The memory came without warning, triggered by something as mundane as the smell of rain on hot pavement.
Astraea was walking home from CYAP, holding Mrs. Evans' hand, when a summer shower began—one of those sudden, violent downpours that leaves the city steaming afterward. The first drops hit the warm concrete, releasing that particular petrichor scent of ozone, minerals, and revived earth.
And suddenly, she wasn't on a sidewalk in New Haven.
Scent: Wet stone after void-rain.
She was on the Starward Crag, a mountain peak that had been dust for three centuries. The rain here wasn't water, but condensed starlight—liquid luminosity that fell in shimmering sheets. It smelled of ozone and diamond dust and things humans had no words for.
Her father stood beside her, his wings spread wide to catch the starlight rain. Each droplet that hit his silver scales flashed with captured constellations before being absorbed.
"First flight today, little star," he rumbled, his voice the sound of continental plates shifting. "Are you ready?"
She was thirty-seven dragon years old—the equivalent of a human ten-year-old. Her wings, newly formed, itched with the same fierce heat she felt now in her developing wing buds. She stretched them—small things, barely eight meters across, speckled with the silver-and-violet pattern of her lineage.
"I think so," she said, but her voice quivered.
"Thinking is for libraries," her father said, not unkindly. "Flying is for the sky. Watch."
He leaped from the crag. Not with a dramatic flap, but with a gentle push that seemed more like the mountain releasing him than him jumping. His wings caught the stellar winds, and he rose—effortless, inevitable, a silver comet against the nebula-strewn sky.
"Now you," his voice came back to her, carried on mana currents.
She stood at the edge. The drop was… considerable. Below, the void stretched endlessly, dotted with newborn stars and the dust of old ones.
Her wings itched. Her heart hammered. Four hundred years later, she could still feel that exact mixture of terror and anticipation.
She jumped.
For one horrible second, she fell. Stone rushed up. Wind screamed in ears not designed for atmosphere.
Then instinct. Older than species. Older than worlds.
Her wings snapped open. Caught the stellar wind. And she was no longer falling.
She was flying.
The feeling was indescribable. Not like human descriptions of flight—those were all struggle against gravity, effort against air. This was harmony. Her wings found the currents in the void, the streams of energy between stars, and she rode them like a leaf on a river. Effortless. Natural. Right.
She banked, following her father's glowing trail. The Starward Crag shrank below her. The nebula unfolded above. She was between, part of both, belonging to neither.
"Remember this feeling, Astraea," her father called as she drew alongside him. "This is what we are. Not creatures of land or sky, but of the between. The connectors. The bridges."
They flew in silence then, just the two of them, through rain made of dying stars and wind made of newborn ones.
That was four hundred and one years ago. Her last flight before the famine.
"Astraea? Honey? You're squeezing my hand."
Mrs. Evans' voice pulled her back. They were still on the sidewalk, rain pattering around them. Astraea realized she was gripping the woman's hand with dragon strength—carefully moderated, but still too tight.
"Sorry," she murmured, loosening her grip. "The rain… surprised me."
"It's just a little shower, sweetie. We'll be home soon."
But it wasn't just a shower. It was a key turning in a lock frozen for centuries. The memory was back. Not as a story. Not as something she knew had happened. But as something she remembered. Felt. The itch of new wings. The terror of the leap. The glory of the flight.
Grief. Yes. Because she remembered the flying, and then she remembered the not-flying. The centuries of groundedness. Of watching birds with envy. Of feeling her atrophied flight muscles ache with phantom use.
[System notification!]
[Achievement unlocked: 'History buff!']
[Description: You've had a vivid imaginative experience about historical flying!]
[Reward: 'Creative thinker' Title, +5 to Imagination stat]
[New skill unlocked: 'Flight fantasy' - Imagine yourself flying! It's almost as fun as the real thing!]
The System, of course, thought it was imagination. A child's daydream. Not a four-centuries-old memory of a lost home.
They reached the apartment. Astraea went straight to her room, not for the usual height measurement, but to stand before the mirror. She looked at her back, at the place where wings should be. Where they were beginning to be again.
She closed her eyes and reached for the memory. Not just recalled it, but relived it. The feeling of stellar wind under her wings. The freedom. The rightness.
Her back itched fiercely in response. The wing buds hummed, resonating with the memory.
The memory was fuel. Mana fed her body, but memory fed her… self. Her dragon-ness. The parts of her that weren't just biological, but essential.
She measured her height almost as an afterthought. 0.35 cm cumulative. Halfway to the next milestone.
But the number didn't matter as much as the memory. The feeling. The knowing that she had flown once, and would fly again.
That night, as she lay in bed listening to the rain, she did something she hadn't done in centuries. She flexed phantom wing muscles. Imagined them spreading. Imagined catching the air.
No, not air. Stellar wind. Void current.
It wasn't flying. But it was remembering flying. And for now, that was enough.
[Quest updated: 'The long wait - Commence thawing']
[Progress: 0.35/0.5 cm height increase achieved!]
[Memory unlock: 'First flight' partially integrated!]
[Note: Keep imagining wonderful things! Your mind is taking you amazing places!]
Astraea smiled in the dark. Her mind wasn't taking her amazing places. It was taking her home. To a crag that was dust. To a father who was… somewhere. To wings that were remembering.
Tomorrow: more kindergarten, more hiding. The day after: more growth, more remembering. The great return continued, one memory, one millimeter, one wing bud at a time.