The flat was oppressively warm, so she drifted to the window. Outside, the heat seemed to be slumbering while a faint breeze whispered through the streets of London.
Perhaps its just me feeling suffocated, she muttered to herself.
A tight knot in her throat broke her breathing. The sensation was familiaran old companion of weakness, emptiness, and indifferent resignation. Her legs gave way, her mind dimmed as if someone were flipping a single light switch. She collapsed onto her bed and slipped almost instantly into sleep.
At first the dream was disjointedsnatches of voices, footsteps on an unfamiliar staircase, a lanterns glow cutting through fog. Then everything cleared. She became a bird, her massive white wings light and sharp as a fresh gasp after a long silence. She rose above a city that glittered far below, trembling with countless lights like a scattering of tiny worlds.
The city was unknown, yet somehow felt like home. Tall shadows of buildings stretched upward, as if yearning to touch the stars. Between them lay bridges and narrow alleys, a breath of freedom that could not be explained, only felt. It was easy there. She suddenly remembered what she could be: not tired, not seeking anyones approval, not compressed insidesimply alive.
Free.
She swooped over the city, dived between rooftops, brushed the cool air with her wings, and it seemed this would last forever. Then an invisible memory tugged her downward.
I need to lie down, she heard her own voice, distant as if from a far room.
The world shivered. Light shattered.
She began to fallsoft as a featherreturning to the stifling flat where it had all begun. She snapped her eyes open as if someone had called her name. The room greeted her with the same stale air, now feeling colder, as though a part of her had stayed behind in that illuminated city of shadows and winged silhouettes.
She sat up slowly on the bed. Silence hung heavy, like a record stuck on a single note. The world around looked familiar yet foreign, as if the walls had shifted while she slept. She ran a hand over her chest, where in the dream her wings had throbbed. Her fingers met only the cotton of her Tshirt.
Strange I was almost flying, she thought. But the memory of the dream was already melting, like damp snow on a palm. All that remained was a faint stirring inside her, a barely perceptible draft of airreal, though almost invisible.
She realized then that the dream was not about flight, nor about a city that could not be spoken aloud. It was about her weariness of living on a ground where every step felt like a debt. It whispered that she needed a different sky, that wings were not fantasy but an ancient, almost forgotten memory.
Holding her breath to keep the feeling from fleeing, she whispered into the darkness:
If I ever decide I will return there. I will truly soar.
In the same instant something quiet answered within her:
Youve already begun.
She lingered by the window for what felt like an eternity, watching the night surrender its hold. Shadows thinned, the sky lightened, and it seemed the world took a deep breath before diving back into its usual bustle.
Inside her, something had shiftedsubtly, silently, irrevocably. She stared at the horizon, where a thin ribbon of light split the world into before and after. In that moment she understood she was no longer afraidof her frailties, of the emptiness, of the indifferent fatigue that often rose over her like a wave.
She saw that the wings were not born of dream.
They were born of her.
She closed her eyes gently, placed a hand over her heart where it beat just enough to confirm her thoughtsoftly, without fanfare, but with certainty.
She whispered:
Enough living for others expectations. Enough tolerating. Enough waiting for permission to be myself.
At that instant something unfurled inside herno longer wings, but something deeper, as if her soul, long crouched in darkness, finally stretched to full height.
She opened her eyes. The sky was a pale pink, and the first morning light rested softly on her face. She stepped back from the window and felt the floor beneath her tremble. Or perhaps the world itself shivered. It mattered little. What mattered was that she no longer fell.
She drew a deep, truly free breaththe first in many months.
And she declared, clear and calm as a promise:
I will rise. On my own. To the heights that haunt my dreams.
No stifling flat would ever again be her cage. She turned, her step light, almost airynot because she hurried, but because a person who has found their own wings never returns to the person they once were.
True freedom, she learned, is not a place you reach but a truth you carry within.
