#8 Flight

by Jessica Alden

Consciousness occurred all at once, a cacophony coiling and constricting around him. Blindness consumed him.

He wrestled against bondage, but the wrappings held firm no matter how he twisted or shook or pressed. Someone had trapped him here. To what end, he could not imagine.

He swung from an unseen hard-point, memory and awareness reconstructing the form of his body. Head, torso, antennae, proboscis—old and new reorganized as one. He remembered the sweetness of leaves and the day the cravings had ceased. A thousand legs had brought him here and, driven by a different craving, he’d bound himself up. Instinct had enslaved him and instinct could free him. It was a truth he did not doubt.

The chrysalis thinned as he struggled to break through. He peered desperately toward the waiting world, but what little light penetrated was cracked and dyed by his wings.

Life erupted through the shattered lens of a synesthete. Every chirp and cry swirled orange or furious red and the wind broke against trees, black and blue, green and brown. The more he fought, the more insistently the sounds and colors crashed against him.

He had to escape or the chrysalis would crush him.

He kicked a crack in the encasement and spilled into sunlight. The stained glass melted, the color dripping away, and he scrabbled onto his shell. He was free. His life was his own.

As his wings unfurled and dried, the scent of hibiscus nectar beckoned him to flight.