Flying is for the birds!
That's what I thought, waking up in my dorm room two years ago, after the near-disaster of the party. And it had gone so well!
At first.
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Going to college was strange and exciting. Mom didn't want me to go; she didn't think I could handle it. But it's not like I didn't know what the outside world was like; we had the Internet at home, after all. She is perfectly happy living in our little valley and only going into town once a month, but I need more human contact. Much more.
I put all the paperwork together, and I got admitted to OSU. I had to take a bunch of tests since I was home-schooled, but Mom's an excellent teacher, and I had no trouble. So there I was: seventeen and out on my own for the very first time. I had made some friends. Not close friends, and absolutely no lovers. I've definitely learned from Mom's mistakes, even though I personally am one of them.
The drinking age is twenty-one, but students pretty much ignored that. And, on a beautiful Spring evening, a group of about thirty underage students decided to have a party by the lake. I went with them as a designated driver. I can't drink because of the risk that I might lose control.
We got out there, some kids built fires, and we all stood or sat around and talked and drank. With a new moon and not a cloud in the sky, it was very dark away from the fires, and couples were sneaking off into the surrounding woods.
I sneaked off down the road, past the woods, and into a field with the new grain just showing itself. Even without my wings, I have much better night vision and hearing than normal people, so after a careful look around, I was sure I was unobserved.
I called my wings.
My wings are glorious, beautiful. Their feathers are deep brown, barred with black and tipped with white. My wingspan is about twenty feet, which is impressive, but clearly not enough to support my weight. On the other hand, my wings come and go with my will, so they are not exactly bound by physics anyway. When my wings come, so do my enhanced night vision and hearing. I checked around again, listened to the lovebirds whispering back by the lake, and launched.
With a few wingbeats, I was up, far above the woods and the drunken students, up in the clear and beautiful air. If any of them did look up, all they might see was a few stars briefly occluded. They would have no idea what was happening.
I had not flown in six months, not since coming to college, and I revelled in the feeling, swooping and diving and twirling in sheer joy.
Until I heard the helicopter.
It was a long way off and no normal person would have seen or heard it. It took just seconds for me to recognize that it was coming my way; it was coming for me.
I power-dived to the field, straightening up just feet above the grain, and streaked for the trees. At the last moment, I flared my wings to kill my forward speed, dismissed them, and hit the ground running. My night vision lingers for a few minutes after I dismiss my wings, so I had no trouble racing through the moonless woods, leaping over downed trees and avoiding low branches. By the time the helicopter turned its searchlight on the field, I was back among the kids.
Everyone panicked. It made no sense that the police would send a helicopter to break up an underage beer bash, but that's what appeared to be happening, and everyone ran for the cars. Jacob, Michael, and Emily had come with me; they piled into my car along with Hannah, who had attached herself to Jacob during the party. Mine was not the first car to leave, nor the second, but it was the third. I thought that put me far enough back that I didn't appear to have superior knowledge, but also that we were unlikely to be caught.
I told the other four to duck down out of sight (Hannah and Jacob enthusiastically complied), and I drove exactly one mile below the speed limit, all the way back to the dorms. Half a dozen official-looking cars passed us, but no one stopped us and we made it back safely. We learned the next day that the last few students had been stopped and questioned about a large drone, but no one was arrested, and we were all very sober the next morning.
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Flying is for the birds!
I understood what had happened, of course. The entire nation is crisscrossed with radar, especially out here in the plains and the low rolling hills, and my flight must have shown up on every radar for fifty miles. I had just thought that a big “drone”, many miles from any airport, would be disregarded. More fool I!
I could just stick to the ground, but that was a terrible prospect. Just six months without flying had made me so desperate to fly that I'd become careless. I knew I couldn't go forever on the ground. Of course, I could go home to Mom, but that was an absolute last resort.
Don't get me wrong; Mom's cool. Imagine the average mother seeing her baby girl suddenly sprout wings and try to fly away. I think she'd hesitate too long, thinking she'd lost her mind. Not my mom. She grabbed me by the ankle, hauled me down, folded my wings for me, and carried me inside. (Not that I remember any of this, but she's told me often enough.)
And if the average mother had managed to catch the kid and take her inside, she'd think she'd lost her mind again when the wings just vanished. Not my mom. She experimented, carrying me in and out (keeping a tight grip all the while), and soon concluded that my wings only appeared outside at night. She modified a dog harness to keep me from flying off, and informed the trustees that she needed a nice isolated property somewhere.
It's nice being a trust-fund baby.
The trustees found this house in a deep wooded valley with only one road in and out, and pretty soon there we were. Keeping her baby girl leashed any time we went outside, she encouraged me to learn to summon the wings and dismiss them at will. By the time I had control of them (I was about five), we could have moved back to town, but she'd discovered that she loved the isolation for her own sake. We stayed. And I flew within the valley, staying below the lines of the hills to avoid being seen. It didn't occur to me -- then -- that I was also staying below the radar.
For lack of a better idea, I stayed at the college and kept going to class. All the classes were pretty easy (Mom is an excellent teacher), but the only one I was interested in was the one on cryptids. My father must have been a cryptid, after all. Mom had an affair with him in college, and somehow the birth control failed and here I am. By the time she realized she was pregnant, it was summer, and he'd graduated and disappeared. Even the private investigators couldn't find him.
Maybe he literally disappeared. I can't, though. I've tried.
There were no reports of cryptids like him. Or like me.
Summer came, and I went home to Mom. Glorious freedom to fly! After a month, though, I was lonely. It doesn't bother her to be out there by herself, but I just can't stand it.
We sat down to look for some place where I could stay under the radar and still be around people.
And that's how I came to working here, at the Palo Duro Restaurant. I'm a good waitress, and the patrons love me. The cryptid-chasers especially love me, because when I'm off duty I'll sit with them and talk about cryptids. (That class comes in very handy.) They always ask me about rumors of the Great Owl of Palo Duro canyon, and I always tell them that, sadly, I've never seen it. I'll spend hours with them going over maps of the canyon as they decide where and when to watch for it.
For all their fancy gear, they've never managed to spot the Great Owl.
