The Sky Between Us

The Sky Between Us

People always dreamed of flying.

So when 17-year-old **Micah Hale** first lifted off the ground, weightless and trembling above his mother’s backyard, he thought it was the beginning of something beautiful.

And it was.

For a while.

Micah’s power wasn’t just flight. He could *hover*, *soar*, *rocket* through the sky faster than a fighter jet—but also float quietly above trees, like a whisper in the wind. He never needed wings. He *was* the wind.

People started calling him **Stratos**.

He saved hikers from flash floods, stopped a train derailment, even helped NASA redirect a malfunctioning satellite. Cities loved him. Kids idolized him. He was light and hope and promise all at once.

But the higher he flew, the lonelier he became.

And no one knew it.

Except Eliza.

She was the girl next door—the one with ink stains on her fingers and notebooks full of poetry she never shared. She knew Micah before he could fly. Knew the boy who stuttered when he got nervous and laughed like the world wasn’t heavy yet.

She never treated him like a hero.

Only like a boy trying not to float away.

He came to her window at night, landing on her roof with bare feet and moonlit hair. She’d make him tea. He’d sit cross-legged and talk about how the clouds felt like silk, how space looked like a bruise from up close, how stars didn’t blink when you were near them.

One night, she asked, “What’s it like up there? Really?”

Micah stared at the sky. “It’s quiet. Too quiet sometimes.”

“Do you like it?”

“I don’t know.”

She reached out, touched his hand. “Don’t get lost up there.”

He squeezed back. “I won’t.”

But he did.

The first time he chose the sky over her, it was during a storm—hurricanes off the coast, four at once, people screaming for him on every channel.

She was in the hospital. Her father had crashed his truck. She called him three times.

He didn’t come.

He saved thousands that night.

But he lost her.

A year passed.

Micah got faster. Stronger. More distant.

Eliza left voicemails. “You don’t have to save the world all the time, you know. You could just… call.”

He never did.

Not because he didn’t want to.

Because he didn’t know *how* anymore.

He was surrounded by people but utterly alone. Reporters. Sponsors. A global fanbase. But none of them saw him.

Not the boy.

Only the cape.

Then one night, he came home.

Not to cameras or chaos.

To her porch light.

She was sitting on the steps in a hoodie and jeans, her face older, her eyes heavier.

“Eliza…”

“You still remember my name?” she said quietly.

He nodded. “I never forgot it.”

She let him sit. Let the silence grow between them like ivy.

“I thought you forgot me,” she said finally.

“I never could.”

“Then why didn’t you come back?”

Micah looked up. “Because I was afraid if I touched the ground again, I wouldn’t know how to stay.”

Tears filled her eyes. “Micah… You don’t have to fly to matter.”

He closed his eyes. “I don’t know who I am if I’m not flying.”

“You’re you,” she said. “You’re still the boy who made paper cranes and hated thunder and sang off-key in eighth grade.”

He laughed, a soft, broken sound.

And for the first time in a long time—he didn’t feel alone.

Micah stepped back from the spotlight after that.

He still flew—still saved people when they needed it.

But he learned to land, too.

To walk.

To sit in cafes with Eliza, sipping bad coffee. To go to book signings with her when her first poetry collection got published. To kiss her in the rain, even though he could’ve flown above the storm.

He learned that being a hero wasn’t about being untouchable.

It was about choosing to come back down.

Sometimes, he still drifted too high—lost in the blue, in the silence. But Eliza would send a voice message, always the same words:

“Come home, skyboy.”

And he would.

Every time.

Because the world didn’t need a god.

It needed a human.

And Micah Hale learned how to be both.