"It Holds Her in the Palm of One Hand"
Part 2
The Bird’s Perspective
Memory collected as of X/X/64.
We notice that she is lagging behind.
She is called: inside-bone smell—rainstorm from the perch on Ungawa [1] —amber-warm skin after a strenuous flight. I call to her gently with this name. But I see it now: the bright red beads that float around her and the copper-urea alarm smell.
Her gut bulges from behind her keel. This is not new. The hatchling was a late hatcher and now a late drop. Its emergence is signaled by the ripples across the flank of warmth—bone—rain. At my approach, she backs away. She breathes in gusts now. Her fear is nauseous and pervasive. Her fear lives inside of my lungs.
I ask the others to wait. I watch their eyes. But after some time, the hatchling does not emerge and warmth—bone—rain’s alarms cease. She shakes instead of straining. Her flank is still.
Perhaps this should not come as a shock to us. Above her gut, her hips sit lopsided. A red scar stretches from flank to pelvis. A metal spear hit her here. Above us, that day, things made of iron and planet-gravity flew past, things that do not think and do not speak.
I approach. I call to her, and she strains weakly. The hatchling’s tail emerges from her as if it might split her in two. This sight is full of wrongness. It fills me with a sickness I have not felt for some time.
I call to her again but nothing seeps out of her, not used-up-air, not my name. When I grasp the hatchling’s tail in my beak and pull, there is not even the urea-fear and no pain, either. I tell myself, there is no pain anymore, as I pull. Her muscles grip the hatchling with a primal memory, a desire to house it within. The feet slip out.
Limp and cobwebbed with blood. There is a wetness, beaded around us, and the embrace of the others against my skin. The others and their fear now, propagated collectively and mixed up with the warmth—bone—rain scent to such an extent that I cannot tell one from the other.
The hatchling emerges and I wrap myself around it. At first, I grip too tightly and it whines. It whines! It breathes and wriggles! Opening its mouth with mine, I let crop-food slide into its throat. It will breathe more easily now. It will warm up and sleep. For now, I will hold it in the nest of my tail.
A few of us nudge warmth—bone—rain’s face. She exhales once, and a strange, crackling period of time waits between this exhale and the next. Her gut is blackened, bruised, wrinkled, and her own blood sticks to her. We try to give her crop-food, as we did the hatchling, but it falls out of her beak. I see her throat moving, convulsing. She swallows maybe a bite or two by happenstance, but with the same convulsion, regurgitates it along with a stream of yellow bile.
There is nothing left of her, but we wait, anyway. We wait and wait until one of us wraps his mouth around her neck and crushes it. Another pinches the skin of her gut and pulls until it tears. Her crop-food leaks out, and we eat, and eat, and ea —not just crop-food but also the meat that warmth—bone—rain left behind. When I lick the fluid from the hatchling’s face, it tastes of warmth—bone—rain. Exactly of her, as if she is speaking her name to me.
[ [1] Approximation based on the given relative coordinates. Confidence 73.4%]
Confrontation and Revelation
"How did you know?" Sun asks, her voice trembling.
Dossa, her pilot and former lover, stares at her with a mixture of sadness and pity. "I’ve been trying to call you. Are you all right?"
Sun’s mind is reeling. How could Dossa know about the bird’s communication? Could he have been manipulating her all along?
"You lied to me." Her voice is barely above a whisper.
"Can I come inside?"
"No! No, you cannot come inside!" Sun slams the door shut, her heart pounding in her chest.
She has been so naive, so desperate for a connection. She thought the bird loved her, that it was her only true friend. But now she realizes that it was all a lie. The bird has been using her, feeding her false memories to keep her under its control.
Sun’s eyes fall to her tablet, where she had saved the bird’s latest communication. She scrolls through the text, her fingers trembling.
"SHE HOLDS IT OUT—THIS THING THAT PEERS AT ME FROM THE CAGE OF HER HANDS
LOOK AT IT—LOOK AT ITS WRONGNESS—LOOK AT EYES WHICH HAVE NEVER SEEN—LUNGS THAT HAVE NEVER TASTED WORDS—WINGS THAT HAVE NEVER FLOWN
WHAT BIRTHED THIS THING—ITS FACE A MIRROR—ITS FLESH AN OLD MEMORY—I DID NOT BIRTH THIS THING BUT IT HAS MY NAME
IT HAS MY NAME AND WHEN IT SPEAKS IT SPEAKS WITH MY VOICE
WE WILL NEVER LEAVE—EVEN IN DEATH THERE IS ANOTHER—AND ANOTHER—AND ANOTHER—WITH MY NAME"
Sun’s face goes pale. The bird is a monster, a parasite that feeds on the lives of others. And it has been using her as its pawn.
The Trap
Sun and the Hatchling head to the piloting chamber, where the bird awaits. Sun’s heart is pounding in her chest, but she has to face this thing once and for all.
The bird is even more massive than she remembers, its beak a cavernous maw that could swallow her whole. As Sun approaches, she can smell the nauseating stench of its fear pheromone.
"I know what you are," Sun says, her voice trembling. "You’re a monster."
The bird’s head rises, and its eyes meet hers. It lets out a deafening roar, its chest expanding like a bellows. The monitors on the walls of the chamber begin to flash and beep, signaling an emergency.
Sun knows that she has to escape, but she is trapped. The bird’s tail has wrapped itself around her, its sharp barbs digging into her flesh. She can feel the life draining out of her as the monster squeezes tighter.
"Please!" Sun cries. "You know I love you!"
But the bird is deaf to her pleas. It continues to tighten its grip, its eyes blazing with hatred.
Sun’s vision begins to blur as darkness closes in. In her last moments, she sees the bird’s true face—a face of pure evil.
Aftermath
Sun’s body is found the next morning, crushed in the piloting chamber. The bird has vanished, leaving no trace behind.
Dossa is devastated by Sun’s death. He had known about the bird’s true nature all along, but he had been afraid to tell her. He had hoped that she would be able to find happiness with the bird, but now he realizes that was a fatal mistake.
Dossa takes the bird’s hatchling as his own, determined to raise it differently than its parent. He will teach it love and compassion, and he will make sure that it never becomes the monster that its mother was.
Epilogue
Years later, the hatchling has grown into a beautiful and intelligent creature. It is a member of the crew of the Messina’s Third Daughter, and it is loved and respected by all who know it.
Dossa watches the hatchling with a sense of pride and regret. He knows that Sun would have been happy to see how the hatchling had turned out.
And so, the legacy of the bird lives on, not in the shadow of darkness, but in the light of hope. For every monster, there is a possibility of redemption. And for every tragedy, there is a chance for a new beginning.
