Who am I? I don’t know. I have no name, no title, not even a color.

I must be an outcast, a loner. And I doubt that it’s of my own will.

I don’t even know where to find civilization any more. I don’t even know if it still exists. I’m completely dependent on these strange things that now populate this planet.

Maybe I’m the only one left.

In memories so distant that it takes me many cycles of light and dark to access them, I hear a voice.

It says: “This one is headstrong. Its challenge will to be to wait until those things that it needs are ready, and then to assemble them into a craft that it can use to join us in our new home.”

And then I had an urge to fly.

I cannot remember whose voice that was, only that it was important to me and still should be. But, it isn’t. I wonder why. I cannot even remember his color.

I wonder why I have no color?

I wonder.

~ ~ ~

For almost as long as I can remember, I’ve always wanted to fly. I’ve wanted to be like a bird, soaring and swooping like a leaf on the wind, diving down and pulling up, courting disaster but never meeting it.

But the chances that I’m going to grow wings are very remote, so I’ve had to find other ways to fly.

Not airplanes or balloons, they’re clumsy and have too many restraints. And restraints matter.

Not parachutes either, because they don’t let you come back up again, and you need to get up, in the sky, to begin with.

Just anything won’t do, because the chances of my actually working them are even more remote than the chances of my growing wings.

I’ve had to build it myself.

It looks like a silvery teardrop, seamless and perfect. I can see out, yet no one can see in. The controls are smooth enough that I won’t cut myself on them, and there aren’t any bright screens to give me headaches. It’s virtually perfect.

Except for one thing. It won’t fly.

Soon, a suitable way to make it fly will be discovered. I don’t know what it will look like, or how it will work. But it will fit my ship.

But I’ve waited this long. I can afford to wait some more. Wondering, trying to avoid discovery by the strange things that I share this planet with.

Something that is growing harder and harder.

But soon, I will fly. Fly away.