Free Wings of Creation by Brenda Cooper Page A

side by side on the bench in the circle of fliers. We were both visible, but who would see us in the midst of so much beauty? She slapped me lightly on the arm. “Alicia. Close your mouth or a bug will land in it.”
    I did, but I couldn’t stop watching. The last few fliers who had participated directly in the ceremony rose smoothly from their perches, wings rustling the cooling air. A man with blue wings landed on the grass near us, leaning forward so as to keep the tips of his wings off the ground. A slender pink-winged woman landed on a stone, standing comfortably, talking to a few of the people with no wings. She belonged in a painting or an animation instead of in the real world, and I wanted to touch her to see if she was real. Three others flew away entirely, fast. After all of the perches were clear, I stood and stretched, finally, belatedly, looking for Joseph. I saw his back as he and Marcus walked away, lost in conversation.
    He should have looked for me first. At least to say he had to ignore me for a while longer. There should have been infinite time to be together on space ships, but there hadn’t been. Not once Marcus found us. Some of the joy I’d taken in seeing the fliers leaked out as he walked away.
    “Shake it off,” Induan said. “He has duties. You and me, we’re closer to nobody. That means we’re free to explore.”
    “Yeah.” It’d be nice if she were wrong once in a while. Not that it hurt to have her on my side. She’d told me to dress even more outrageouslythan Marcus had suggested, and she’d done the same. She wore white leggings and a white lacy blouse with long, belled sleeves, everything so stark her white skin looked almost normal. She and her outfit took on a bit of a glow in the fading light. We’d both belted on boosters for our invisibility mods, to help them work with our clothes.
    She did not seem as beauty-bit as I felt, so I asked her, “Aren’t they the prettiest people?” I remembered how awkward the first real fliers I saw looked, waddling through the full gravity of Silver’s Home, pain lining their faces. “I mean here, where they belong.”
    Induan’s laugh came out kind. “You’ve got Space Ship Shock.”
    “Huh?”
    “You know. When you’ve been locked up in a big tin can for years and you finally get onto a planet and everything looks big and beautiful?”
    But it was. “Did you feel like that when you got to Fremont?”
    “Until I realized everything had sharp edges.”
    It was my turn to laugh. “That should have taken five minutes.”
    “Two.”
    I looked around. The ground was rolling grass, nano-bot–trimmed like in the parks on Silver’s Home. Purple and yellow flowers held their petals open to catch the last rays of sun, and beside them, a line of white flowers had already closed for the night. Hills rolled away in all directions. We were high enough up to see the humped bellies of the closest ones, all dotted with people and fliers and gardens. “I don’t see edges here. The fliers are beautiful.”
    Induan smiled faintly, then nodded, both unconvincing. “Fliers make strange allies. They’re unpredictable in interworld politics.”
    I shrugged. “Can you blame them? They can’t even walk on some of the worlds.”
    “Don’t underestimate them.”
    Oh no. They must be powerful. But more than power, they had grace. Calm. The first one I’d seen had been a statue, and no dead thing had ever exuded so much calm and peace coupled with action and movement. And here? Live? They were more beautiful than the artist had made the statue. I wanted to be one.
    We snacked on a few of the richly scented grapes that explodedsugar into our mouths. No one bothered us, although from time to time I caught a flier or a wingless looking at us out of the corner of their eye, or offering a small smile. It felt weird to be watched. “Let’s take a walk. See what they’re like in the wild.”
    She understood my unspoken meaning.
    We found a bathroom