Perfect Mirage

The dead duck is festooned by algal blooms and ribbons of damp milfoil, lapping festively at his feet. Upended in stagnant, muddied water, his teal feathers and long, graceful neck are tangled hopelessly in razor-sharp bulrushes. Usually, she finds ducks face-down in the water, indecipherable, ugly masses of matted grey feathers. But his regal corpse has been laid to rest on a shallow bed of moist loam, kept adrift by the gentle, unrelenting current. No blood, no visible curvature of bone arising from his flaccid, bleached flesh indicating an attack. No adventurous fox or malnourished, desperate wolf going out beyond its usual territory for fresh meat. He had died a slow, tranquil death. Sedated and opiate far before he was destined to rot. Poisoned. Trapped.

“Wake up,” she whispers. He takes an unusually long time to respond, so she bides her time, humming a rhythmic, jaunty melody that had been forgotten by humans sometime in the last millennia.

Stolen from the carefree lips of leather-skinned seafarers as they hoisted up tattered flags and toiled in the scalding sun, the song led her to focus her work, although that wasn’t quite the right word for it, on that particular ship perhaps a little more than she needed to. She’d use a drowned quartermaster or malnourished cat as an excuse to heed oddly hypnotic cheers, drunk on syrupy rum the colour of newly dug topaz. Eventually, the ship had faded like everything else.

Humans were not homogenous to her, but they rarely afforded her the same open-mindedness. Their ancient leather-bound volumes detailed the attributes of her kind in laughably absolute script; destruction incarnate, harbingers of destiny. They were closer than they thought, and further than they could ever imagine. Nevertheless, she finds them endearing. She holds a soft spot for their epic love stories, encapsulating lifetimes. For a second, she entertains the idea of death guaranteeing her own impermanence, excusing her flaws. For once, someone else would carry her to the Other Place instead of the other way around.

“What are you?” she hears a startled voice behind her.

Uncharacteristically curious, she looks around to see who he is addressing. There is no one there but her.

'Ah. A madman,' she thinks.

She is unnerved by his crazed black eyes, fixated on her own. Almost as if he can see her. Almost. Suddenly, he rushes toward her, his alabaster skin shining with sweat.

Unable to process this new, unfathomable threat, she pushes air beneath her expansive feathered wings, creating great, stirring motions.

His palm brushes up lightly against her body.

In a split second, she falls quickly and heavily to the ground, her skin bruised and puckered with thorns. Her left arm feels peculiarly hot, so she touches it gingerly. Her finger returns a slippery crimson; the substance is new to her, but she has seen humans coated in it, stilled and pale beneath its misleadingly colourful façade. Blood.

The boy breathes beside her, his face a perfect mirage.

"You're going to die," he tells her.

She smiles at the thought.

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