Writing Prompt 24: Winged Girl
Phonella shook her shoulders and pushed back her hair, raking through the fine strands with her fingers.
The rain fell gently, a drizzle that soaked you through in minutes if you stood around for too long.
The nubs on her shoulder blades were bigger this morning. She turned herself so her back was facing the mirror and craned her head around to see as best she could the things that had begun to grow from her body. She leaned her head back stretching out her neck before straightening up. Her mother said this might happen one day. Might. For most, it doesn't. Most human beings do not grow wings. Phoenella sighed and rubbed the nubs of skin and bone up against the door frame of the bathroom. The sensation satisfied the itch, like sticking a cotton bud down your ear to clean out the wax or having someone else brush your hair.
She relaxed her shoulders. Through her thin pyjama top, a fine downy hair was sprouting along her collar bone and up the sides of her neck. She ran the tips of her fingers along the new texture growing from her body. It felt soft under her fingertips like baby hair. Except this was not hair. These were new feathers. She had feathers growing from her body. A rumble of panic grew deep within her body, rising up to her throat. She opened her mouth and began to scream.
Story first posted August 2020 // Photo: Tanya Clarke 2016 reproduced here with the permission of Phoebe Chaytor
