Wait. Wait for the muggiest, mistiest predawn of summer and the thundercloud pressing at its heels. Patience. As you learn how the clouds come and go, whirling, stretching their tendrils down to grasp at earth, the temptation will build to climb some human-made height, a water tower, a power pole, the peak of some rotten old barn with its lightning rod or weathervane. A leap of faith, you’ll think. A leap of desperation. Just once, you’ll think. Once is all it will take. Your heartstrings will sing for desire of it. Resist! If flight could be achieved by leaping from the highest height, suicides would sprout feathers.

Michael J. DeLuca’s fiction has appeared in Middle Planet, Orthogonal SF, Mythic Delirium, Ideomancer, and Phobos. He guest-edited Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet No. 33 and has big plans for an annual journal along similar lines. He operates Weightless Books with Gavin J. Grant and narrates occasionally for the Beneath Ceaseless Skies podcast.