Grief in the Age of Flight

I float above the chrome and glass canyon, my personal drone humming its lonely tune beneath me. Below, the morning crowds surge through the boulevards, humans in their aerial pods, weaving between the towers like schools of metallic fish. I used to find it beautiful, this ballet of flight. Now it just feels empty.

My drone banks left, and I descend toward the veterinary district where Dr. Reeves keeps his practice. The buildings here are older, their facades marked with the carved symbols of every species that walks, crawls, or flies through this city. A parrot swoops past my window, cursing at my trajectory in three languages. I don't bother to apologize.

"Sarah," Dr. Reeves says when I land on his balcony. He's a Border Collie, gray around the muzzle now, wearing the white coat that's become as much a part of him as his own fur. "I wasn't expecting you today."

"I know. I'm sorry." I step out of my drone, and my legs tremble slightly. I haven't been sleeping. "Is she still...?"

"Yes. Come."

He leads me through the hallway on all fours, his claws clicking against the tile. Once, when I was younger, I asked him why he didn't walk upright like some of the other animals chose to. He'd looked at me with those impossibly wise eyes and said, "Just because I can speak your words doesn't mean I need to adopt all your ways."

I wish I'd understood what he meant then.

The room is quiet, filled with afternoon light that slants through the floor-to-ceiling windows. My cat, Whisper, lies on a cushioned platform, her breathing shallow. She's seventeen, ancient for a housecat, even with all our modern medicine. When she sees me, her ears twitch forward.

"You came back," she says, her voice barely audible.

"Of course I did." I kneel beside her, running my hand along her gray fur. "I'll always come back."

"Liar," she says, but there's affection in it. "You've been avoiding me for weeks."

She's right. Since Dr. Reeves told me she was dying, I've found excuses to stay away. Extra shifts at the atmospheric regulation plant. Maintenance on my drone that didn't need doing. Anything to avoid watching the only creature who truly knew me fade into nothing.

"I'm sorry," I whisper.

"Stop apologizing. It's beneath you." She coughs, a rattling sound that makes my chest tight. "Tell me what's wrong. And don't say 'nothing.' I can smell the sadness on you."

This is what no one tells you about the Awakening, about the day forty years ago when every animal on Earth suddenly gained human-level consciousness and speech. They tell you about the wonder of it, the philosophical implications, the new laws and ethics we had to construct. They don't tell you about the grief.

"I'm scared," I finally admit. "When you're gone, I won't have anyone who remembers. Who remembers Mom, or our apartment before the sky-rails, or that summer when the power went out and we slept on the roof because it was too hot inside."

"Your mother loved you very much," Whisper says.

"She loved you too. More than she loved most people, honestly."

Whisper purrs weakly. "She had good taste."

Outside the window, the city continues its endless motion. Delivery drones swarm between buildings like bees. An elephant in a custom flight harness drifts past, heading toward the government sector. A flock of ravens spirals upward in a formation so precise it must be deliberate, probably one of their poetry readings. The city is alive with voices, with consciousnesses, with beings who think and feel and dream.

And yet I've never felt more alone.

"It's strange," I say. "We gave you language, or you found it, or however it happened. And instead of making the world fuller, it just made it more complicated. Now I can hear your pain. I can know exactly how much you're suffering, and it doesn't change anything. You're still dying."

"Language didn't do that," Whisper says. "Death did. Death was always there."

"But before, I could pretend you didn't know. That it was just... instinct."

"And now you know I've always known. Every time you left for work, I wondered if you'd come back. Every night, I checked to make sure you were still breathing." She pauses, her yellow eyes finding mine. "Love is always grief waiting to happen, Sarah. Speaking your language didn't change that. It just means I can tell you now: I wouldn't trade a single moment."

I press my face against her side, feeling the rapid flutter of her heartbeat, and I cry. Dr. Reeves quietly leaves the room, giving us privacy that only matters because Whisper can ask for it now.

Through the window, I watch a child in a bright red drone chase a dog, a Labrador, laughing and shouting for the kid to catch him if she can. They spiral upward together, joyful and free in a world I no longer understand. A world where animals talk and humans fly and nothing is simpler for it.

"I don't know how to do this," I say.

"Yes, you do," Whisper replies, her voice already fading. "You wake up tomorrow. You fly through your strange and terrible city. You talk to the ravens and argue with the pigeons and you keep living. You do what we've always done."

"What's that?"

"You love the world anyway. Even when it hurts. Especially then."

Her breathing slows. The light shifts. And in this room, in this city of talking animals and flying humans, in this future that's somehow more heartbreaking than any past I can remember, I hold my oldest friend and I let her go.

Below us, the city hums its electric song, full of voices now, full of stories and sadness and joy in equal measure. And tomorrow, I will wake up and fly through it alone.