Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free (Bennu)

His skin was turning gray like a dead man. But Rowan was very much alive. Rambunctious as any other one and a half year old, he was starting to string words together and form an intense dislike for doctors.

"Please tell me he's not... he doesn't have what I have."

Ingram told her that he would like to keep the child overnight. For observation. She would stay with him, of course, Maya knew what Ingram's idea of "observation" was. But for now, in this very moment, Maya needed to step away and take some time to think for herself.

Rowan went to stay with Papa Swift and then Maya allowed herself to do what she so rarely did these days: she ghosted.

She had a specific plan in mind to somehow hit up all the tourist spots she had yet to visit. The Statue of Liberty was first on that list. Ghosted as she was, she wouldn't have to worry about admission, waiting in line, or any other paltry human trifles. She could see the lady in her full form all at once from any height. Best of all, she could gain access to the one place she really wanted to go without it officially being open to the public.

Public access to the balcony surrounding the torch had been barred for safety reasons since 1916. Even trips up the crown were closed until only earlier this year after Hurricane Sandy -a natural disaster that, for once, seemed to actually be of natural causes- but it was the torch she really wanted to visit. It represented progress and it was delightfully private.

Maya, in the form of a nebulous white cloud, circled the statue in lazy, uneven arcs as she admired the structure. It was hollow. For some reason, she had thought it solid except for the tourist areas. She felt along the engraving marks in Lady Liberty's book and touched on her lips and eyes and hair until she found her way to the open windows of the crown.

Disregarding the gasps and camera phones, the aeromancer breezed past, over, and around the tourists as she checked out the space. She didn't want to miss out on the experience everyone else got. Satisfied, she summoned a gust of wind that plucked a brochure (or ten) from its holder and together with the paper, she zipped her incorporeal body right back out the way that she had come and then straight up to the torch.

It was supposed to be dangerous, but that was for the general public.

She found her solidity slowly, touching first one foot then the the other on the delicate metalwork of the torch balcony. The day was probably cold. Most of the people inside the crown had been bundled up, but Maya wasn't. She smoothed her favorite yellow skirt down the back of her thighs modestly before she sat and dangled her ballerina flats over the edge of the platform.

Certainly, no one was normally allowed to do this. It looked like an awfully long way down.

The view was worth it.

Up here, no one would care that her hair was striped. No one would care that her pale skin was translucent enough that the shadows of her skeleton, her teeth and even the tongue in her mouth were sometimes visible. Up here, no babies were dying and no genetics were screwed up.

Maya caught one of the brochures as it fluttered by and scoured the cheesy rhetoric for historical nuggets that would validate this trip, legs swinging in the wind.