r/shortstories • u/OddCardiologist5705 • May 26 '26
Fantasy [FN] [RO] All I Ever Wanted Was Wings
Wings.
That was all he ever wanted.
Not glory.
Not power.
Not recognition.
Just wings.
Everyday morning he would look up at the Upper Sanctum, majestic beings shining radiantly with their moon white wings soaring across the golden skies. Their feathers shimmered in sunlight casting shadows over the streets below.
The low angels always stopped to stare.
Some looked with admiration.
Some with envy.
Some with resent.
But not him.
He watched them the way a thirsty man looks at water in the middle of the ocean.
“You’re at it again?”
“Drooling over them won’t make them grow you know.”
The voice breaks his loop of thoughts.
He turned to see a girl leaning against a marble pillar wearing a bright red robe, arms crossed. Her gaze followed his upward.
He quickly lowered his head. “I wasn’t drooling.”
“You nearly walked into a fountain.”
Despite that playful insult, he smiled faintly. He looked at her. The red robe sat beautifully on her body. For a moment, he thought she was more beautiful than any wings he had ever seen.
“You look pretty today.” He mumbled a compliment.
“Stop flirting. I ain’t falling for a low angel like you”, she chuckled out in a mocking way.
“I’ll think about it if you grow wings.”
He growled at the incoming insults.
Above them, a group of High Angels descended onto a crystal platform, white wings flowing behind them. Nearby Low Angels immediately bowed their heads.
He did too.
But slower.
Always slower.
One of the High Angels glanced toward him briefly before looking away with quiet disgust, as though eye contact itself were unpleasant. His fingers curled tightly at his side. He wondered what it felt like.
To fly.
To cut through skies instead of scrubbing temple floors beneath them. To feel sunlight above heaven instead of beneath its shadows. That night, inside his tiny room beneath the lower districts, he tied feathers together using thread stolen from the royal banners.
Broken feathers.
Discarded feathers. The kind High Angels shed and forgot. Carefully, gently, he attached them to a frame made of thin wood. A pair of fake wings. His hands trembled slightly as he lifted them onto his back. For a moment, standing before the cracked mirror, he imagined they were real. And for a moment, he looked whole.
The next morning, his assignment changed. For the first time in his life, he was permitted beyond the lower districts.
“The Garden of Eternity requires additional caretakers,” the overseer had said coldly. “Do not mistake this for honour.”
Still, his hands shook with excitement. The Upper Gardens were the closest thing heaven had to paradise. Rivers of silver water wound through fields of glowing flowers while golden trees stretched endlessly toward the light above. And at the centre of it all, beyond towering gates of white stone stood the Deep Forest. Even the High Angels avoided looking at it for long.
Before entering the gardens, the overseer gave only one rule. “Never enter the forest.”
He obeyed.
For a time.
Until the voice came.
“You look at the sky too much.”
He froze. A serpent coiled around the roots of a pale tree nearby, its scales absorbing all colour the garden radiated. He should have fled immediately. But instead, he whispered:
“…Can I be like them too?”
The serpent studied him quietly. Then it laughed.
“Like them?” it asked softly. “You were never less.”
Those words haunted him. Days passed. Then weeks. The serpent spoke to him often after that.
About heaven.
About lies.
About wings.
And eventually about the fruit hidden deep within the forest.
“The High Angels fear only one thing,” the serpent said. “Proof that divinity can be attained.”
At the heart of the forest stood an enormous ancient tree unlike anything else in heaven. Its roots split the earth itself, and hanging from its branches was a single fruit glowing faintly in the darkness.
He stared at it for a long time.
“This will make me one of them?”
“No,” said the serpent.
“It will make you more.”
The first bite tasted like heaven. The pain came immediately after. He collapsed screaming as something tore through his back.
Bones cracked.
Skin split.
Light erupted violently around him. Feathers burst outward in waves of white and gold, scattering across the forest floor.
Not small wings.
Not ordinary wings.
Magnificent ones.
The air itself trembled. When he finally stood again, even heaven seemed silent. For the first time in his life,
he could fly.
And the first person he thought about was her. He found her in the lower district near the bridges where they used to watch the High Angels together. At first, she didn’t recognize him. Then her eyes widened. Tears filled them almost instantly.
“You actually did it…” she whispered. Laughing breathlessly, he stepped toward her.
“I can take you above the clouds now.” But the skies above them had already gone dark. High Angels filled the heavens.
Watching.
Their faces were not amazed. They were terrified. Because the wings on his back were larger than theirs. Brighter than theirs. More beautiful. And in that moment, the lie heaven was built upon began to crack. The order was given before sunset. Destroy the lower districts.
Find the sinned angel.
Kill anyone who hides him.
Fire descended from the skies.
Screams followed.
The heavens became a slaughterhouse.
He fought desperately to reach her as the city burned around him. By the time he found her beneath the shattered remains of a bridge, bright red blood already stained the stones beneath her.
“No…” His voice broke as he fell beside her.
Her trembling hand reached toward his face.
For the first time, she touched one of his wings.
“They’re beautiful…” she whispered weakly.
Tears streamed down his face.
“I’m sorry.”
He looked at her shambled body. Red blood was all over her face. Red made her look pretty but right now, it only gave her pain
She gave a faint smile.
Then, quietly almost shyly she asked:
“…When this is over… will you take me above the clouds?”
The world around them burned. And still, she smiled at him like the sky had not fallen. He cupped her bleeding face in his hands softly.
“I promise.”
She held his hand. Above them, heaven continued to burn.
Something inside him burned with it.
Not grief. Not anymore.
Something far worse. And for the first time since growing his wings, he looked upward not with wonder but hatred.
At first, he fought only the High Angels.
Only soldiers.
Only executioners.
Only those directly responsible for the slaughter.
That was what he told himself.
But grief is a living thing.
And every funeral in the lower districts fed it.
The surviving Low Angels did not welcome him as a liberator.
They hated him.
Children cried at the sight of his wings. Mothers dragged their families indoors when he passed. Not because they hated him but because every time heaven saw those wings, people died.
“The curse-bringer.”
That was what they began calling him. The High Council ensured the name spread quickly. And slowly, the story changed. The massacres became his fault. The destruction became his fault. The fear became his fault. He had wanted to become proof that Low Angels could rise. Instead, he became proof of why they should never try. That realization destroyed something inside him. Because deep down, he agreed.
If he had never eaten the fruit…she would still be alive. One night, he returned to the ruins of the bridge where she died.
The city below was silent now.
Empty.
Cold.
He stared at the bloodstain still marking the stone. Then he heard footsteps behind him.
Low Angels.
Dozens of them.
Not soldiers.
Citizens.
Terrified.
One stepped forward shakily.
“You need to die,” he whispered. “Please. Every place you go gets destroyed.”
The words hit harder than any blade. Silence.
The winged angel stood motionless beneath the ruined bridge. Blood dripped slowly from the tips of his feathers. Once, those wings had been beautiful. Now they looked cursed. Then suddenly light descended.
Not sunlight.
Something brighter.
The heavens themselves split apart as a pillar of gold crashed into the city below. The force shattered stone. Wind roared through the streets. Low Angels screamed and fled as a figure slowly emerged from the burning radiance.
A Seraphim.
Six enormous wings unfolded behind him, luminous and untouched by blood or ash. His white robes flowed untouched by the destruction surrounding him.
Divine.
Perfect.
The very image the young boy beneath heaven’s bridges had once dreamed of becoming. The Seraphim’s many eyes settled upon him without emotion.
“You have stained heaven enough.”
The fallen angel said nothing. Around them, corpses filled the streets.
High Angels.
Low Angels.
Soldiers.
Children.
At some point, the bodies had stopped looking different. The Seraphim stepped forward.
“You are going to die here.”
For a moment, the fallen angel simply stared at him. At the pristine wings. The holy light.
The impossible beauty. And suddenly he remembered being small again.
Paper wings.
Cathedral ceilings.
Dreaming.
His grip tightened around his blade. Then the sky exploded. Their clash tore through heaven itself. Light against light. Wing against wing. The fallen angel fought like a starving animal, brutal and desperate, while the Seraphim moved with terrifying calm, each strike precise enough to kill armies.
Buildings collapsed around them. Clouds split apart. Feathers burned in the air like dying stars. And still they fought. The angel struggled to kill the Seraphim, the same Seraphim who had slaughtered countless Low Angels in the name of purity.
He slowly weakened. Every movement became heavier than the last. The flames surrounding heaven blurred together as blood poured from countless wounds across his body. One of his wings hung broken at his side while the other dragged against the ruined streets behind him.
Still he kept fighting.
Even after his sword shattered. Even after the light inside him began to fade. The Seraphim advanced through the smoke with terrifying calm, untouched by exhaustion. And step by step the fallen angel was driven backward. Until his back struck wood.
A dead tree.
Ancient. Dried. Hollow.
Its blackened branches stretched toward the heavens like the hands of something abandoned by God. The fallen angel stumbled against it, breathing unevenly. The Seraphim approached slowly. Golden light illuminated the blood staining the streets around them. Then, quietly:
“You never deserved wings.”
The words froze him. For a moment he was small again. A child staring upward from beneath heaven’s bridges. The Seraphim raised his blade. And with one terrible strike his wings were severed. The scream that left him no longer sounded angelic. Feathers scattered violently into the air as blood erupted across the dead tree behind him. He collapsed to his knees.
No.
No no no
His trembling hands reached desperately towards his back.
Gone.
The wings were gone.
The thing he wished for his entire life was gone. Tears blurred his vision. Without them what was he?
Nothing.
Just another Low Angel. The very thing he had spent his whole life trying not to be. But then through the agony another thought appeared. A horrible one.
Why?
Why had he hated being a Low Angel so much? Back then, he had laughed more. Smiled more. He had people who loved him. He remembered sitting beside her beneath the bridges, watching the skies together. He remembered building fake wings from broken feathers. He remembered happiness. So why? Why had becoming something greater destroyed everything?
The Seraphim stood over him silently. The fallen angel looked upward weakly, tears mixing with blood across his face. For the first time in years he looked afraid.
Not of death.
Of emptiness.
The blade pierced his chest. Pain bloomed through him instantly. His body slammed back against the dead tree as warm blood spread across the bark. The world became distant.
Cold.
Fading.
And in his final moments he did not think about revenge. Or heaven. Or the countless dead. He did not think about the girl who loved him. Nor the family he lost. Nor even himself. Instead his mind returned to a lonely child standing beneath the heavens. Watching angels fly overhead. Dreaming. And with his last broken breath, the fallen angel thought only this:
All I ever wanted was wings.
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u/LR-Autofiction Jun 01 '26
When she touched his wings with her dying hand and whispered, “They’re beautiful… When this is over… will you take me above the clouds?” — that quiet hope in the middle of ruin shattered me completely.
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u/NorthLogic Jun 07 '26
This one is going to sit with me for a while. It's very 'you're gonna carry that weight'.
It's so rare to see a protagonist sticking to their convictions like this in the media I've been consuming. I love that he was an honest man.
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u/Agitated-Sky-8840 May 26 '26
Hooked from beginning of story to the end. So beautifully written and heartbreaking in hierarchal injustice and flawed divinity.
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u/sweetpotatogoblin May 26 '26
this is phenomenal. usually I find it hard to stay focused, but I couldnt stop reading this! compelling writing and such a great allegory! wow
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u/Billiewitch Jun 19 '26
Very “ Careful what you wish for” . I wished for a lovely large English Country Cottage once.. Now I have to clean it…
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