Jack, Jake and the Lake

He soared with his wings wild and wide, whistling in the wind and wavering above the wintry waters. The frozen hands of Jack had touched the lake below, and with a weary white face it offered up no break from the fall. The span of the once watery surface was acres and acres, and Jake flew for his life. The wind still tried to take him down, to be crushed against the ice, to be blood on snow with broken bones. He shook and looped as clouds covered his view, and his heart cascaded to the depths of his internal reality. He descended like a dart, dropped from the heavens, damned to death by the Gods above.

Down he went, the wind acting like the ice, breaking into his skin and freezing his blood, stopping his organs and grinding them to a fearful halt. They no longer sloshed but crunched, a noise like metal on metal, like mechanical parts striking clunking cogs. The noise deafened him as still he fell, the world spinning, the white icy face coming closer, calamity upon calamity, he knew for certain he was set to die. Though he was entire three dimensional, he felt only like an unreachable ball of fiery emotion headed to the centre of the earth like a burning meteor, which would chomp through the surface as if it were mere cheese.

He blinked. Back in the sky, the wind held him. There was, there had been, no drop; he was flying as sturdily as ever. His gorgeous, glorious unrivalled white wings stayed true, as they had never failed to do. They felt not a part of him, but a part of the sky itself, as though the universe was holding him tightly. Perhaps that meant the universe could decide to drop him, if the wings were not his own, but for now he trusted in them and continued his courageous course. He smiled, for he was but more than emotion, more than fear, and more than a wreck upon the cold and stone like ground. He was more than even he knew, there in the hands of the world itself.

The snowy face of the lake lost that look of bleak weariness; Jake could see the love in its invisible eyes. Jake could see contrast. He could see science and he could see art. He could see death and life, love and hate, pain and happiness. He could see dark and light, fear and courage, anger and soft serenity. He could see it all. Perhaps to see is not to understand, for he understood not why he did not fall. But see he did, and fly he did, for joy, for tears, for the want of never knowing, for the want of never coming within the safety of the ground.