Fanfic: Icarus Unburned [Highlander]
Jul. 16th, 2012 10:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
argentum_lsTitle: Icarus Unburned
Summary: To learn to fly, one must learn to crash.
Word Count: 500
Characters: Female OC
Notes: For![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
hc_bingo prompt: plane crash
Wreckage surrounded her, pieces of wood and metal spread across the field. Sophia collapsed into the grass among the destruction and stared up at the pale blue sky, a grin plastered across her face. The aeroplane had crashed; it always crashed. It had also flown. She laughed, her voice ringing out clear and bright across the field. The machine had stayed aloft for a full minute before the engine cut out.
From the moment she had learned that the gods lived in the sky, Sophia had set out to join them. She didn’t know how she had come to be stranded on the ground, but she knew she didn’t belong. Since she was no mortal, she had to be descended from the gods. She desired only to sit at the table with her own kind, and to live among those who understood what it meant to live.
In her youthful naiveté, when she still believed that the sky was an enclosure, she had sought to climb for it. The first time she had conquered what she had thought was the highest mountain, she had reached her arms upward, expecting to find a solid surface at her fingertips. She had frozen to death in that position, mouth open in a scream of frustration. Years, and untold deaths, later had been more mountains, higher and higher peaks and greater and greater disappointments.
She traveled the world, tracking down every legend and trying every spell and every prayer. She’d sacrificed more lives than her own, and learned that spilled blood lifts no one. The gods ignored her pleas and scoffed at her offerings. She begged the gods for understanding as to why they kept her stranded, and why they tantalized her with hope. The gods were cruel, she decided—further proof that they were her kindred.
The age of machinery took hold. With it came mankind’s persistent efforts to learn to fly by mechanical rather than magical means. Man believed it was meant to soar with the birds, to steal the sky from the animals as they had taken the land and were endeavoring to take the sea. Sophia knew she was meant to get there first.
Time after time she crashed, her wings burned, her gliders destroyed, her balloon deflated or depressurized. She died, her arms and legs shattered, skin burned or iced or both. She drowned and suffocated and felt her lungs sear from fumes and fire. Each time she suffered through the agony of resurrecting, she recalled why she kept trying.
The gods took only the worthy; this was her trial. For more than three thousand years she had been trying. Though she had been higher, never had the possibilities been so limitless. She rolled over in the grass, fingers clutching the first piece of the plane’s remains they touched. Pulling it close, she set to assessing what went wrong, fixing the flaws. The whole while, she basked in knowledge that she had finally figured out how to get home.
Summary: To learn to fly, one must learn to crash.
Word Count: 500
Characters: Female OC
Notes: For
hc_bingo prompt: plane crashWreckage surrounded her, pieces of wood and metal spread across the field. Sophia collapsed into the grass among the destruction and stared up at the pale blue sky, a grin plastered across her face. The aeroplane had crashed; it always crashed. It had also flown. She laughed, her voice ringing out clear and bright across the field. The machine had stayed aloft for a full minute before the engine cut out.
From the moment she had learned that the gods lived in the sky, Sophia had set out to join them. She didn’t know how she had come to be stranded on the ground, but she knew she didn’t belong. Since she was no mortal, she had to be descended from the gods. She desired only to sit at the table with her own kind, and to live among those who understood what it meant to live.
In her youthful naiveté, when she still believed that the sky was an enclosure, she had sought to climb for it. The first time she had conquered what she had thought was the highest mountain, she had reached her arms upward, expecting to find a solid surface at her fingertips. She had frozen to death in that position, mouth open in a scream of frustration. Years, and untold deaths, later had been more mountains, higher and higher peaks and greater and greater disappointments.
She traveled the world, tracking down every legend and trying every spell and every prayer. She’d sacrificed more lives than her own, and learned that spilled blood lifts no one. The gods ignored her pleas and scoffed at her offerings. She begged the gods for understanding as to why they kept her stranded, and why they tantalized her with hope. The gods were cruel, she decided—further proof that they were her kindred.
The age of machinery took hold. With it came mankind’s persistent efforts to learn to fly by mechanical rather than magical means. Man believed it was meant to soar with the birds, to steal the sky from the animals as they had taken the land and were endeavoring to take the sea. Sophia knew she was meant to get there first.
Time after time she crashed, her wings burned, her gliders destroyed, her balloon deflated or depressurized. She died, her arms and legs shattered, skin burned or iced or both. She drowned and suffocated and felt her lungs sear from fumes and fire. Each time she suffered through the agony of resurrecting, she recalled why she kept trying.
The gods took only the worthy; this was her trial. For more than three thousand years she had been trying. Though she had been higher, never had the possibilities been so limitless. She rolled over in the grass, fingers clutching the first piece of the plane’s remains they touched. Pulling it close, she set to assessing what went wrong, fixing the flaws. The whole while, she basked in knowledge that she had finally figured out how to get home.
