The world was wet. Patricia was not. She was vibrant. She was wonderful. She was without a care. She wanted to careen down the street, skipping and leaping, flapping and dancing, but she didn’t. She held herself back. She didn’t want to draw attention. She knew she was weird enough already.

She hopped carefully over puddles imagining worlds within them, tunnels and twisted streets that ran as far and as deep as the sky. She wanted to dive right in, but she didn’t. She couldn’t. Who would tell her mother where she had gone?

High above her and reflected in the cool waters she could see several cranes reaching high. The city was expanding. It was always expanding. Patricia found the never-ending construction fascinating. None of those silly geese she usually hung with understood why and Patricia could never explain it. She barely understood her own mind sometimes. It dipped and dived like a bird in flight.

She rounded a corner and almost ran into the end of the bus line. Where were they going? A man in a forest green coat glanced up at her with disinterest then returned to reading papers bound together in a manila folder. How strange. She imagined he was a spy studying secret documents. In front of him stood an old lady, hunched in a grey coat, holding a cane, and who didn’t glance up at all. A witch? Who next? A boy in a red baseball cap became an alien in disguise. A blond woman with curly hair, now a time traveler from a small town in Finland.

The bus pulled up driven by driven by a professional pianist. In her mind’s eye Patricia was sure she had seen him practicing on the 7th floor of the apartment around the corner. He wasn’t her usual bus driver though. He didn’t know she got free rides. Rather than risk him rejecting her for her lack of funds she opted for a different method of travel instead.

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She had long legs for her age and she walked with an odd gait. Her mother had always said she was a strange bird. A strange bird indeed, but she moved fast. Moving fast meant she didn’t have to think about those who mocked her for her height. Somewhere above her the cranes towered and a part of her felt an affinity to them. They lived in the clouds too, just as she did most of the time.

She came to the base of one. A bright yellow one. Not as tall as the others. She felt a little sorry for it being down low. But in other ways it was perfect, just tall enough to clear the nearby rooftops and give a view across the city. She hopped the fence effortlessly and keeping her head low she made for the ladder.

She climbed up the crane, rung by rung. The view was indeed beautiful. It deserved a slow reveal. She finally made it to the top as the edge of the sun kissed the horizon. She took a deep breath, admiring everything that was laid out before her. She wobbled to the furthermost corner from where she had arrived, never loosing sight of the horizon until she reached the edge. Once there she closed her eyes and smiled. She took two steps forward, opened her eyes, and leapt out into nothing.

But Patricia was not nothing. White feathers surrounded her long neck, her back, and her head. They covered all of her but for her feet. They shivered in the breeze as feathers are inclined to do taking all of the cold from her skin so that all she felt was the warmth of the sun on her wings as she took the scenic route home.