The air smells of burnt rubber and kerosene. The track is grippy and rubbered-in from the hundreds of karts that pass over it every day. The sounds of the city beyond fall away; the roar of the two-stroke engines and the squeal of tyres mixes with shouted curses and laughter.

The track blurs past, again and again; Daniel doesn’t need to think to... See more

He asks Charles about it as pre-season testing draws to a close – whether Charles minds having to spend so much time on Carlos’s wings when he must be exhausted from driving.

Charles looks at him oddly.

“Why do you ask this?” he says. “They are your wings, Carlos.”

Carlos thinks he can be forgiven for wanting to cry a little, at that.

Daniel had thought his wings would go back to how they were. He’d never thought they would be remade.

He had fallen from sun’s glare into the waves with his wings aflame, and the sea has given him new wings of storm-tossed blue.

Max is right.

Daniel’s wings are beautiful, because they are Daniel’s.