Disclaimer: ...So my friend called me a "bulk." I don't know if I should take that as a compliment or an insult. So I just took it as a compliment.

Question: Are wings of the heart capitalized? Like "Wings of the Heart"? Or is it just all lower-cased?

SPOILERS...kinda

Room

By: Me

Milly was seven years old when her father caught her with her wings of the heart opened wide.

She was in her room. It was a big, bright room. Filled with pinks, reds, and whites because pink, red, and white were colors that little girls like Milly were supposed to love. The curtains were always pulled open to allow sunlight. There was a lot of space. Milly liked space.

A bed stood in the corner of the room. It was a comfy bed. Warm, too. It was pink and white. Like the pillows that adorned it. A small, white nightstand stood daintily next to the bed. A small desk occupied the space in the corner opposite the bed. Armchairs surrounding a small coffee table was pushed against a wall. Some stuffed animals were lined up along the window. Milly's favorite stuffed animal had a special place among her pillows. Some toys were strewn across the floor, forgotten. Her sock drawer was decorated with a vase full of ornamental flowers.

Some framed pictures hung on the walls. Knickknacks and old arts and crafts were scattered around the room.

Her father was always away to do research or to talk to some important-looking people with weird fancy clothes. Milly didn't miss her father. Even as a seven-year-old girl, her father's absence was nothing new. She had gotten over loneliness a long time ago. And besides, she wasn't a baby anymore.

Baelheit had been away all day to finish some research on whatever machinated gadget that needed improving. Milly knew she would be home all day. She wanted to play outside on the streets, but the maids and butlers would never let her. They insisted that it was her father's wish to "protect her from all the inevitable dangers that being outdoors imposed"―whatever that meant. Milly had tried sneaking out once, but she got caught and was scolded for a straight 2 hours by her nurse. She never wanted to go through those 2 hours of torturous boredom ever again so Milly resolved to never try to sneak out unless she was absolutely sure she wouldn't get caught.

But that wasn't very often.

So Milly was playing alone in her room when she had a great idea.

Her father hated seeing her wings of the heart out in the open so whenever her father was around, she was careful not to allow it to materialize across her back. One time, she had unintentionally allowed her wings of the heart to unfurl when Baelheit had some guests over and he got so upset at her that she never opened her wings in front of him again.

But, that day, her father wasn't home so she was free to do as she wished.

Milly smiled as she allowed her wings to materialize across her back. She fluttered and stretched them as wide as they could go before allowing them to relax. She loved having her wings open. Her entire body was machina. Every time she moved a limb, she could hear a soft, barely audible clink! of working machina. It was extremely quiet and most people couldn't hear it, but Milly lived with it for almost all her life. Every time she moved, that clink! would resonate in her head, loud, clear, strong, and so repetitive that every day she would pray to the gods that it would stop. But when she had her wings of the heart out, they did not clink with machina. They were not mechanical. They were not metallic. She could flutter and move them about all day and they wouldn't make a single machinated sound and she loved it.

Milly jumped up in the air, allowing her wings to levitate her over the ground. She zipped across her large room, doing short, graceful spins as she allowed her wings to carry her body above the floor. Feathers scattered across the room as she giggled. She loved how light her wings made her feel. Like she wasn't made of iron and her body wasn't composed of heavy metallic compounds. Like she was just human. A human with emotions and freedom and a heart.

In the midst of her dancing, her door suddenly burst open and in came her father, calling her name.

"Milliarde, I need to talk to―" At the sight of his daughter, Baelheit completely stopped.

The guilty girl stood in the middle of her room, surrounded by glowing, ethereal feathers that disappeared before they reached the ground. Her wings of the heart were opened wide, spreading across her back. Milly's light brown eyes widened at the sight of her father, but she was completely frozen from fear. She couldn't even find it in herself to put her wings away.

Baelheit's expression was completely unreadable as he stared at his daughter with her wings of the heart shamelessly unfurled before him. He stared and stared at her wings, at the blue and white butterfly wings. Milly squeezed her eyes shut, knowing that her father was going to hit her, or yell at her, or tear out her wings, or feed her to the monsters in Nihal Desert. She waited...waited...

But Baelheit simply turned his head away from her in disgust. "Put your wings of the heart away, Milliarde. They're useless, impractical things. You don't need them."

He swiftly closed her door behind him as he hurried away to gods-knew-where.

Milly listened to her father's footsteps fade away as she quietly put her wings away. The feathers around her disappeared. She stood there for a few minutes, contemplating, her head staring at the floor.

Then, she lifted her head, her brown eyes filled with fire and spread her wings out as far as they would go. She launched herself up into the air and spun around, allowing her wings to lift her above the ground, defying gravity. Her light brown hair lifted from her shoulders, flowing behind her small body, as she flitted across the room. She jumped, spun, danced, somersaulted across the air with a huge grin on her face. A machine cannot dance as she can in the air. A machine cannot lift itself from the ground with ethereal wings. She was light. She was human. She was not machina. She was not metal. Milly closed her eyes and reveled in her dance of freedom.

And she imagined a world outside her home, a father who loved her heart, and a body without machina.

A/N: So...Milly. Seven years old. How'd I do?

I wanted to try to capture Milly as she was as a child, growing up in that sheltered environment. Honestly, I agree with Guillo's "bomb shelter" thing. Milly has so much spunk, even though she was raised the way she was raised. I can totally see Milly as a little girl, fighting for what little freedom she had, struggling to keep her heart in that machinated body of hers.

And...don't you find it strange that Milly has heart-wings when her father is Baelheit, the guy who, you know, tore off Gena's wings?

I was just wondering.

Btdubs. This is a five-shot. After all, Milly's summary of her life was "Room, ship, school, ship, room." That's five words. Count 'em.

Thanks for taking the time to read this. It's greatly appreciated :)

The trajectory of your swag far exceeds that of the limit of a positive cubed function as x approaches infinity.