[.I dreamed of falling and somewhere between fear and faith, I grew wings.]

.

 

She had stood at the edge for as long as she could remember.

 

Not the edge of a cliff exactly, though it looked like one in her dreams. No, this was subtler. The edge of change. Of truth. Of everything she thought she was, and everything she might become.

 

Every night, the wind whispered jump, and every night, her feet curled tighter into the stone. She wasn’t afraid of dying. She was afraid of not becoming anything at all.

 

“I dreamed of falling,” she whispered to no one.

 

One night, the edge crumbled beneath her before she could decide.

 

She fell...

 

It wasn’t graceful. It wasn’t quiet. She screamed. She clawed at the sky, at the emptiness, at the fading shape of who she used to be.

 

And then something strange happened.

 

In the freefall, her heart,split between terror and trust, opened. Not like a wound. Like a pair of wings.

 

They weren’t made of feathers. They were made of all the moments she’d survived. All the times she’d almost given up but didn’t. They were stitched together from her softest dreams and her sharpest scars.

 

And before she could doubt it ....She flew.

 

Not upwards. Not away. But forward. Toward the horizon that had always been calling her.

 

Later, people would ask her how she did it. How she found the courage.

 

She’d just smile and say, “I dreamed of falling and somewhere between fear and faith, I grew wings."

 

.

 

Done