Landed Wings - By Skylhur Tranqille Page 0,13

to know me? I don’t know maybe, he’s got me mistaken for someone else.”

“What are you going to do Ash? Are you going to go ask your mom what he’s talking about? I thought your mom did some kind of record-keeping. Why would she be able to answer your questions? I don’t even see how you could ask her anyway, you would have to tell her you flew LandBound and you would be in trouble with her and Sky Patrol.”

“I know. I don’t know what to do. I don’t understand what’s

going on, Ivory. I’ve got this feeling in the pit of my stomach. I don’t know why any of this matters but I feel like it does. I’m in the middle of something and I don’t know what it is. I don’t even know why I just had to go LandBound. If I had just listened to you guys, I wouldn’t… Ive, I’m scared.”

Ivory looks worried and she’s probably right to be worried. This is serious. No one, no one was supposed to, no one was allowed to have wings down there. It’s forbidden. If you have wings, you live in the sky. If you don’t, you live on the ground. That’s it, no exceptions. So what is a SkyBound doing living down there?

I had to go home and as expected, my mom asked me where I had been. The conversation didn’t go well and when I say asked, I really mean yelled. I had stayed on the bench and hadn’t gone home – I knew it was a mistake, but I couldn’t go home and face her.

“Where were you, Ash?!?! You know that you aren’t supposed to leave the house before I wake up! How did you disable the alarm! What were you thinking!?”

“Mother. I’m seventeen and I have my solo license, which means I can leave whenever I want, which means I don’t have to wait for you to wake up anymore. And I’m not going to. You sleep for too long and you might want to talk to dad about the alarm.”

She was shocked. But it was weird, underneath the shock was calm, cold, hard anger. For a second, I wondered if I had gone too far.

“You… can….leave…. whenever… you …want?! Are you

crazy? Who pays for your meals, a place to stay, to groom for hours in the morning? I do. You don’t know how to earn your keep and until you can support yourself, in your own place, you will leave when I allow you to leave. While you are in this house, you will watch your tone, speak to me with respect and follow my rules. Is that clear? ”

I could feel the rage building up - it almost blinded me.

“No, it’s not clear. What are you going to do if I don’t fall into line – follow your rules? Are you going to pull my feathers out? Are you going to pull my wings back? I’m not a little kid anymore -you’ve run out of punishments mother.”

She pulls back in shock.

“You like to pretend it was discipline but you and I both know it was abuse. How could you think hurting a little kid like that was right? You would always say you were doing it for me, but that’s not really true, is it? You really did it for yourself. What did you get out of it – torturing me like that? Do I have it wrong mother? Do I? Wasn’t it your face I was looking up at while you strapped me to a chair and methodically pulled the feathers out of my most sensitive spots. You probably figured I would forget – I was too smart for you even then, I heard you tell the people in the white coats that the memory pills would make me forget – you remember don’t you? The ones you would tell me were vitamins. Well, I didn’t take them because I didn’t want to forget. As I got older and realized what you had done to me, I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want the pity of other people when they found out how abusive you were. I didn’t want them to take me away from my home, put me in a temporary home and put you in jail. So I didn’t say anything. But I’m not afraid of that anymore so I’ll tell you what - I will go where I want, when I want – if you’d like, feel free to