Stormseeker

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For several moonspins now—like a field lying fallow, like a steel blade shedding its fatigue—I have been waiting and resting. But lately a sense of imminence has grown and I have taken to night-riding in the silent sled, soaring over the city’s trembling lights or drifting low in a Debussy prelude ambience of moonlight and towers, fulfilling childhood dreams of flight. At times I hover close to stolid old buildings, filling my eyes with the details of their crenels and corbels, but such things look strangely irrelevant when viewed from close anchorage on a tide of dark winds. They produce a sense of unease and vertigo, of a dangerous ending to the volant dream, and I turn the sled away, wondering what the birds must think of us.

Selena has gone with me on several of these aerial excursions, on nights when neither of us could sleep, yet I know they make her unhappy. Percipient to a wonderful degree though she is, a streak of practicality in her nature forces her to question my “profession“. We talk about having children—I have been assured I will breed neither mooncalves nor mutants—and while she nods in agreement her eyes grow smoky with doubt. Who could blame her? Only I can sense the ethereal migration of electrons and scry the shadows of lightning flashes yet unborn.

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