Rochita Loenen-Ruiz is a writer-mom living in The Netherlands. When not engaged in Mommy activities, she writes speculative fiction, fantasy, poetry and essays. She writes columns for several publications and her work has been published in various online and print magazines. For more information, please feel free to visit her blog.

"Here's how we'll do it," my mistress said.

She trapped light dancing in through her window, traced the patterns of exotic blossoms onto thin parchment, a dash of cerulean blue - silver shadow tipped the wing. White feathers floated in through the casement - she caught and pressed them onto the page

I grew jealous of the weightlessness of light, of the sound of her voice caressing the shadows, of the arch of a wing, and the trill of fragile song.

"Give them lift," she whispered.

And there they were, rising up with flutelike melody, voices shattering the calm of late afternoon.

"Fly, fly," she crooned and cried.

Her arms imitated their flight - her fragile feet perched on the edge of a chair. I watched her slender frame grow tinier still, until she was nothing more than a mass of feathers and eyes blinking at me through the rims of her spectacles.

Before she learned to sing like one of them, before she lifted off and flew away, she gifted me with her pens, her brush, the kaleidoscope of colors on her palette, the secrets of her alchemy.

"Remember," she said. "Remember the magic lives inside you."

Trapped within this awkward shell, I struggle to emulate her wizardry. Sometimes, I think I am at the verge of discovering what art she used to break free of earth's gravity.