Zia's Four Free Wings

Fresh from the pond

Zia climbed out of the still, green water and gripped a reed with six brand-new legs, blinking in the sunlight for the very first time. Just hours before, she had been a nymph hiding among the pond weeds; now four long, glassy wings lay damp and folded flat against her back, drying slowly in the warm afternoon breeze. Above her, older dragonflies zigzagged through the air like sparks, darting up, down, and sideways all at once. Zia's new wings gave an eager little shiver. She couldn't wait to join them.

A wise great-aunt's secret

When she finally tried to fly, she wobbled forward in one stiff, straight line and thumped straight into a cattail. "Ow!" Great-Aunt Vela, the oldest dragonfly on the whole pond, landed beside her with a papery rustle of wings. "You're flying like your wings are tied together," Vela said kindly. "But look closer, little one. Each of your four wings has its own tiny muscle at the base, and each one can beat and tilt all by itself. You're not flying with one pair of wings. You're flying with four."

Learning to hover

Zia lifted off again, and this time she thought about each wing separately instead of all at once. She felt her front wings tilt one way and her back wings tilt another, and suddenly, instead of zooming forward, she simply... stayed. She hovered above a lily pad, her four wings blurring into a soft silver hum, not drifting an inch in any direction. "I'm not falling, and I'm not flying away," Zia laughed. "I'm just staying!"

The hungry frog strikes

She was practicing lazy loops above the water one golden afternoon when a shadow shot up beneath her: a hungry frog, its tongue already uncurling toward her wings. Zia didn't have time to think, only to fly. Her front wings snapped one way and her back wings snapped another, and she darted sideways so fast that the frog's tongue slapped only empty air. She hung frozen in place for one heartbeat, and then, before the frog could even blink, she shot straight backward, out of reach entirely. The frog stared at the empty space where she used to be, and sank back into the pond, confused and still hungry.

Four wings, every direction

Zia's heart pounded, but she was grinning as she looped back to Vela's cattail. "I flew sideways! And backward! And I stopped in midair!" "That's the gift of four free wings," Vela told her warmly. "Dragonflies have flown exactly this way for hundreds of millions of years, since long, long before the very first dinosaur ever took a single step." Zia looked out over the glittering pond, where every dragonfly darted and hovered and turned in whatever direction it pleased, and she rose up to join them at last, flying happily in every direction all at once.