Flight
For so long now she has only been watching. Endless days spent following the sun crawling across the sky, nights of gazing at the moon slowly float over the glass dome. There should have been stars, too - she remembers the word, but doesn't know what they look like anymore. They can't be seen because of the harsh glow of the city below.
And she has also been thinking, so many different thoughts: about the birds on her shoulders and why the old Wizard says they aren't alive. About the sound the sun probably makes when setting and about how strange it is that she never noticed when she had still been free - or maybe she just forgot. About the people in the city, who surely can fly wherever they want. About the reason she can't be let out of the cage.
Such thoughts occur more and more frequently lately. Maybe it has something to do with the sunsets having been exceptionally spectacular this week. Or with the fact that the drops never reach her when it rains outside, always sliding off the glass that divides her from the rest of the world. Or with the way the rabbit doll says "Good evening" every time in exactly the same tone of voice.
But she would really like to breathe the outside air.
Why does it have to be like that? Would the world really be destroyed if she ever set one foot outside? She can't imagine that, in spite of what the Wizards say: the birds trust her, perching upon her hands and letting her pet them. Wouldn't they feel it if she were a bad person?
The great doors open - there is no creak, but when her birds are all asleep she can recognise it by the movement of the still air. For a moment she feels strange, irrational hope that it is someone who will take her outside. But it is just a cat doll, sent to water the plants. Nobody will come for her. She herself is the only person who'd care enough to let her out.
So Suu makes a Wish.
The cat doll stops existing. The great cage with all its unreal inhabitants disappears next - suddenly all the leaves in the little forest she lived in start moving, creating a long-forgotten sound; her hair moves as if she were flying, but she remains in place, and the air flies instead; this is called "wind", she remembers. As a new, living air fills her lungs, the city disappears with all its artificial lights, giving way to the stars - for a moment she feels the weak, futile resistance of the Wizards and almost smiles. No more responsibility for humanity's future, and no more Wizards to try and force it all on her.
And it's a crystal clear pale night; the sky is a kind of transluscent smoky blue, what she imagines precious stones to look like. The wordless song of a lone bird pierces the air. Rosy clouds gather at the sky's eastern edge.
By force of habit she stretches her heavy weightless wings, then remembers that it is her own world now and rises high into the sky, defying the law of gravity - not necessary for her to follow anymore. And, carried by a wind from the east, she looks over this new Earth - a paradise of leaves and life and no human soul but her.
In this vast blue-and-green space, lit by the sun's first rays, she is finally free.
But she does not know what "happiness" is.