You Can Fly

I poise, wings at the ready, stretched out beyond the reach of my arms, the gossamer material catching the slightest draught from the ground five hundred metres below.

With the three-beep countdown I lean forward and on the final count my feet leave the platform and slowly my wings fill with air as I gracefully descend.

My next three minutes are filled with pirouettes, balletic movements, aeronautical contortions in three dimensions, my very being filled with the thrill of mastering an element that, back on earth, people could only dream of.

Here is human flight in its truest sense, my sturdy arms carrying me in great sweeping heaves of my wings towards the upper reaches of the arena, then allowing me to fall in the slow pull of the moons gravity, spiralling to the ground then at the last minute folding my wings and careering between the obstacles in front of the blurred crowd then turning upwards in a curving stall - and once again working my way upwards to the upper reaches of the great underground cavern that had revealed itself when finally we settled on the moon.

We had drilled into its rock to find these unexpected empty voids where once volcanic gases had made a series of subterranean refuges to protect us from the suns rays and the hazards of the vacuum of space. Now sealed and filled with air they were home to us, a lunar settlement whose contribution to the Olympics was the hosting of the new sport of human flight.

My three minutes ended, my scores displayed, I waited for the other nations to complete their aerial displays, their brightly coloured, iridescent wings circling the dark walls of the cavern like dragonflies.

I guess my performance had impressed one particular person who caught my eye and, smiling, mouthed at me from the stands, “You CAN Fly!”