Robert Silverberg - Nightwings

She rose and let her wings unfold. Some passers-by looked oddly at her, not because there was anything unusual about the sight of a naked Flier in the streets of Jorslem, but because the sunlight was so strong and her transparent wings, so lightly stained with pigment, were evidently nightwings incapable of withstanding the pressure of the solar wind.

“I love you,” we said to her, and our hands ran lightly over her satiny skin in a brief caress.

Her nostrils flickered in delight. Her small girl-child’s breasts, became agitated. Her wings now were fully spread, and they gleamed wondrously in the sunlight.

“Now we fly to Agupt,” she murmured, “to Redeem the Changelings and make them one with us. Tomis, will you come with me?”

“I will be with you,” we said, and I gripped the star-stones tightly and crouched over my cabinet of instruments in the dark room beneath the place where she stood. “We will fly together, Avluela.”

“Up, then,” she said, and we said, “Up.”

Her wings beat, curving to take the wind, and we felt her struggling in the first moment, and we gave her the strength she needed, and she took it as it poured from us through me to her, and we rose high. The spires and parapets of Jorslem the golden grew small, and the city became a pink dot in the green hills, and Avluela’s throbbing wings thrust her swiftly westward, toward the setting sun, toward the land of Agupt. Her ecstasy swept through us all. “See, Tomis, how wonderful it is, far above everything? Do you feel it?”

“I feel it,” I whispered. “The cool wind against bare flesh—the wind in my hair—we drift on the currents, we coast, we soar, Avluela, we soar!”

To Agupt. To the sunset.

We looked down at sparkling Lake Medit. In the distance somewhere was Land Bridge. To the north, Eyrop. To the south, Afreek. Far ahead, beyond Earth Ocean, lay my homeland. Later I would return there, flying westward with Avluela, bringing the good news of Earth’s transformation.

From this height one could not tell that our world had ever been conquered. One saw only the beauty of the colors of the land and the sea, not the checkpoints of the invaders.

Those checkpoints would not long endure. We would conquer our conquerors, not with weapons but with love; and as the Redemption of Earth became universal we would welcome into our new self even the beings who had seized our planet.

“I knew that some day you would fly beside me, Tomis,” said Avluela.

In my dark room I sent new surges of power through her wings.

She hovered over the desert. The old Surgery, the Changeling shrine, would soon be in sight. I grieved that we would have to come down. I wished we could stay aloft forever, Avluela and I.

“We will, Tomis, we will!” she told me. “Nothing can separate us now! You believe that, don’t you, Tomis?”

“Yes,” we said, “I believe that.” And we guided her down through the darkening sky.