Afterglow Flight

Hold to rise. Release to dive. When the flight ends, its path stays in the sky. Afterglow is an endless night flight you steer with one thumb. Every run you finish is left behind as a ribbon of light, and the next run flies through it. After a week you are threading a sky made of your own old flights. Fly close to a past ribbon and it answers. Your multiplier climbs from ×2 to ×8, and every pass strikes a chord on a pentatonic scale, so nothing you touch sounds wrong. Those old runs were flown at your old skill level. The sky you built is the course you now have to beat. Every ribbon ends where that flight died. Its last stretch burns red, so you know when to break away. Your best flight is drawn in gold. The sky has two edges. Ash below, flare above. Touch either and the flight is over, so there is nowhere to hide. The further you fly, the stranger the sky gets. Seven reaches, each…