Friday is writing creepy bummers.

Even with the net, the riggings, the adrenaline, the roaring crowd and the bright bright lights, she was afraid to fly. Always had been. Her heart could soar like a trapeze when watching the aerialists whizzing about overhead, but each time she tried to climb the ladder, willing herself to stand atop the platform, inching toward the edge with shuddering breath, the world would tilt around her and she would lose herself in the rush of blood inside her ears. Who ever heard of a trapeze artist afraid of heights? She was a joke.

On the ground beside the net, she would mime along with the real flyers. Her arms and legs were elegant things. Long and slender with tapered fingers and sweet little toes. Her frame was long and slender as well. By all rights she should be beautifully aerodynamic, though who would ever know? She moved gracefully underneath the ones who weren’t afraid. One young woman on the ground, barely an adult, small as any child when viewed from so high up. Her arms and legs twirled through the choreography as though she were in the air herself, perfection in each movement. What technique, what showmanship! What a waste, down on the ground alone among the wood chips and rigging anchors. Running away to join the circus is all well and good as far as life choices go, but one must rise to meet any challenge when living a performer’s life on the road. Life had gone on like this nightly for a year and some.

One moment in one evening as she was leaving the bigtop, in fact precisely at the moment the moon became full in the early August of her 19th year, she contracted a sudden and mysterious fever. She abruptly stopped and swayed on her feet as though she’d been hit by lightning. Her flesh rippled and became hot, became quite dry. A delirious euphoria touched her nerves, eliciting a groan that was equally a girlish giggle. It felt as though electricity had a direct line from the night sky into her bones.

The illness was a lunacy, but a madness of the body rather than the mind. The moon called to her with all its sky-high allure. The hot air lifted the dry oak leaves off the ground and eddied them around her slender ankles. She felt pinned in the doorway of the tent, pulled up and up by the moon and the warmth and the wind. Her skin became as paper, thin and drawn taut. Those elegant long bones saw their full potential before them and shaped themselves longer and more elegant, as they were always meant to be. Perfect stems branching out from a slender core, translucent paper flesh stretched between them. Her throat, always a vanity point for its length and curve, now fully realized its destiny as it stretched and thinned as well.

This geometric wonder, this marvel, this former girl who was now a sentient work of aerial art, wept gratefully from the girl-eyes, still set in a beautiful young face atop a pale pink kite. The nightdress she wore accommodated her transformation, cordially refitting itself to meet her new marvelous shape. The pink satin sash of the nightgown trailed just below her ankle as she began to rise up, up, blessedly upward in the hot wind, mouthing thanks to the moon as she flew.

She may indeed have floated away and never been seen again, had the circus master not caught up the sash and secured her just above the dry earth. Their eyes met, each tearful in awe of the miracle, each full of understanding at the fate upon them. She was no longer afraid.

In the golden years that followed, the circus flourished. What had once been a middling pony and trapeze show was now a traveling festival of international acclaim. All the aerialists she had admired now admired her. They would press rhinestones into her paper and dot her cheekbones with rouge. They asked her thoughts on their routines. Lunar imagery decorated every costume, a playful wink from the circus master to the Soaring Starlet (as she had become known on every television set in the world). Tickets to see her fly were treasured and young girls wished on stars to be her when they grew up. Lengthy limbs and throats were more in fashion than ever and all in the circus family were happy and well-off for a time.

You know how time can be. How time always is. With age comes thinning skin and brittle bones, and a girl who is mostly thin skin and fragile bone already can only hold up to the rigors of living for so long. The wear and tear was evident after three years on the road. The circus master and the Soaring Starlet spoke without words, as they had learned to do. They agreed to one last show. Tears of friendship and gratitude were exchanged and a date was scheduled.

An audience of five hundred and sixty-seven people were stuffed like sardines into the bigtop. They had been promised the show of a lifetime, a once-in-forever spectacle! The Soaring Starlet hovered in the center ring. The crowd was silent, breathless. She held their attention so raptly that each soul seemed to leave its body and float alongside her. With skin now so translucent that the show lights danced through her, the glow of her body was like a little moon itself, held aloft by cleverly placed fans to gust her this way and that. She was blown about in swirling movements, now toward the hushed crowd, now again away from them. She floated up above the highest wire, rhinestones sparkling and body glowing all the way. The beauty and strangeness of her was an enchantment. This had been so since the night of her transformative fever, the illness that blessed her along with the company that had given her a home. Tonight it was especially so, as though the attending crowd could sense that this was the last performance of her career. A truly ephemeral performance.

The tent roof opened slowly as she approached, canvas pulled back by the strong man and several aerialists. They’d all shared a loving, tearful goodbye before the show. It was time for her to go, and though the audience weren’t in on the secret they understood nonetheless. It was good and proper, for she was beautiful and so very tired. Even the most stoic father in the audience wept openly as she approached the portal.

A small wave and a sparkling smile were her parting gifts. The moon, full as it was the night it lay claim to one young woman who dreamed of flying, welcomed her home.