The air in the cramped flat was oppressive, so Emily drifted toward the sash window. The heat had begun to settle, and a faint breeze stirred the curtains.
Its probably just me feeling suffocated, she muttered to herself. A tight knot formed in her throat, strangling her breath. The sensation was familiaran odd blend of weakness, emptiness, and indifference that no longer startled her. Her legs gave way and her mind dimmed, as if someone had flipped a single switch in the darkness.
She slipped onto the bed and almost immediately drifted into sleep. At first the dream was disjointed: fragments of voices, the echo of footsteps on an unfamiliar staircase, a lanterns glow through fog. Then the chaos cleared. She became a bird, its massive white wings sleek and sharp, like a fresh breath after a long silence. She rose above a city that glittered far below, trembling with countless lights, a constellation of tiny worlds.
The city was unknown, yet somehow felt like home. Towering shadows of buildings stretched upward, as if trying to brush the stars. Between them lay bridges, narrow alleys, and a sense of freedom that could not be described, only felt. It was easy there. In that place she remembered what she could be: not weary, not seeking approval, not cramped insidealive.
Free.
She swooped over the skyline, dived between rooftops, brushed the cool air with her feathers, and for a moment it seemed this would last forever. Then an unseen memory tugged her downward.
I need to lie down, a voiceher own, distant yet clearcalled out.
The world quivered. Light fractured. She began to fall, gentle as a feather, back to the stifling flat where it all began.
She snapped open her eyes as if someone had called her name. The room greeted her with the same stale air, now colder, as if part of herself had stayed behind in that luminous city of shadows and wings. She rose slowly, sitting on the edge of the bed. Silence hung heavy, like a record stuck on a single note. The world outside looked familiar yet alien, as if the walls had shifted while she slept.
She ran a hand over her chestwhere in the dream her wings had beaten. Her fingers met only the soft fabric of her Tshirt.
How odd I was almost flying, she thought, but the memory was already melting like damp snow on her palms. All that remained was a faint stir of air inside her, barely perceptible but unmistakably real.
And then she realized: the dream wasnt about flight. It wasnt about a city that could not be named aloud. It was about being tired of living on earth where every step felt like a debt. It was about the need for a different sky. It was about wings not as fantasy but as an ancient, almost forgotten memory.
She held her breath, careful not to scare the feeling away, and whispered into the darkness:
If I ever decide Ill go back there. Ill truly take to the air.
In the same instant something quiet answered from within:
Youve already begun.
Emily lingered at the window for a long while, 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 shiftedsubtle, silent, but irreversible. She gazed toward the horizon, where a thin ribbon of light divided the world into before and after. In that moment she felt no fearno fear of her own frailties, no fear of the void, no fear of the apathetic fatigue that often crashed over her like a wave.
She understood then that the wings were not born of a dream.
They were part of her.
She closed her eyes gently, placed a hand over her heart, feeling a quiet thump as if confirming her thoughtnot loudly, not triumphantly, but with steady certainty.
She whispered:
Enough living for other peoples 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 curled in darkness, finally rose to its 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 not. What mattered was that she no longer felt herself falling.
She inhaled deeplythe first truly free breath shed taken in months. Then, with calm resolve, she declared aloud, as if pledging an oath:
I will rise. On my own. To the heights that visit me in dreams.
No stifling flat would ever again be her cage. She turned, her steps light, almost airy, not because she was hurried, but because a person who has discovered their own wings never walks the same way again.
The lesson was clear: true freedom begins not with the miracle of flight, but with the quiet decision to let the hearts hidden wings lift us up.
