Aile’s France

It was a normal, even beautiful day. The summer hadn’t quite gotten warm, but the cold of winter had finally started to let go. The sun was shining, and a bright, cerulean sky arched overhead. Large poofy clouds rolled lazily across it. The human statues stood silently to entertain the tourists, and the accordions played for the same. The cars drove by on the cobblestones, the Métro ran underneath, and the zeppelins flew overhead between the great cities of Europe.

If one looked more closely, though, one saw the changes. Newer buildings with strangely tall and wide arches. A strange number of large feathers shed around the city. More stools for sale than normal. New loft apartments with skylights that opened.

And beautiful people with great bird wings of all shades and many colors, strolling down the promenades.

Here one flew in that cerulean sky, around an incoming zeppelin, oblivious to all airspace laws; a well-loved human friend was on board, and another moment couldn’t be spared. There one walked down the street with another, perhaps a mated couple.

Not everyone had taken so strongly to the visiteurs ailés, the winged visitors, as they were often referred to in the earlier days. Some had. Not all of the visiteurs ailés took to humans. Some had. The budding friendship between them was an on-again, off-again sort of thing, and many humans were superstitious to the point of denouncing the visiteurs ailés in spite of their similarity to certain biblical figures. Some denounced them simply because of that resemblance, unable to bring themselves to believe that some of it might be true in a visceral, tangible way.

But all who had bridged the gap reported the visiteurs ailés to be warm and wonderful friends once the ice was broken. Oh, certainly, they came in all shapes, sizes, and degrees of snobbery or friendliness, but on the whole, the general consensus was that they were okay.

When they first arrived, flying down from a shimmering hole in the sky with edges like the aurora on a long North Pole night, there was a certain amount of understandable panic. Some precipitous and unfortunate things were nearly done in those first few moments. But cooler heads somehow prevailed, perhaps having to do with all the children streaming to the windows of zeppelins in the air and buildings on the ground, waving and smiling. And there was that unmistakable similarity to those biblical creatures...

People took immediately to calling them visiteurs ailés, but as they settled into Parisian life alongside humanity, it became clear that they were not just visiting. And in spite of a desire in some quarters to hold humanity aloof, it was clear that one way or another, they were to become a permanent fixture of life on la Planète Terre. By that time, some measure of communication had been established with them, and in spite of learning that, in their melodic language, they called themselves Ka’aulele, the winged metaphor had already stuck. Most people thought of them as simply les volants, the flying ones.

If a newer building here or there had strangely tall and wide arches, or a strange number of feathers were shed around the city, or there seemed to be more stools for sale than a few years ago, no one really said anything. It was a different variety of thoughts that caused the friction; the thoughts that had plagued nearly every group of people since time immemorial who had been unfortunate enough to be different. People wondered. They didn’t say, but they wondered. What effect were they having on the human world? Were they tainting the children? Had they been let "in" too far, as if they were a dog of uncertain background... And were they here to stay?

Until the winged visitors had arrived on Aile’s Earth, it had been a fairly normal year; life afterward had not been the same. And yet it had. The very foundation of their understanding of the world had changed, and yet life went on. It was not the first time this had been so in France; and it would not be the last.

C’est la vie.