Celia lived on the ground. She lived in a cute little hut on a cute little patch of ground that had been in the family for years. Specifically it had been in her family for seven years. She lived on it with her family, but they aren’t going to enter this story much so I won’t bother much with them.

Many people around Celia enjoyed living on the ground. People would say how lovely the ground was and they would comment on how blue the grass was and how wonderful the berries were looking this year. And then these nameless people would look at Celia and expect her to add something to the conversation, but Celia was never paying attention. She would be looking at the sky.

Celia thought the sky was beautiful. She would stare at the clouds and dream of wings. It was Celia’s dearest dream to fly. Every night she dreamed of wind and every day she thought of moist, purple clouds. She knew that if she could just taste that wind she would wake up happy or if she could just feel those clouds she could focus on conversations about the ground, but she never did and so she never did.

It was on a day when the sky was so green it hurt your eyes that Celia hit upon a plan to fly. If she could not grow wings, she thought, maybe she could make wings. So Celia set about learning the physics and mechanics she would need to make wings and to fly. She spent most of her waking hours working towards her wings. She studied machines and how to make the squiggly bit go round and round. She studied winds and drafts. She wanted a flying machine someone else had made to study, but the people around her were so pleased with the ground they lived on they didn’t make machines to take them away from it. But still Celia worked and studied.When her family went on vacation to the hills Celia stayed behind and worked. When others were thinking about the grass and the trees they had Celia was thinking about the sky she wanted.

And so time passed. Celia was miserable, but determined for much of the time that passed. But then came the Day. It was the Day she had been working and waiting for. This Day she would prove them all wrong. It was the Day she would go touch the sky. It was the Day her wings were finished.

They really weren’t that nice to look at. There were rather loud and bulky, but Celia thought they were fine. She ran with them to the top of the highest hill. She strapped on her wings and jumped. And she flew! The wings actually worked!

Celia soared across the sky. Celia swooped and swirled as her wings belched out black smoke. She flew over her village and for once the people looked up at the sky. They stared in horror as the black smoke trailing behind Celia disfigured the sky.

Celia didn’t notice the smoke. She was ecstatic. She was flying. She was showing them all that she had been right to dream. Yelling with glee she flew up to touch her beloved clouds. She touched them and as her wings stalled and stopped she knew them to be vapor.

Celia plummeted down. She fell towards the ground she had hated for so long. As she fell she turned and watched the ground rush to meet her. She noticed for the first time that she enjoyed that shade of blue. She noticed that the flowers were pretty and how rich the soil was. She noticed that the ground had always been kinder to her than the sky would ever be. And she noticed she was sad she had spent more time with the sky that killed her than with the ground that loved her. And then she did notice anything else.

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