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don't think it had flowers.
    I leave my room and wander through the rest of the house. It smells of my father—the rich leathery scent of his cigars and the perfume, redolent of cotton and flowers, which he keeps because it reminds him of mother. The walls of the hallway are lined with bookshelves, dusty old things. My father is a collector. On the kitchen table sit a steaming bowl of porridge mixed with blueberries, and a cup of black coffee. He must not be far away.
    Outside, the sun shines down, warm and smiling. A stream babbles, and my mother's old flower garden, grown beautifully wild, ripples and dances in the breeze. I once asked my father why he never tended the garden. "That is what your mother was like in life, my darling,” he told me. “Free and boundless. Her spirit now cares for those flowers."
    Willard, my father's big wolfhound, is nowhere to be seen.
    The windows of my home are dimmed to keep the house cool, and my reflection in their dark surface shocks me. The wings on my back are no longer clunky metal but luxurious feathers. White as fresh-fallen snow, they look as an angel's wings. I spread them wide—twelve feet at least from tip to tip. Spreading them feels wondrous, like the muscles have been cramped and bound for my entire life. I flap them once and the gusting wind sends my mother's flower garden into a frantic shudder.
    Then I fly—like I was a bird born to it, not a little girl with newly found wings.
    Far and wide I fly, all across the land. I leave my house, Father, Willard, and Sebastian behind, all forgotten in my excitement.
    I circle the world in minutes. Or is it years? Time has no meaning as my angel wings flap. I see many wonders from above: far to the south, glaciers crash into the sea, and waves crash in all directions for miles and miles; I cross endless grasslands and forests seeming to blanket half the world… but I do not see a single living thing. Not a bear hunting for salmon in a stream, nor a gazelle prancing through the long savannah grass; no whales break the roiling surface of the ocean; and the enormous cities, endlessly scarring the beautiful earth, are empty.
    Eventually, though, I hear voices raised in argument.
    Far from any city, I stumble upon a volcano. Lava oozes from the crown of his head as he argues with the sun, who hangs far above in her heavenly perch.
    Far distant, the moon watches. His face is wrinkled and his eyes are wise and sad.
    "She will never be replaced!" says the sun.
    The volcano spews ash and more red lava leaks from its cracks and seams, like hot tears rolling down his devastated face.
    "Sarah is gone," says the sun. "Forever, John. She’s dead." Kindness and cold callousness mix in the sun's voice. Suspended above all, she will never understand the volcano's misery; she can never know the scorching pain of the magma that fills his craggy core.
    The volcano spits an enormous gout of ash and flame, showering the land with its fury. The sun and moon are hidden behind the dark cloud.
    I flee on my wings of down toward the kind-faced moon. Higher and higher I fly, my wings tireless—away from the sun and the angry volcano, back to the land of the waking.

    The next time I woke, I was allowed to leave my room. Walking at the woman’s side, I caught my first glimpse of the outside world through the dimmed force-windows that lined one wall of the hallway. White buildings reached toward the heavens; cars zipped around through a crowded sky. The woman stopped at a door—it looked no different from the sliding door to my prison, or the others that lined the wall opposite the force-windows. She pressed her palm on a sensor next to the door and it opened with a relieved hiss as the slightly pressurized air inside the building escaped into the outside world. On the other side of the door was a walled garden—utterly alien to the rest of the compound’s technological utopia. This garden was alive—lush, organic; the compound was