Soaring
Perspectives Magazine (Sept 2017)
by gayla mills

Mom told me I’m four dimensional. There are three axes, she explained when I was a mere tweet, but we float on the fourth. I liked the idea of floating, especially when I was snuggled close to her and my sibs, warm.

Then one day I felt ready, confident and eager. I spread my arms, stretched, and I was off, traversing the fourth dimension on the southeastern wind current that alternated between 40 and 60 degrees in slope. Whoo, it picked me up higher and I found myself flushed with boundless nowness. The earthly things dropped as the scents, colors, richness of the air drew me forward. Effortlessly, I closed my eyes for a moment so I could better sense the pieces of molecules of particles of world that pressed in around me, as I rushed through them, floating, soaring. So this was the fourth dimension she had spoken of.

Feeling giddy with its newness, I abruptly flipped my feathers and headed straight down toward the trees. I could feel the tips roughed up by the air as I used one force against another to plunge swiftly. Then feeling mischievous, I robbed gravity of its reward and turned 37 degrees on the western axis, 110 on the northern, and 52 on the fourth. With what I must say was an elegant reversal, I drew up to the scented branch covered with soft spines and grabbed hold. Not bad for a first run, I thought.

Unable to bear my new existence silently, I felt my full throat. I let loose, crying out in the gleenal scale that I had heard in late evening. This, of course, is the scale reserved for intense feeling, and it seemed fitting. I was pleased to be joined by my clitchmates, who responded with the sleelie scale of pride. They had witnessed my journey in the fourth dimension and celebrated it with me. I knew with a certainty born from my success that the possibilities to soar would always be.

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