Yesteryear Fiction

The Solace of Leda
By Amanda Firefox


Wings beating against my face, the warm smell of angels. The book pushes against my chest, bound tight with biting leather straps; the harness of my fate, the only reason I am alive. I open my eyes and a wash of sea emerald light fills me, blinds me, urges me to cry out. All around me, there is the throbbing sound of wings in flight, the mingling of high, thin air and the stifling closeness of feathers, of down and the arms of men engineered to fly. Lost in the middle of the pulsing, white swarm, I am helpless as they take me, one by one, my body both pinned and cushioned by the backs and arms of feathered forms. I am the vessel this swarm has chosen, the center of their cloud, the field in which the seeds of their future are sewn. When it is finished, when the last of the angels cries out in sweet release, I am discarded, dropped and left to fall into the aquamarine depths of the sky as the swarm flies on, but it is not my destiny to die. From the depths of my womb, there is a flash of light, a flicker of emerald as blinding as heaven, as the bosom of ether and air that enfolds me. I cry out as the pages of the book catch fire, as the straps of the harness snap and fall away, leaving only me, leaving only a body consumed by light, burning away to pure, aquamarine energy. In the same instant that my body becomes the sky, I feel the swarm of angels fade into the abyss, become their own light and burn on into the distances. The world delights softly in our electric rain, rich with infant smiles, and as the sky darkens at the edge of apocalypse, the fires of heaven thunder and flex, rejoicing.


- - -
Amanda Firefox is a fiery little blue-eyed brunette who spends as much time at the beach as she can manage. She doesn't write much, but when she writes, it's almost always about her favorite subject: boys.