Evening Flight Part 2 of 3

The freak is in flight. I have learnt at an early age to disown myself
from my flock. I am the outcast. The freak. The one with the asymetrical
white stripe down my back. The “fierce feather” whispered by
hysterical mothers to their young who, I know, worship me in secret.
I once had a moppet fly up beside me to try to start a conversation. It
seemed he had idolised me and heard many stories about me and
wondered if they were true. He asked if I could show him the lands
beyond Turtle Hill. Or perhaps the lagoon five clouds away where
they say is entirely covered with green coloured fish. The boy even
asked me if the fable of the two legged creature was true. I have seen
them all of course, and if I had the gift of words I would have led him
astray with my stories and separated him from the flock and his
family. So I smiled but said nothing and accelerated away. I fly alone.
I always fly alone.

My flight-spin from my perch forms a circle in a single direction at
first. And then there is a quick pause before I turn my head to my side
and swing in the opposite direction, but in the same circular fashion.
I don’t need to close my eyes like the gulls when I do this. I am not
without my poise. In the day when I do this, I can see the ocean floor
turn ceiling in one swoop. It is essential that when one turns upside
down, one releasese all the air from the lungs so that when it becomes
time to angle yourself down for the dive, you do not suffocate from
too much air rushing upwards into your mouth. It is very important
to keep one’s sense of perspectives through every single second
of flight.



I have many stories to tell from my adventures abroad. While many
can hardly stay on the migratory path in one safe piece, I have instead,
taken strange roads where my own life was nearly lost. I have seen
many strange lands where tree tops make way to stone tombs that
stand many miles into the sky. I have seen jewelled nights of lights
scattered everywhere on a black carpet landscape. I have seen dry and
arid desert. I have seen death of not just my brothers but of larger
beasts and all. I have found myself hungry and wandering among the
corpses of my kind that have littered across empty plains and fearing
for my fate. And things I don’t want to remember.
But you always come home to the place you love and here is where
I am. Not quite my place of origin but this place. And this place
especially at night. You see, when the night gets this dark and the
moon is at her brightest, it is when scents rise up from the sea and the
beaches below. The scent of magic magnolias rise up and mix with the
myrthy smells of the warm sea-salt air. The entire rock cavern is
swirled into a heady perfume that spins and lulls my distant flocks of
cousins to sleep. Not me. I shall swim in it, spinning a complete
circle in my flight path, my breath in rhythm patterns. The span of
my wings stretch with every turning tide of the midnight breeze.