Winterborn

[Blighter]

[font=Palatino Linotype][color=#999999]O[color=#99AA99]h dear, the first time. Just like the other kind of first time, over way too quick, but it wasn't awkward in the least. It was wonderful. After seven months of theory and simulators, flying in the backseat with an instructor in front of you, watching over you, they let me fly on my own.

I don't really have the words to describe it, I mean, I do but they just don't do it justice. It was such an overwhelming feeling, sitting alone in that little Tiger Shark as it made way out of New Berlin's gravitational clutches. Escaping the world as I knew it, making off into darkness. Stars glimmering faintly in the distance, the system's own shedding little light on everyone traversing this patch of space, reflections of the light in the distance, their source the space-station, The Ring ahead.

But the most wonderful part of it all was that blissful silence. With the looming darkness of space all around you, it was strangely comforting, not menacing, threatening like the calm before a storm. It was just like in the middle of Winter, as if snow had fallen onto the world, shrouded it in a veil of endless white. Silencing everyone and all things as the world came to a standstill. It was overwhelming and comforting at once, and that moment I knew, this was it.

This was what I wanted, was where I wanted to be. It was perfect.

You caan imagine how annoyed I was when the instructor said his part over the radio, telling me to do as I had learned and to get in formation, to follow him on this unfortunately too-brief voyage.

I did as told, already longing for the next time I'd get to make this experience, the next time I'd feel so... whole, in a way.