Every dragon in the Emberhollow clan could fly. Every single one.
Cinder’s three older brothers had all flown by their second summer. Her cousins had flown even earlier. Her grandmother, it was said, had flown straight out of the egg, which Cinder privately thought was showing off.
Cinder was in her third summer, and Cinder could not fly.
It wasn’t that she hadn’t tried. She had tried every day, from every rock and stump and hillock in the hollow. She had flapped so hard her wings ached. She had jumped, and run, and jumped while running. Once she had tried jumping off her brother Flint, which had ended badly for both of them.
Every time, the same thing happened. She would flap and flap and flap — and drop like a stone into the soft grass.
“You’re thinking too much,” said her mother.
“You’re not thinking enough,” said her father.
“You’re too little,” said Flint, which was unkind, and also, Cinder feared, true.
One evening, after everyone else had gone to sleep, Cinder climbed alone to the top of Lookout Rock. It was the highest place in the hollow. From here you could see the whole valley, silver in the moonlight, and the river winding through it like a ribbon someone had dropped.
She wasn’t going to try flying. She was too tired to try. She just wanted to look.
So she sat, and she looked. She watched a barn owl glide low over the meadow without a single flap. She watched a puff of dandelion seed rise on the warm air and simply… float. She watched the moths circling the moon-flowers, not trying at all, just drifting from one to the next as though the air were water.
And Cinder noticed something.
None of them were trying. The owl wasn’t flapping hard. The seed wasn’t flapping at all. They weren’t fighting the air. They were letting the air hold them.
Cinder stood up on Lookout Rock. She spread her wings — not stiff and straining, the way she always had, but wide and soft, like she was stretching after a long sleep.
A breath of warm evening air came up from the valley. She felt it push gently under her wings, the way water pushes under a leaf.
She did not jump. She did not flap.
She just… leaned forward, and let go.
And the air held her.
For one heartbeat she hung there, wings wide, weightless. Then the warm air lifted her, and she was drifting out over the hollow — slow, and silent, and higher than she had ever been. The valley turned beneath her. The river glittered. Somewhere below, an owl looked up in surprise.
Cinder laughed out loud. It came out as a small puff of smoke.
She flew three lazy circles over the sleeping clan, then let the air carry her gently down to land beside her mother, who opened one eye.
“I stopped trying,” Cinder whispered. “And then I could.”
Her mother smiled and closed her eye again. “That,” she murmured, “is the whole secret. Now sleep, little wing.”
Cinder tucked herself against her mother’s warm side. Her wings ached in a good way, the way things ache when they’ve finally done what they were made for.
And if there’s something you’ve been trying and trying to do — maybe tonight, just for now, you can stop trying. Lean back into the dark. Let it hold you. Sometimes that’s all it takes.
🌙 The End 🌙
Sweet dreams, little one.
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