Young Writers Society

The leathery wings hugged her body to keep the girl warm. Her naked shoulders showed the join between her back and her wings, tiny white scars covered the join making it look like a spider had stitched her wings on with a fine web.

Her skin was beyond pale; it was white as new paint and appeared never to have seen the sun. The truth was, it never had.

The girl looked in shock at the crowd gathering around her. The looked of pity and disgust meant nothing to her having only ever seen the faces of four people who all kept their faces expressionless.

The girl stood up from her crouched position on the pavement. She stood at nearly six and a half foot tall even though she had barely entered puberty.

She was naked from the waist upward and she only wore a pair of dirty white trousers that came to her knee. Her legs were covered in scratches and a thick coating of dust covered her bloody feet. She stretched her wings, seventeen feet of leather as black as night, filled the space around her. Gasps of shock and fear came from the audience.

The girl looked around, each person looked different, each wore different clothes, each had different hair some had no hair at all, each and every person was different, unique.

A sudden rush of fear his the girl, she didn’t know it was fear but her body was telling her to escape and she did.

She stretched her leathery wings and crouched low before taking a huge jump, that took her nearly eight foot in the air. She flapped her wings and rose a further ten foot. Slowly she got into a rhythm and climbed higher above the buildings. Having only ever flown in a warehouse she was unused the wind that circled the buildings around her. Her instinct told her to fly higher but as she did the winds became stronger.

The reduction in oxygen n the air didn’t bother her, her body worked anaerobically as a matter of course so she could fly for hours without any regular oxygen supply.

Eventually the wind got the better of her and she dropped from the sky like a stone. She was about fifty metres from the ground when she caught herself.

Below her was a woodland area, the trees offered a little protection so she sank into the branches gratefully. Surrounded by the thick leaves the girl felt warmer and slowly the fear she felt before sank away.

After a while she sank into a shallow sleep, sitting on a branch surrounded by everything she didn’t know.