Creative Writing: Feathered Roar

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Feathered Roar

Jennifer Niskanen, 2016

I woke to total disorientation that night, not sure if I'd even slept at all, reaching out in distress for a hand-hold, arms up and out for anything I could grab on to. My fingers flexed to breaking, only to curl back in convulsively, like a pulse, echoing my pounding heart. Should I go forward? Am I headed back, somewhere? Where am I going?

My head whip-cracked down and up, right and left, looking for the right direction. What was all this for? How did this start? Was I always like this? Light feather-touched my face, drifting out of the shadows from the uncovered window, reaching around me, howling out of a snow storm but soft, far away, like I wasn't quite there.

"There must be a way out," I thought …show more content…

I really felt like that little girl again, ready to jump. I had to hurry. Trudging on faster, my breath ripping my lungs between my hard clenched teeth. I had to run. I clawed at the ground, bending to all-fours like an animal, coughing and choking on my own hair, wild with the wind.

The trailer wasn't even a spot in the distance. I had no sense of home behind me. There was only this moment. There was no room for anything else. Maybe that was my breaking point, but it didn't feel that way. I was giving in, I suppose, but I wasn't giving up. It was something else, and it was just around the corner, just a little bit further into the darkness.

It was hard to think. It was so loud. That might have been part of the problem. Snow snaked like dragons pushing me on. Was the wind screaming like that or was it me? It made by ears ring.

I was vibrating with it, like a struck bell. This was life turned up to the max, all pain and cold. I was loving it. I couldn't get enough. I wanted to revel in it. I reaching down, tearing off what was left of my nightgown.

"Whatever! Give me what you've got!" I shouted, raw with the volume of it, shaking my head, jumping and waving my arms. I was flying. No matter what anybody said. This was my …show more content…

Wings wrapped and snapped the highest tree limbs, claws lacerated the trunks, bleeding sticky with sap. I could smell it. "Oh yeah. This was definitely it!"

There was something else in the air too. It's hard to describe really, a sweetness, almost like vanilla but older with on-going decay and age. There was that and the cold. The storm permeated everything. Snow has a smell all its own, if you look for it. I breathed it all in. I wanted to remember it. Have you ever had a moment like that, where something inside you says, this is important? You have to remember everything!

Their shapes where dancing around and above me, moving into each other, so nothing was exactly separate. There was no telling where one began and another ended, no dissociating them from the forest or the sky. It just kept mixing together, and I was a part of it. I demanded my place, hopping in disjointed affinity, my arms jerking, my back bucking. My laughter hooted with the madness of it. We're they crazy? Was

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