As the sun rose, so too did the wind, and the sky began to fill with fluttering diamonds. From her perch on the edge of the water tank, Navya watched as the battles commenced, airborne fighters bobbing and weaving as they sought to gain purchase on each others' lines.
Just below, she heard the excited clamor of voices as her cousins spooled the string and argued cheerfully over who would get to launch the kite. She felt no rush to join the fray. As always, it would be the eldest cousin, who could most be trusted to run along the roof without falling off or tripping on the pipes snaking their way across the flat expanse.
But there! A few streets upwind, a pink patang swooped under and up, catching a gust and spooling outward to cut the line above it, freeing a white kite with a large blue spot.
Navya very carefully skirted the opening of the tank – her aunts' stories of children falling in and drowning had at least partially stuck – then scrambled quickly down the ladder, wrapping her small hands as best she could around the thick, knobbly rungs. She ran to the closest end of the rooftop, leaning on the whitewashed concrete wall as the kite glided toward her. Would it soar up in a gust? Would it fall before it reached her and get tangled in the trees? Would that boy on the next rooftop manage to grab the string as it passed?
She tracked the kite as it passed just barely over the corner of their building's roof, and reached as far out as she could without falling over the edge, just barely snagging the string. She laughed excitedly as cousins jostled around and congratulated her on her capture.
It was always a bit of a risk, trying to fly a losing kite. Maybe the pilot had simply made an error…or maybe the kite just wasn't maneuverable enough and would be cut again as soon as its string was knotted onto theirs and took to the air again. In the end, though, kites would come and kites would go – the joy lay in the striving.