Firebird

Since the first sparks of consciousness, I have dreamed about taking flight on the wind. As a small child enraptured by soaring birds, I longed to sprout wings and float skyward to glide amid clouds and mountaintops far below. Others playfully indulged such musings, even as age taught adult wisdom like stones in my pockets, tethering me seemingly forever earthbound.

The dream never fully died, though time slowly eclipsed it from waking thought. It hid safely away like a seed dreaming through winter's frozen soil, awaiting the moment skies softened once more into spring's promise. The moment my heart could blaze unquenched again toward those elusive azure heights.

They said the firebird roosted amid unscalable crags, high above the forests and farms of my valley home. Legends endowed this phantasmic creature with age and wisdom beyond human reckoning, keeper of aerial secrets from an epoch when dragons still ruled the firmament. Myth claimed the phoenix could appear to those questing skyward on mountains; not embracing them in fiery immortality, but bestowing instead wisdom to unlock all fetters oppressing mortal flesh. Even, some whispered, the gift to fly unbound by earthly chains.
Such lore gilded many childhood dreams beneath green valley canopies. How I envied the creatures wheeling freely through summer skies! If only fate allowed humans such beauty, how I would spend all days aloft...

Familial voices mostly dampened such notion. We have our realm and purpose as earth dwellers; seek not what heaven denies you. Keep attention rooted firm right here, lest you lose everything solid while chasing vaporous dreams. Practical words, wise enough words for one walking lesser roads. I heeded them as I stretched into awkward youth, burying disappointed longing to watch sparrow flocks darting through twilight. It hardly occurred to leave trodden trails behind.

Until the restless seed below silent soil abruptly stirred again, kindled by realization I could no longer breathe earth's heavy, stagnant domain without starving for want of something missing, something elemental my caged heart recognized across the gap of years from earliest dreams of flight. The mountain's rarefied peaks haunted nightly, promising reunion impossible on mist-cloaked valley floors. I gazed up from pastures and spades mid-labor as if glimpsing snatches of a half-forgotten paradise, shadowy images like old friends waving bittersweet from just out of reach. Each dawn stirred malignant longing for skies solely owned by winged others.

I must find the firebird. However impossible the striving, my life's compass inexorably pulled toward that long-frozen dream. No longer could I deny the stirring vision, the sense of fueled preparation over years suddenly igniting fiery purpose. The time had come at last...I must ascend the mountain! I must unlock skyward gates too long barring passage from earthbound chains - no matter how improbable the attempt seemed viewed from my small, obscure world. I must know what dwelt at the apex of all longing, all denial, all belief caged beating-winged in this single human form since first I drew breath and glimpsed my kindred slicing effortlessly through weightless skies.

Let others bind themselves safe to humble furrows; my destiny shone clear as sunfire at last. Heart racing, I bid silent farewell to the still valley as first rays kindled mist. With cloak and staff and traveler's sack, I turned resolute feet up the little-used footpath winding toward veiled mountain foothills. Toward revelations possibly awaiting no mortal in generations beyond count...