In the office of Major Essen, First Lieutenant Kasey Graham stood waiting for her assignment. A piece of paper, orders from the higher-ups, in the higher-ranking officer's hands. "You are assigned to test the new fighter jet."

Kasey gave him an unsure look. "With all due respect, testing that thing out so soon seems extremely stupid."

He nodded. "I agree with you, but these orders are coming from Colonel Young."

Now Kasey sighed and shook her head, saying in unison with her commanding officer, "Fucking Colonels." This prompted a shared smile between them. After a moment, she looked at him and asked, "Has it been tested before this?"

"Yes and no," he admitted. "They know it can fly, but advanced functions have not been tested. That is where you come in. Today's flight practice is going to be centered on you testing its combat capabilities."

She felt very unsure. "Frankly, sir, I don't feel comfortable with this."

Essen held his hands out and made a face. "I don't either, and I voiced my concerns to the Colonel. He blew me off. But, if you feel anything is wrong, emergency land or eject. I will take the blame if they want to point fingers, but I'm not risking your life."

"Yes, sir." She saluted, then left when dismissed. She sighed as she traversed the halls to the locker room to change into her flight suit. This wasn't the first time she had been asked to test out something new on a plane, but this was hardly just a simple systems check; this was a brand new fighter jet, and it made her uneasy. No matter what Colonel Young had said, Kasey did not trust that it was safe to fly.

Just eject if something goes wrong, she thought as she changed into her flight suit as quick as she could. She then went out to the tarmac to meet Major Essen, Colonel Young, and an engineer by the jet. It didn't look that different on the outside, which did inspire a bit more confidence than she had had a few minutes ago.

She saluted the two higher-ranking men in front of her and introduced herself to the engineer. "Doesn't look any different."

"The difference is inside, and in how she is supposed to fly," the engineer explained, "but, according to the Colonel, this is nothing you can't handle."

That did make Kasey smile; at least the Colonel could get his head out of his ass long enough to acknowledge that she was a skilled pilot.

After a few minutes of quick explanations, mostly about the systems that have obvious differences and some about the things that needed comprehensive testing before the jet was given a pass, she climbed into the cockpit. The top closed her in, engulfing her in darkness.

"What the hell?" She muttered just before the dome above her head lit up, revealing that, instead of a window, a tactical screen surrounded her. Well, she had to admit that that wasn't necessarily a bad idea, she just hoped that it worked.

Once the jet had finished running its own diagnostics--okay, that was another good feature--and she was cleared, she took off. 

Everything was running great, her fears seemed misplaced, and, really, she was glad for this. If things kept running this smoothly, she would actually love to fly a plane like this. It almost felt like the form of wish fulfilment she had been wanting since signing up with the Air Force.

This, however, did not last long. Just as Kasey was relaxing, something broke off the plane. She heard the Major telling her eject, that something fell off the back; she was on fire and going down. 

She reached between her legs and found the ejection handle. She took a breath before she pulled...but nothing happened. She pulled the eject handle again, but still nothing happened. "Shit!" She grabbed the yoke and pulled back as hard as she could, but it was completely locked up.

Major Essen was still in her ear, screaming, "Eject, eject!"

She looked up at the screen just as a warning flashed across it: WARNING: GROUND IMPACT IMMINENT; EJECT NOW

"I can't!" She screamed just before the jet made impact.

However, there was no explosion; Kasey opened her eyes and no longer saw the inside of the jet. Instead, there was a dark void and stone stairs. She looked around for another way to go, but there was nothing.

So, confused and with nowhere else to go, she climbed the stairs. At the top, a glowing blue portal swirled silently before her, feeling almost inviting compared to the darkness surrounding the staircase. Cautiously, she reached out and touched it, finding it felt like water. She looked between her hand and the portal, then back down the stairs to the landing.

She sighed and looked back to the portal. "Nowhere else to go, I guess." So she held her breath and stepped through with closed eyes.

Her boots landed on grass and a warm breeze surrounded her. When she opened her eyes, she was in an empty field and the portal she had just stepped through was gone. She looked around, seeing nothing but thinking that maybe if she walked she would find people. Whatever the hell was going on, she was alive, and that fubar flight test was clearly just a dream.

So she picked a direction and walked, unsure of where she was or how she might have gotten here. Maybe this was the dream, she thought after a solid hour of walking without seeing a thing, because anywhere she could have possibly gone would not have been this far away from civilization.

Kasey finally decided to just sit down and think on a boulder she happened upon. As she did this, she unzipped her flight suit to her waist, leaving her upper body in just a tank top. When she looked at her bare arms, she screamed. There were red feathers embedded in her arm. They didn't hurt, and they appeared to be natural. Somehow.

She reached up and ran her fingers along her scalp, feeling more feathers there as well. She took her red hair out of its bun and felt once again, and once again, she felt feathers. This had to be a dream! There was absolutely no way she suddenly sprouted feathers! That wasn't how humans worked! She tried to pull one from her arm, but stopped when it hurt.

A dream wouldn't have hurt.

She felt panic rising and her hands shaking as it hit her that this was real. "What the fuck is going on?" Her voice was shaking along with her hands, but a small voice broke into her panic.

"Are you okay?"

Kasey jumped and looked over to see a little girl in a dress staring at her. The girl had the same feathers in her arms, matching her brown hair. "You...have feathers too."

The girl looked very confused, but nodded. "All Noctowls have feathers." She stepped over to the woman stared at her closely. "You have weird clothes. Are you lost?"

"Um," she looked from the girl to the rocks surrounding them, "I think I am."

The girl then smiled. "You should come to my village then. We'll help you find your way home." She held her arms out to her sides and they transformed into wings in the blink of an eye. She looked confused again as Kasey jumped back and stared in shock. "What? I know I'm little, but my mom says that flying should start from a young age."

"How did...you...?" She didn't know how to ask how to grow wings. It wasn't exactly like she had ever prepped herself to ask such a thing.

With that question, a light seemed to go off in the girl's head. "Oh, you must have come from Outside, right?" When Kasey nodded, the girl nodded back and flapped her wings to hover in the air. "Okay, here is how I was taught. Hold your arms out to the side, feel the wind, and see yourself riding it."

Once again, confused but seeing nothing else to do about her situation, Kasey did as the girl said, closing her eyes as she imagined soaring through the air, not in a jet like she was used to, but by herself like she had as a small child. A strange sensation filled her arms moments later, and she opened her eyes to see red wings spread out on either side of her.

The girl was smiling and congratulating her for doing it so easily as Kasey was still in disbelief; even as she flapped her new wings and hovered, she could hardly believe this was real. After a few minutes of the girl showing her easy maneuvers that could at least get them to her nearby village, they slowly flew off into the sky.

As Kasey flew over grass and trees, and felt the level of freedom she had dreamed the skies would hold, she didn't even realize the memory of how she arrived to this place was slipping away. The attachment to a battered and burned corpse in another realm was severed.