I think anyone that wants to make pictures with Sanguine will happily make the time. Me especially.

over. For now she would return home, her feet firmly on the ground, for all the rest of the world just another person walking through life. They would never know her beyond what she let them see. They would never know the real her. The version of her that only existed in the freedom of the clouds.

shuddering breath and gripped the controls of her craft. Taking control of herself once again, she pushed the throttle forward and brought the stick back, levelling out to a normal cruising flight.

Maybe one day she'd let herself do more. Or maybe she'd let gravity win. Either way it would be

their prison as she allowed her sorrow it's brief freedom.

She never knew how long she actually let herself be like this, only that it was both long enough, and not. Enough to at least feel and release some of the pressure, but never enough to be rid of it.

Opening her eyes, she took one last

happiest moments.

She never let it out, never let the tears fall... except here. Here, where she was alone, where she was in control, and yet totally out of control.

Her breath caught and shuddered as the sobbing started. Her chest rattled and heaved with each breath, tears finally escaping

through her body as she went into freefall. She could feel her craft shifting around her as it plummeted, but kept her eyes closed. Her breathing was slow and steady, her mind clear. And there it was. That ache of sadness. It was always there, lingering at the edge of her thoughts, even in her

One more glance assured her she was well and truly out of the reach of the trees and ridges she had so recently been mere inches from. Far enough to let go.

Throttling back nearly to idle power, she let her craft fall backward, then closed her eyes and let go of the controls.

A familiar chill ran

cleared the wall. She streaked into the blue, cloud pocked sky, sparing occasional glances at the altimeter as she left the earth further and further behind. Perhaps one day she would be able to leave it behind entirely, but not today. Not with her current craft.

The engine shrieked with the strain, the nose of her craft blocking her view of the wall, her momentum still throwing her toward it even as she clawed her way skyward.

No explosion occurred. There was no crunching of hull on rock that would have been the telltale of a tail strike had she not

curves, and she counted them down as they brought her nearer and nearer. As she cleared the final curve, the dark grey of the crushing stone wall hove into view and she pulled the controls back into her lap, firewalling the throttle as she forced the craft into a sudden vertical climb.

the logic of the local topography. Climbers used it's vertical face to challenge their strength. She used to it to challenge death.

The curves of the valley whipped her from side to side as she approached the massive stone edifice. They hid it from view, but she knew it was there. She knew these

into those unyielding rocks. The thoughts were there, but she would never let them take her.

She pushed the throttle still further as she entered what she knew would be the final stretch of her run. This was always where she ended. A valley that came to an abrupt end in a sheer cliff that defied

to toss the treetops with her wake, inches separating those silent witnesses of her passing and the fragile hull. On bad days, the ones where even the refuge of flying could do little to lift her mood, she'd thought it would be so easy to simply let go, let the world win, let gravity drag her down

curves of the earth beneath her.

Nothing else mattered as she pushed to the limit of her abilities. There was no thought, no plan. She reacted to each obstacle as it came, living in the moment as if nothing else could possibly exist. Her craft tore through the mountainous countryside low enough