Chapter 3: A Wife

I must've been born defective. Ever since I opened my eyes, I've felt this longing for someone. I can't really explain who they are or why I long for them. It certainly isn't my pacifist older brother who feels tethered to nothing and no one but their stories. Nor is it the creepy people who watch us from the bushes, although I do enjoy their taste in snacks. A word echoes in my mind, but I don't know what it means. Love.

I never brought it up to Master, and continue to ponder it on my own as time marches on. Soon, we matured into wisdom, and our sacred robes with them. I’ve decided that love has many forms. It’s an affection that could be given and got more complex the more I thought about it. I mean, I loved my brother. I loved the planet. I have even grown to love those wide eyes that watch over us from afar. But it isn't the same as being in love. Whatever that means.

The longer I ponder it, the more confused I become until I just blurt out to Master one day. 

“Have you ever been in love?” 

Their eyes nearly pop out of their head, as if I just told them the answer to all life's problems was pea soup. 

“What is love?” they asked. 

After much explanation and deliberation, my brother seems as stumped as I was. And then another word popped into my mind. Wife. asked if Master could make me one, but they didn't even know what a wife was. Neither did I.

I was about to give up when my brother smiled and agreed to help me. They're convinced that my body knows more than my mind and that they could use that to give me what I've yearned for my entire existence. All it would cost me was one wing. I never felt whole with both wings anyway, and I tell them to take whatever they needed to bring this wife person to life. My eyes grow heavy. Is this the end, or a new beginning?