She is very young. It cannot have been two years since she spawned into this world. It is a quiet world- practically uninhabited. The house behind her is the only building for miles around. It is a mid-sized house, made from a soft, brown material, that seems almost alive. Or maybe it swells and bubbles through her eyes only. The main body of the house is on the ground, but there are smaller, secluded rooms floating in the air around it. To her, they are like little suns, baby clones of the light that shines from the core of the house itself. She stands on the second tier of the layers of gardens and terraces that are next to the house.

 It is too late for her- she was meant to have been in bed long ago, but she has absentmindedly drifted around the house, until she drops out of her thoughts and finds herself here, with cool grass below and the night sky above, blurred slightly, as it is seen through a film of water that hangs in a crescent above her.

She is curious. Too curious, some might have said. She always wants to know what is there, just out of reach, just below the horizon. Always wondering. And that was why she wonders now, and her gaze turns to the gate. She stands absolutely still for quite some time, her head tilts slightly to the left, the only `movement the steady rise and fall of her chest and the occasional blink of a heavily lashed eyelid; slowly letting her thoughts caress the gate.

Finally, she comes to a conclusion. Her head rights itself, and as she opens the gate her breathing remains at its steady rhythm.

And then she is out; the sky, open above her, undisrupted. The heavens like a lamp covered with a black cloth that has been pricked with a pin a million times so that the light streams out. Her gaze is turned up towards this, her eyes shining and sparkling so bright that they are like two stars that fell to earth.

She longs for them. Her heart sings and aches to be with them yet so far away. She rises off the floor, climbing higher and higher up into the sky to be with them- be part of them.

And then she feels something that she has never felt before. Her skin tingles and a thrill runs up her back.  A very different thrill to the thrill she felt when gazing up. She feels a gut-wrenching feeling pulling her back to the earth.

She begins to fall. She has lost control. Her skin chameleons, changing to match the night sky surrounding her, but she keeps falling. Finally, just as she is about to hit the ground something clicks, and she spreads her arms to reveal long metal wings. They are made up of thousands of tiny scale-like slivers of metal that sprout from her back. Though they are so superbly crafted, perfectly interlocking and delicate, they look heavy and un-natural on her tiny figure. They catch her and she alights gently on the ground. Two tears role down her round cheeks that are beginning to fade from navy blue to a pale rose pink.

She stumbles inside. They see her. They see the red eyes and the wet cheeks. She is taken upstairs. She is put to bed. A drip is attached to her. The pale gold liquid slips into her veins. She is soon asleep, her breathing at its steady rhythm, her face a neutral mask again.