After the Final Clash, one more image emerged, this time through a more intentional process. What looked at me from the paper was clearly a girl talking to a dragonfly in an open field. While I was writing and preparing the publication of "The Final Clash", already in love with the scroll as a publishing format, I was considering turning that second drawing into the background story of the Witch of Bubbles. Meanwhile, a friend saw the drawing and proclaimed it was a pirate ship emerging from water. That's when I decided to open the subject online, which brought a third vision, that of the baby bird with open beak, in a nest.

Effectively, "A Bird's Hunger" fuses all these interpretations, and is therefore a philomuse publication, as the collaboration element is central. Further, it is an addition not only to the saga inaugurated by "The Final Clash" but also to the scrolls, which will hopefully grow in number.

A Bird’s Hunger

At the edge of the marsh, a girl with a long crinoline dress was marching among the thinning reeds, jumping over the little streams that rushed along toward the sea.

A dragonfly the color of old copper and river-glass followed the girl, and despite its frantic winging it struggled to keep up. Still it found time to tilt its head, as if the world were a riddle worth solving.

The girl, both fierce and awkward, marching like bobbing fire through the uneven marshlands, was thought by some to be a princess, coming as she did from a household of tapestries and velvet curtains, while others called her a witch, because she had been seen talking to the moon and nodding to the wind.

“They’re here,” the girl said and the dragonfly vibrated, affirming the rumors that had been moving beneath the water.

They stopped and turned their gaze to the bay. The world fell silent.

Next to them, in the crook of a sparse and naked wind-bent tree, a nest trembled. A small bird lifted its head and opened its beak to the sky but didn’t make a sound.

The girl looked from the nest to the water, and from the water to the dragonfly.

“They’re starving,” she said.

“Yes,” said the dragonfly. “What are you going to do?”

At that moment the water bulged, as if the sea were holding its breath. The featherless bird pipped faintly.

Then the water began to split, and the bow of an enormous ship rose slowly to the surface with a creaking sound, like a heavy door opening.

This was a pirate ship returning from the place where lost things go, a construct of both reality and myth, unkempt and majestic at once, its golden sails unfurled, its carved figurehead blinking free.

The girl felt the old pull in her chest: She could sense what the ship was bearing, and the bird’s hunger was the omen which told her that what she sensed was true.

The ship drifted closer, its hull scraping the shallows. The world stood still again. No crew appeared on deck but the silence wouldn’t fool the girl: She, just like the bird, just like the ship, had also known hunger – not for glory, not for gold, not for port or wind – or for food – but for a life that was yet to be lived.

She reached into her pocket for the seeds she had been saving for times of need: A seed of love, a seed of acceptance, a seed of good luck. She tossed them upward, like a priestess who tosses knucklebones in the air to predict the future. The seed of love fed the open mouth in the nest. The begging stopped.

Then the girl turned to the water. The second seed was carried by the wind to the ship. The dragonfly showed the way.

The girl raised her hand, in greeting and command. “You may pass,” she said to the ship “but never forget what you carry.”

The dragonfly traced a circle in the air above the deck. The hull shuddered. From the hold came the clanking sound of old laughter, old grief and promise dissolving into the air with the hissing sound of extinguished fire. Lighter now, the pirate ship receded silently, and the sea closed above it.

When not even a ripple remained, the dragonfly returned to the girl’s shoulder. The last seed, the seed of good luck, had remained for them to share.

“What are we, then?” asked the dragonfly, biting into its half.

The girl watched the nest that was now quiet. She watched the waters that were again still.

“I think,” she said, “We’re the ones who know when to nourish, when to listen, and when to release.”

The dragonfly shimmered, pleased.

And even though the lineage and the nature of the girl remained a mystery, the marsh that day learned her name, and in exchange gifted her her first bubble.

And a .pdf link.

An audio version! :)

 

And a .pdf link.