The king sits on the balcony tonight.
Not because there is a kingdom to survey,
but because the sky is clear
and clear skies make him remember.

He had wings once.
White ones, earned among a people who lived in the clouds,
who taught him to carry grace through turbulence
and serve without losing himself.

He carried a child across an ocean once.
A girl whose tiny hands gripped his shirt
and taught him he was meant
to protect something.

He built a nest.
Wove it so tight he didn't notice
when it stopped being home
and started being a question
neither of them could answer.

He traded his wings for a forge.
Good gold. Steady ground.
Then a plague emptied the sky
and he watched his old companions
grounded by a world that forgot how to move.

He was forged in fire.
Returned to a castle full of echoes.
Built a new kingdom
from what the old one left behind.

The dwarves gave him a new way to fly.
Not feathers this time — iron. Thunder.
A dark machine born of twelve hundred fires
that cut through the desert
like a promise being kept.

Then he fell.
Not from the sky — from the road.
The machine is wounded.
He is not.

But courage is like a blade left in the rain.
It doesn't disappear.
It just needs to be cleaned
before it cuts true again.

The princes sleep inside the castle walls.
The forge is banked but warm.
The jet waits in the workshop,
patient as a horse that knows its rider.

And the king sits here,
on this balcony,
not because he is lost
but because he is remembering —

that every version of flight
taught him something different.

The feathers taught him grace.
The forge taught him endurance.
The iron taught him that the sky
doesn't care what your wings are made of —
only that you use them.

He will fly again.

But tonight, the balcony is enough.
The stars are the same ones
he used to see from 30,000 feet.
And that is almost like wings.