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Did you hear about the boy who tried to fly?
He flew too close to the sun and burned his wings.
Yes, and without his wings he fell.
There. Out there is where they say it happened. That’s where they saw him fall.
He fell so far away they never found his body.
Nothing of him left, poor thing.
Poor thing.
The boy is trying to fly again. Youngjo has watched him every day as he makes his wings, painstakingly stringing feather to frame and sealing it all with hot wax. He yelps now, hurriedly wipes a drop of wax from his finger and crams it into his mouth to soothe the burn. Youngjo licks his own lips in sympathy. Surely there must be someone to help the boy - but no, he has always been insistent on doing this alone. Passerby glance at him with odd looks on their faces. He is an odd one, the boy. The boy trying to fly. He makes his wings, and flies, and falls. He has tried for more times than Youngjo has bothered to count, and everyone who sees the boy has stopped bothering to care.
This time is different. Youngjo can see it in the gleam of the boy’s eyes, the flash of teeth as he straps on his wings. They look sturdy, these wings, the feathers glossy and dark. Solid. Shining. Strong.
The boy wobbles as he adjusts to the new weight. Now is the time when tests his wings, flapping his arms from small heights. Youngjo has watched the boy nurse more than a few bruises from these times. He hurt his leg once, and hobbled around with it stuck in a splint while he made his next wings. Youngjo looks towards the sloping hill where the boy will go—
—But no, not this time. This time, the boy goes straight for the cliffs. They loom high above the sea, an abrupt edge where the boy’s world ends and Youngjo’s begins. Youngjo hates going near the cliff’s jagged rocks and choppy waves. But the wind there is strong. The best place to fly.
The boy runs to the cliffs’ edge, spreads his wings, and flies.
He flies.
Youngjo feels a smile pulling across his face. He never doubted the boy. He knew that he would fly, and now here he is, spinning higher and higher into the bold blue sky. Youngjo cranes back his head to watch as the boy flies higher, a dark speck growing smaller and smaller. The speck disappears into the bright glare of the sun, and finally Youngjo has to look away.
The boy is flying.
Youngjo blinks the spots from his eyes. He looks at the vast sea around him. And now, he…
He should go. The boy went his way, and he should go his. Youngjo has always known that this was how it would end, ever since he first saw the boy trying to fly. It would always end with the boy flying into the sky, and Youngjo watching from far below. Their story, however brief, is over. It is time for Youngjo to leave.
And still, he lingers. The smile falls away from his dry lips. It feels as if something heavy has settled in his chest, dark and cold and tethering him down. The boy has flown away, and Youngjo is anchored far below. Far below the boy would ever bother to see. He should go.
One last look. Youngjo shakes his head firmly, then tilts his gaze upward. One last look where the boy flew into the blue sky and the bright sun and—
—The sun flares. Youngjo tilts his head, brows creasing for a closer look, and watches as the flare falls away from the sun. It is a bright speck growing larger and larger, falling, definitely falling. Perhaps a falling star, Youngjo muses, the sort that people like to wish upon. But there is something ungainly about this falling star, something grounded and not quite so ethereal, something like…
The boy is falling.
Youngjo watches as the boy falls from the sky. His wings, so strong and stable, are aflame. Burnt feathers and melted wax scatter away from him. Youngjo as the boy struggles with his dying wings, tries so desperately to fly, tries so desperately not to fall.
The boy falls. Youngjo reaches out his hands and catches him.
“There was a raven,” Geonhak tells him. The cool water soothes the burns on his back, and Youngjo’s hands soothe him more still. “There was a raven and he could fly so high. He flew so far away.”
“You wanted to fly like the raven,” Youngjo says. His voice lilts up at the end, as if asking a question.
There are dark feathers along Youngjo’s face. Geonhak doesn’t think Youngjo knows they are there, scattered across his cheeks and shoulders and down his back. Glossy feathers, solid and shining and strong. Geonhak had tried to make his wings for so long, sturdy wings like the raven so that he could fly.
The day the raven disappeared, Geonhak found the feathers for his wings.
He finally meets Youngjo’s gaze. “I wanted to fly with the raven.”
Geonhak reaches out his hands. Youngjo watches him, and falls.