Page 176 of Let It Snow
"You’re right," I whisper, then loosen my arms around him.
Snow drops instantly, plummeting toward the ground. I dive after him, folding my wings tight to gain speed, cutting through the air like a bullet, but it’s not enough. He’s twice my weight, at least two sixty-five to my one thirty, so he picks up speed faster. I use the air itself to push me forward, pressing against the wind to keep close enough to save him if anything happens.
We’re slicing through the snowy sky.
The speed is crazy.
And… I watch as his body grows brighter, turning into a sphere of light.
He looks like a bolide, a blazing meteor cutting through the upper atmosphere, glowing bright.
Is this the chrysalis-shedding phase… or something else entirely?
Suddenly, the sphere starts to change shape, expanding outward.
Boom.
I shoot downward, and now I’m below him, and lose sight of him.
As if pressing the brakes, I abruptly spread my wings wide, halting hard, almost stopping midair.
I tilt my head back, scanning the sky above me.
Whoa!
What the hell is that?
Something enormous is floating up there.
A massive, luminous shape.
And I mean… massive!
Is this Snow, what he’s become?
His glowing wings look immense; they spread wide like the shimmering surface of a glider’s sails.
It’s hard to find the right words to describe it, there’s nothing like this on Earth, but if I had to compare, at first glance it looks like gigantic dragon wings, but with a swirly, spotted pattern similar to that of a butterfly’s, and at the same time they’re translucent—effulgent, lucent, like a fairy’s. What a mix!
"Oh… wow," slips out of me.
I rise slowly, climbing higher, trying to understand what exactly I’m seeing, and how it’s even possible that Snow is something so much more than I ever imagined.
As I get closer, I finally reach the level of his radiant chest and face.
The light pouring from him is blinding, yet as I stare, I can make out the lines of his features, his face, his body, his arms.
They also have a new quality to them; it seems that a scale-like pattern, similar to mine, is lightly overlaid on his skin, and his eyes resemble mine much more now too; we both have these narrow, dragon-like irises.
We look at each other.
"You are… spectacular," I murmur, and he smiles faintly. "Are you a light dragon or an… unusual butterfly?"
"I doubt there’s even a name for me."
"A… fairy?"
Snow chuckles softly.
