible, but he had never really tried to understand how it was.

He would have to go to the library later and see what he could find out about the craft. He had a feeling, though, that he would have to find help for this project -- it was one thing to work on things that would be on the sea or ground, but something else to try to fix something that would be in the sky.

He thought about the aeroplane, and thought about Maia as well, and how it felt to laugh. To really laugh. It had been a long time. Three sailors and two shrinks, singing bawdy shanties and dancing by a fire -- he felt, when it was all over, that she didn't often get to enjoy such things.

She spoke of tears in the world and dark things, and Harold knew inside himself somewhere deep that Maia had spent too much time looking at tears and dark things -- that she had spent too much time staring into places that no human should have to, and it made him sad in a way. God only knew that he had seen and even felt or done terrible things, and God only knew that life had overwhelmed him horribly once, but looking at her made him appreciate that he had not spent so much time looking into the very heart of darkness that he could not find some way back.

He wondered, sitting stone still and watching a bird floating, dipping, flying up again, if she could find a way. If he could help her find a way back, to some place where she wasn't always looking into dark places.

That maybe if she could find enough hope, wherever she had to, that she would be able to spend the rest of her years a happy sailor, loved at home, respected at sea, until her time was done.

Maybe he could find the same.

He thought of Cinder and Sarah; Cinder, who had said he ached for his home. Sarah, who he was certain had known few places she could call that. He wondered if they could make a home in each other, maybe learn to fly together, regardless of whether the wings were made of metal or flesh and bone.

So, he thought of the sea and the sky.

Of himself and Maia, and the salt and the sunlight and the canvas. Of Sarah and Cinder, and the clouds and the sunlight and the air.

He thought of home.

And finally, inevitably, he thought of the wind.