
PodCastle 553: Grounded Women Never Fly
Show Notes
Rated PG-13.
Sound effects used in the host spot are in the public domain and can be found here.
Grounded Women Never Fly
by Stefani Cox
It is the women of the community who can run, but don’t.
The women are the ones who can place a foot just so, another precisely calculated in front of it and leap across yards of empty space. If the women did move in this way, there would be a rhythm. The settling of muscles. A steeling of the mind for the goal of the further rooftop. And the moment when the visualizations and intention explode into movement.
For a short time, such a woman would experience flight. There would be a spreading of arms accompanied by weightlessness; the thrill of a body propelled over nothingness. She could bridge impossible distances this way. She could crisscross from building to building among the packed houses. She could scale walls.
This magic is not a substitute for wings, for this woman would still be humbled by gravity. It’s just that that such a force would seem a mere afterthought. An inconvenience to be shrugged off.
In the end, however, none of what they could do really matters, does it? Because the women do not run. (Continue Reading…)