I return to consciousness falling. The sky around me is dark, the roiling clouds lit up by periodic lightning bolts, strong wind blowing this way and that in no predictable pattern.

Then the clouds part, and I see what I’m falling toward.

Below me is a tortured landscape—sharp, broken-looking mountains like shards of obsidian, deep canyons full of rushing, raging water surging between mountain peaks, cascading off cliffs onto the broad plateaus, glinting with the shallow water covering them. The lightning seems to be the only source of illumination, but it strikes frequently enough to provide more than adequate light to see what I’m falling toward.

Directly beneath me, on a small plateau falling in steep cliffs on all sides, is a temple, gleaming in the brilliant flashes as if made of polished mirrors. I recognize it instinctively, almost-memories telling me that it is where I am meant to be. But I’m falling fast, too fast. I reach desperately for the threads I know are there, the natural pathways that let me control my own flight, but they evade me. If anything they are surging around me, bristling and deadly, ensuring my demise. I fall faster and faster, coming closer and closer to the gleaming temple. Then I turn my head and see someone else falling beside me.

It’s like the sky has become a mirror. Dressed in black soldier’s garb, short dark hair shot through with gold, skin neutral gray, eyes bright violet-touched silver, but otherwise she looks exactly like me. It’s creepy, seeing your own features reflected on someone else’s face, especially using a different color palette. She locks eyes with me, and the hatred in her gaze throws me off balance. Then the temple rises up beneath us and in a flash of violent light—

‘Elva!’

I wake up drenched in sweat, electricity crackling in my hair and at my fingertips. Zara is kneeling over me, hands on my shoulders, Ikaros on one side, Luxia on the other. The only ones that can withstand lightning, I think, and roll onto my side, pushing up into a sitting position. I run my hands through my hair, attempting to tame its aspirations of increasing my height all on its own.

‘Nightmares?’ Zara asks, full of concern. I nod.

Ikaros and Luxia go back to bed then, but Zara, I realize, is fully dressed, her eyes bright and awake. She moves to stand by the window, hands clasped behind her back.

I crawl carefully around the bodies of my unit-mates and climb off the bed. There’s a violent thunderstorm outside, and when I reach carefully toward it I sense a new storm spirit, figuring out what it means to exist.

‘Sorry about that,’ I say sheepishly, keeping my transmission quiet so as not to disturb those that managed to sleep through my dreams. ‘I haven’t had a dream like that in years. I’m not sure what triggered it.’

‘Do you remember the face of the warped mirror?’ She inquires by way of an answer, meaning. Of course she’s skimmed the gist of the dream from me.

I don’t even need to think about it. She’s still there, hovering in my mind. Zara nods, then presses one hand flat to the window, eyes unfixed, brows furrowed. ‘You remember when we were Grays, when you were afflicted by these dreams?’

‘Of course.’

‘Well, she looks remarkably similar to that girl. Similar enough to be the same person, if aged a few years.’

I scowl in thought. ‘She does. She also looks like me. Just on a different color scheme.’

We stand in silence for a while, then Zara asks, ‘Are you going back to bed?’

I shake my head. ‘I don’t think I would be able to get back to sleep. I’m still full of adrenaline from that nightmare. I think . . .‘

She catches what I’m thinking, and grins. ‘Let’s go.’

From the roof, the storm is deafening. Zara throws her head back and inhales deeply, eyes closed, her hair whipping around her face. ‘I can finally breathe,’ she says, in a rare moment of vulnerability, and I catch a fleeting impression of her day, which she once again spent elsewhere.

I stare up at the sky, rain and wind pelting my face. Lightning flashes overhead, a distinctive blue cast to it. This is one of my creations. *Hello, young one,* I say to it, stretching out my hand in the direction of its heart, whirling some distance away. *Are these not glorious skies?*

*Yes?* The spirit answers in a childlike voice, sounding confused. *Who and what are you? You are my mother, and yet you are not.*

My inner storm rears its head, and now I am the one to throw my head back, breathing in the night air, full of water and wind and charge to feed the beast within me. Almost without warning it surges up and out, wings of cloud forming in an instant. The great thunderbird screams a challenge to the youngling, who cowers, shrinking in on itself.

I wrench my storm back, concerned that I have turned the poor thing against me, but after a moment it gathers itself, taking on a concrete form—a winged foal. It screams in reply, and now I smile, and leap up into the thunderbird, my body merging with my storm. I glance back once, and see Zara crouched at the peak of the roof, watching with appreciative eyes. ‘Go,’ she transmits. ‘Fly. Chase the night and don’t come back until dawn has overtaken you.’

And I do. The glorious fusion lets me forget my dreams and revel in the power of flight. The little one keeps pace the whole time, wings spreading a little wider with every hour that passes. With sunrise at our backs we soar, pursuing the shadows across a landscape of endless trees and mountains and water. We notice habitations from time to time, schools with their walls fully guarded, communities tucked into the natural flow of the land. Most of the day creatures are asleep, tucked into their little dens and cozy nests, while the night creatures roam free, stalking a quiet world while far above, we soar.

And when dawn does overtake us, we’re nearly back where we started. The young storm, doubled in power and confidence during our flight, leaves me behind and continues on, faster and freer than I with my mortal roots could ever be, while I drift down onto our roof, the storm and I separating, then it coils back into its place in my chest and I open the window, slipping inside as quietly as I can.

Zara’s sitting in the windowsill opposite me, while the rest of the room is empty. “You look better,” she comments. “And the skies are clearer now, so I’m guessing it helped?”

“Yes.”

“Good, because we have a meeting in fifteen minutes. You’d better get dressed.”