Winterborn

[Blighter]

[font=Palatino Linotype][color=#999999]Y[color=#99AA99]'know, even though I buckled under all the pressure and I still wasn't that partial to the whole Military Academy thing for the most part, it changed a lot when I saw that I had the possibility to learn to fly. I've always been fascinated with the whole idea, the whole concept of flying out there in space like my parents used to do. Just being there, isolated, confined to the little ship's cockpit you were in, far away from everyone and everything. And yet at the same time, part of the whole universe in its colorful entirety.

That freedom when you'd be in control of your own destiny by moving the flight-stick and that overwhelming sense of foreboding you'd get when you made escape velocity and that little ship of yours kissed the gravity well goodbye, launching off into the dark, into the unknown. It always seemed strangely peaceful to me.

It was as if a gate to a whole new world had opened up, a world you never get to grasp when flying aboard some luxurious little shuttle, just staring out of a window while counting the hours until you were to arrive at your destination.

But l'm trailing off here. I don't have to tell you that it didn't start that flashy and easy right away. First came the theory. Then the countless simulator rides. Between the usual day-to-day work, the usual courses and lessons, there was only some time alloted to my greatest interest in this whole gig.

Instead of complaining, bitching, I did as told, did as taught even. The basics, theory, that had come to first. It had to, because if you didn't learn that, didn't know, you had no foundation atop which to build on the things that followed. And I wanted the things that followed. I wanted to fly.

You could say that I ended up going from a troublemaker to someone who delivered A-grades on a daily basis after a while. I learned, studied, didn't rebel. I was being a good girl. And it paid off.