“This blatant effrontery will not stand!”

Margo rolled her eyes and stormed out of the room. Whatever, Mom. As if I need your permission to fly. The very ability made her free in a way her mom could not comprehend. When her nubby winglets had finally unfurled, after weeks of agonizing yearning, her parents had been duly flummoxed. She was lucky it was summer and they were eating out on the patio – the dramatic opening of her shiny iridescent wings and subsequent flight would have been far less impactful if she’d had to get up from the dining room table and walk outside first, making sure they all followed. Instead she simply waited for the right moment, somewhere between asserting her independence and giving a withering diatribe on the impossibility of tbeir even attemting to curtail her freedom and then WHUMP she was wingful and then WHOOSH she was gone.

Now, of course, she had to deal with the fallout. Sigh.

Just her mom of course. Her dad was busy investigating the last uptick in the market, and her brothers had long since gotten over ther initial surprise. After all, wings were quite common alterations nowadays. It didn’t make her so special. Just because it wasn’t Orthodox didn’t mean it wasn’t done.

Just tell that to her mother.

“You know you can’t be buried in a Jewish cemetary if you have genetic modifications!” her mom yelled after her.

As if she cared. Why would she care to be bound by a bunch of stilted old rules when she could soar through the sky? If God didn’t want her to have wings, He wouldn’t have invented Cosmetic Genetics.

Her wings were something between a bat and a dragonfly, and her bone structure and composition had been modified as well in order to make her lighter. She’d had to keep her wingnubs concealed for some time as they grew in. Man did they itch. But it had been worth it.

As long as her mom didn’t do something psycho and lock her in the cellar.

She wished she could pick her mom up and carry her with her as she flew, to show her the amazing feeling of being airborne. But she wasn’t nearly strong enough to carry a full human, even a skinny one like her mother. The supplements the cogen company gave her were filling out her shoulder muscles but it would still take time to grow that much muscle.

But someday, she would do it. She would show her mom what it feels like to fly.

She wasn’t naive enough to think that it would change anything. Her mom would still be anti-cogen and would harp on her everytime she came home and give her pamphlets about the Natural Humanity movement. But maybe, just maybe, the little girl that still lived in her mom would feel glee, soaring above the city, being carried by the wind–and that would make it worth it.