Suburban Sprite : Chapter 1

It must have been some two weeks before I noticed what was growing on my back. By then the protrusion had become a little obvious – the two tiny slits which had, out of nowhere, opened up somewhere in the middle of my back sometime around my seventeenth birthday. They were mere slits in my skin, about a millimeter wide, situated equidistantly from my backbone, halfway down the either side of my spinal cord. A week before, I noticed something emerging from them – something silvery and glistening, from whatever I could make from the mirror. As the days passed, the protrusion grew- from a tiny glimmer of silver to a more defining shape; by the eleventh day a small triangular shape with rounded edges peeked out of each slit. The silver was more pronounced and I dared my trembling fingers to feel it once. For the short stub it was, it certainly felt nothing short of spectacular; my fingers felt the sensation of fondling the finest fleece, the silkiest plush. Yet for the richness it showed, it was amazingly delicate and whisper thin, with a few vein-like bulges sprinkled in between.

    Of course, wings was the last possibility on my mind. The very idea that my skin was giving birth to some strange silver fabric was alarming, and a thousand other possibilities revolving around tumours, skin diseases, rare disorders and other medical failures came to me. I didn't have anyone to consult, anyone to turn to for help. Especially not after my father so nonchalantly walked out on us- my little sister Sasha and I - last month. But then it really became evident that they were, in fact, wings, when, just the previous night, I found that the slits had grown a full two inches more and the protrusion had worsened with more clarity. There was no mistaking it, they were definitely startings of wings. And it frightened me to no end.

Of course. I should’ve expected this, really. Wings were in my genes, after all. But I never expected to so blatantly take after my mother. Or maybe I had all along known this, maybe I just couldn’t bring myself to accept it.

    I, a normal seventeen year old girl(with a rather tumultuous childhood but sane, nevertheless) was growing wings. I felt like an animal. Worse, an insect.

    And I had no idea what to do about it.