The Phoenix Creation 🆕⭐⭐⭐⭐ (on Amazon)

Chapter 8

Chapter 8

Unwelcome Visitors

'That wasn't so bad was it, Aly?' said Diana, as she plumped down on the sofa and kicked off her shoes.

Alya ignored her mother's question and plumped down next to her. 'Why don't they make shops where you can fly around and then our feet wouldn't ache so much.'

'Oh, Aly,' laughed Diana. 'They'd need to be huge now wouldn't they, and can you imagine how complicated it would be?'

'Not really,' huffed Alya. She hated shopping, and she'd just spent the past five hours doing so. It was torture, but she'd decided to make amends to her mother after she'd ruined the dinner a fortnight ago. 'We were born to fly, why make it so complicated?'

'Well,' said her mother, thoughtfully. 'We weren't actually born to fly, we were made this way, and if we had been born to fly, I think we'd live in a very different world by now, don't you?'

'What, like a world with seven continents instead of just one you mean?'

'Well, yes, that; and we'd probably be more like birds by now, with feathers all over our bodies and beaks probably.'

Alya smiled mischievously. 'Well, that would make clothes shopping twice as pointless then.'

Diana chuckled. She'd had the best day with Alya, and it felt like the old mother and daughter relationship that they'd had when she was little, instead of the constant division and opposition nowadays. Her daughter could be so wilful, and Diana didn't know how to deal with her, nor did she have the energy to do so. Her job as a senior executive in C1's transportation division usually meant she was up against it; keeping trams, monorails, and cars moving smoothly. It was a technical nightmare to most, but to Diana, it was simply a large but complex puzzle. A challenge she loved and a darn sight easier one than raising one wayward teenage girl. Diana smiled at her daughter as she reflected; there wasn't much of her in Alya, except looks perhaps. Alya had inherited Diana's lovely hazelnut, skin tone, black hair, and sweetheart-shaped face, but her daughter's eyes were a very dark brown compared to hers. And as for personality, they were like chalk and cheese. Alya had her own unique temperament and disposition, like that of a wilful and happy canary surmised Diana, and then her thoughts stumbled on the analogy. Her daughter had indeed been a captive for many years, albeit in a hospital bed. Diana returned to those memories of her baby growing up surrounded by doctors and nurses as one bout after another of pneumonia racked her poor little body.

The theory had been that Alya's lungs had grown too fast for her little torso to cope with, and were constantly flaring up with pneumonia as a result. The anomaly was part of a glitch in the genetic coding of hybrids, although cases were very rare these days, but not unheard of. Generally speaking, the hybrid community of Continent One was the healthiest they'd ever been. It was unusual to find birth defects relating to their bird coding, and so Alya was a rare case. Diana had been disappointed to learn that the anomaly could be inherited and so the medical advice had been; no children for Alya. Diana had pushed the information aside at the time, but she knew the day was coming soon when she would have to speak to her about it. But not now, her Little Bird was still growing up, and Diana, least of all, couldn't imagine Alya as a mother anytime soon. She had a long way to go yet.

'What's for dinner?' said Alya, rising to her feet and stretching. She looked wistfully at the balcony and the beautiful scene outside; not a cloud in the sky, the sea glittered all the way out to the horizon. She could easily drop off the balcony and fly around for twenty minutes before food, maybe she'd head out to sea and dip her feet in the water.