Ezreal felt the warmth grow into unbearable heat.  Summoned from sleep, he opened his pale blue eyes and relaxed the muscles in his shoulders; he spread his wings and let himself drift into the cooler air.  Falling and rising on the currents that churned the sky, Ezreal’s body cut them with precision.  He looked down and saw a translucent white sphere floating up towards him.

            Ezreal delicately grasped it with his claw.  He held it up to his mouth and stabbed it with a needle-sharp tooth.  The delicious gases trapped within it forced him to inhale sharply.  In that same instant, the last scale dropped from his shoulders where his wings were, revealing the bright white feather beneath it.  Ezreal dropped the deflated sac and began to rise.

            Jenna looked down at her napping son, his body and face in perfect pose of release.  She quietly stepped out of his bedroom and walked through the house to the patio, which had been the scene of his birthday party.

            Carrying a white plastic garbage bag, she filled it with paper plates, dumping in half-eaten slices of pizza, cake, and juice boxes.  Jenna worked methodically, one thing at a time, until she washed, put everything away, and cleared the patio.   She arranged Jack’s unopened presents on the dining room table, just as her mother used to do for her.

            Jenna realized for the first time that she could not remember her mother ever explaining why presents went on the table.  She only remembered being four, the same age as Jack,   and being yelled at for putting a gift on the floor.  Until today, she had never been aware of this as anything unusual.

            She had one last task to accomplish before Jack woke up.  She went into the garage and took out a brand new bicycle from where it had been hidden behind some lawn chairs.  She rolled the bike back to the patio.  Suddenly, her mother’s shrill voice came to her; it called her worthless and dirty as her mother’s hasty hands grabbed a gift-wrapped box off the floor.

            She left the bike where it was, returned to the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, and pulled out a milk carton.  Pouring herself a glass full, she stood over the sink, gazing out the window.  Taking deliberately measured sips, she saw the bike, the darkening clouds in the sky casting shadows and a slight wind rifling the streamers on the handlebars.  In the maple tree on the far side of the yard, she noticed a party balloon trapped in the lower branches, forgotten.

            Jenna put her glass down and went back outside.  She crossed the yard to the tree.  The balloon was still there, its string carefully knotted to the white latex and dangling down just within her reach.  Jenna was about to pull the balloon out of the tree.  She stopped herself.  Instead, she pulled the branch towards her and let the balloon sail free, away up into the sky.

Rina Palumbo is currently working on a novel and two nonfiction long-form writing projects alongside short fiction, creative nonfiction, and prose poetry. Her work appears in The Hopkins Review, Ghost Parachute, Milk Candy, Bending Genres, Anti-Heroin Chic, Identity Theory, Stonecast Review, et al.