I stand on the ledge my heart pounding, my stomach churning. I lean forward until the point of no return, my eyes wide, focused on the turgid ivy green waters far below.  

This is the moment. The moment I fall. 

I drop, the adrenaline runs wild through my body, the wind whips my hair across my face. For a moment the forces of nature wrestle with each other but gravity succumbs as my wings flex and judder in the torrent of the updraft. Fear turns to elation as I rise up into the shivering ice sharp sky. 

I climb and climb, tossed and harried by the blustering wind until I can see the curvature of the Earth over the sea on the horizon. Far off I can make out the low hulking white shapes of packs of icebergs heading south as if drawn by the warmer waters, their tips breaking the surface like dipping pods of migrating narwhales.  

I duck, dive and drop back to the glistening surface and race along close enough to run my fingers through the shifting water.  

Dodging around the broken tips of twisted buildings poking up through the water I head toward the largest I can see. I alight on a great stone lantern set on top of a dome drawn the colour of deepest black lead. The dome is dangerously tilted, the swell of the sea laps at its worn tiles, gently rising and receding like the waves on a smooth beach atoll. It's time is near, what has stood here for so long will soon be grappled below the waters and tumble broken beyond recognition to the rubble strewn floor of the ocean. I listen to the sounds carried by the wind, to hear the sound of the mourning of its passing but nothing comes but the hollow voice of the wind itself and the constant shrieking of the gulls. 

Taking to the air and heading away from the city I watch the thin trails of smoke like those from a recently extinguished tallowed candle drift up into the sky from a dirty smudge of land far off over the glittering sea. Drawn by a clutch of wheeling seagulls circling over some floating debris I turn to investigate. When I see what they've found I wave my hands and shout to scare them off. When I fly off I don't look back. The cawing seagulls return behind me to do their worst.  

I race off with the wind's hand upon my back toward a giant bubble in the ocean's surface. 

The bubble grows and grows in size as I approach. Slowly I circle it like a vulture assessing its dead prey. Below me lies an ovoid ship, its size vast beyond comprehension. Like a coral island only its tip breaks the surface of the teaming waters, far below, deep in the stygian waters it rests on the ocean bed. Its form, alien to this planet, is clutched and clawed at by the blue grey waves, its body mashed and torn by the waves. White flecks of surf spin off the ragged silver surface tearing long strips of skin from its frame exposing the bone white ribs below and a honeycomb of cells and passages. The silver skin, shredded from its body floats like tentacles in the relentless churning sea, from on high it appears like a skeletal remnant of some rotting giant kraken, long since dead, washed up from the deep.  

I turn back as the orange sun relents and descends to touch the sea sending out a thousand red tongues that lick the water's surface and chaise me away. Below me the chameleon sea shifts from emerald green to a spittle filled blood red and the shifting wind turns cold on my face. 

Landing back on the balcony of our tiny flat I slip inside, sliding the door to behind me to quell the noise of the ceaseless swell and the slapping of its hand against the tower block ten floors below.  

My father sits on a stool by the tiny kitchen bar doing a crossword in an old puzzle book, its pages turned tawny brown with age, his great white wings folded together about his back. My mother tries to boil water on the rusted stove, her damp hair pasted to her attentive face. Down the dark hallway, through a tunnel of mottled peeling wallpaper piled high with cans and barrels of water I can see the steel door to the flat heavily bolted from within. 

He looks up. 'How far did you go.' 

'Up to the city and then back down as far as Gravesend. There are some wooden crates floating by the docks caught in the rigging of the mast there.' 

'I know the place. Good, you and I can go out scavenging tomorrow and see if they are still there.' He taps his pen thoughtfully for a moment on the paper then returns to his crossword.  

'And?' my mother looks up expectantly. 

'St Paul's will not last much longer, Nelson's column has gone. The run from Westminster to Greenwich is just a collection of tiny crumbling ocean islands, beyond that almost nothing can reach the surface now.' I decide not to tell her the bodies caught in the rip tide providing food for the gulls. 'I can see fires burning on the high ground away toward to North Downs.' 

She pours us weak tea into tin cups studded with enamel chips and shakes her head. 'Too many people, too little space. We should pity them.' She is pregnant again. Soon she'll be able to lean over the balcony and watch us. I'll have a little brother or sister to take to the skies with - her angel and her little cherub.' 

'And the ship?' Father asks. 

'A little less. Skin peeled back like a silvered orange and the swell leaches even more at its innards.' 

He shrugs, 'It was meant for space flight, not this strange salted water. We were lucky to have made it here, this far, to find some salvation.' 

'We were lucky you found us,' my mother wraps her elegant arms around his waist and kisses his wide forehead with her wet lips. 

'Salvation for us both then,' he smiles and kisses her back. 

She returns to the stove to clatter amongst the old pans and rusted tins. 

'Biblical sign sent by God,' my father calls from his puzzle book. 

'Deluge!', 'Redemption!' My mother and I both shout out at once. 

We all laugh. 

It is fortunate my father and his kind came when they did, we have to adapt to survive in our new world and after all it is human nature to want to fly.  

One day soon all humans will be like me.

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I wondered what might happen if an alien ship escaping from its own planetary problems found us, right in the middle of ours.