#ScribesAndMakers 2026.03.30 —Do birds ever feature in your work? Give an example #excerpt.
The current title I am writing in the reluctance series features a day angel. She has wings, owl patterned with blue and white feathers, but Bolt would take exception if you called her a bird. For a woman, it's a slur. It's an SF story, so her being able to fly requires more than pure muscle power. She calls it gravitics. This is very 1st draft and it needs work. I still have to check my aeronautical terminology, but let's take flight anyway!
I heard a familiar whistle, not Boss Mead or one of his shadowy bodyguards, either. Never was. Clink. Jangle. I glanced at the pavement. Three silver coins spun where the cement met the dirty formerly absolute white wall.
I grinned. I flicked my left wing up with a waveguide twist. Immediate anti-gravitic thrust let me throw my feet upward and my torso ahead, cartwheeling with six limbs in a way a saint with all her strength and a piddling four limbs could never do, or most non-athletic feathers. I snatched the coins as I spun past. The bonus conserved momentum let me launch myself forward. Flapping for all I had to level out, I rocketed along the centerline of the road until I could bank west, sideways, into a slot alley. Wingtipping the walls with my crazy velocity—my feathers made a zzzzz sound—tilted diagonally, left primaries warped to the left wall, the rights toward the right, I sent uncompensated gravity torque pushing against those walls. Raw thrust kept me from dropping more than a handswidth per heartbeat to the cobblestones, still frighteningly quickly toward my left wing tip as I accelerated toward an almost to distant exit. Leaves, dirt, and cans shot away in spirals or as if kicked, banging walls or jumping a couple stories upwards.
A lost memory now found surfaced from when I was twelve: I remembered side-flying that got me suspended, trying to embarrass a girl classmate—Sage Peaches was it?—who'd bullied me before I fledged. Had the boy blocking the alley between buildings not dove to the pavement, nothing but feathers would have remained when we would have collided, but flap that was fun! I remembered screaming in glee as I buzz cut the vice headmaster's hair, unaware of my impending disaster.
I stormed over a parked wagon; a load of recycled newspapers snapped and roared as they got sucked aloft behind me. The alley opened up to a dome, across a city street, with light traffic but thankfully no busses or lorries, that often had an upsweep thermal. It did today. I rolled in the turbulence greeting me, back-flapped and pulled up against all the gees I could stand and shot up like a firework easily twenty stories, flapping for all I was worth, barely clearing the curving away wall, squealing in glee until I shed my momentum and leveled off without stalling.
I might be approaching 30, but flying risky maneuvers were the water of life, and my racing heart agreed. Skill or chance, skill prevailed for me. These days, little else fun was guaranteed me but flight. It didn't hurt as I kept my muscles tuned at Sky Dancer's Gym. I banked toward the Residency. A 10º horizon trim set my glide path, feathers buzzing nicely as my racing heart slowed. The News Building tower to its southeast hove into view above the skyscrapers and rooftop trees between.
[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S.]
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