I lie on the ground, on the vast wide fields, looking up into a bird filled sky. To fly; oh joy, bliss, love, redemption. To have wings to call my own. To soar above the masses, lost in cloud and light and love while they, earth bound, wallow in the mud like pigs.
I watch the birds, and sigh. I sleep.
Darkness. Night has fallen. Still birds fly, but these a rarer breed. Ghosts of light beneath heaven's moon.
"If only," I breathe aloud.
"If only?" a voice, behind me.
I turn to see a man, or mostly so. He shares the form of such, but there is more - or less depending on your view. Fair skinned and tall, his features fine and sharp. His hands made more like talons than a man's. Is he a bird?
"If only I could fly," I hear myself.
"If you trust in me, you can," he smiles.
Dreamlike, half awake, swayed by the feathery quality of his voice, I leap from the cliff before me, sailing into the sky.
Too heady with the joy I forget to question how this cliff sprang newborn in an open field, that place where I had lain to watch the birds. Too wrapt in the exhilaration of flight I fail to ask from where my wings have sprung.
Lost in the moment I soar above the world, looking down on the earth bound masses.
"Is your heart fulfilled?"
"Yes," I whisper.
"Is your dream made real?"
"Yes," I sigh.
"Is my gift a joy?"
"It is," I laugh, enrapt.
"Do you trust me?"
"Yes," I cry.
"Do you love me?"
"I do," I moan, echoing the chorus of the wind.
He laughs, a hollow sound. I fall, my wings undone. Feathers fly as I crash earthwards.
He opens wide his arms and I am within them. They surround me, engulf me.
"Then love me," he whispers into my hair.
I do. There and then on the grass beneath a bird filled sky. He takes my body, devours it. He enters my mind, tearing and shredding, using me up. He possesses my soul. Agony, ecstasy, pain, horror - gone.
* * *
I wake on the ground, looking up into a bird filled sky. My soul is empty of dreams; my mind shallow, desire spent; my body broken and twisted.
And I grovel in the mud like a pig, knowing nothing else.
© copyright 1999 - NPM Oakley
Published in Beyond the Sunset v2.4 - July 2001
The Camarilla Australia's national magazine