Icarus and The Magpie (Short Story)

Prologue : The first page.

Iris loved the Summer.

Summers in the countryside were hazy things. Full of melting ice cubes floating in bitter lemonade. They were tan lines and wispy seedlings drifting on the muggy breeze. Summers were beautifully insignificant, quiet things. This is how she loved them. It was a perfectly golden, understated paradise.

Iris had so many objects wrapped up in her cloth satchel that a single jostle threatened to be its undoing. She didn't mind it. It was an ugly mess of patchwork fabrics and foundlings. Seed pods and shells, lost buttons and faulty keys that went to nothing short of a ravens den. They would all jingle against each other with each step she took. It was majestic. It was a warning to everything within earshot that she was approaching. Here, past the brook and down through the marshy glens, she was a Queen amongst the trees. Everything was perfect. Everything was alone.

Now and again others made the trek to her hidden spot, sat in her grasses and took up blanket picnics in the shade. But, the sun would go, and so too would they. They were like beings of light, unable to exist in the trees darkness. These woods didn't belong to anyone; but on days like this, when the heat made dancing mirages along the horizon, she felt they were hers. They knew her, they accepted her, and she owed it to them to learn their language. One made of mysterious runes and carved poems in tree trunks. She, had put them there. Dusting her hands against her raggedy jeans she freed the pollen from long picked wildflowers that clung to her fingers and lowered, sitting barefoot in the grass. Iris didn't need a blanket or chair to relax. The moss and weeds were more than enough. Her nose meeting the tops of the tallest sprouts. In the distance a lone blackbird crooned and called to her.

"Iris..." It said in looping chirrups. "Iris- paint me the sky."

So she did. Like a puppet on mottled strings she moved smoothly, sweeping the leaf of her satchel open, pulling from its felted depths a leather-bound journal. It was new, it was crisp. She had found it in an old bookshop in town years ago and only now, felt ready to lay out her heart on it. Creating , was a spiritual experience and she loved every step along the way. The pages parted willingly. Ready to be made into something more than pressed whiteness. Ready to be born. With a breath, she began, and her mind wandered through the ideas that came after.

Iris, was in no way young.

At least, not in the sense of mind.

Nor was she old.

She was somewhere in between. Lost in the ages. With no need for time. "Don't be so hasty in growing up." Her mother had told her over afternoon coffee. She took it as wisdom and opted to never grow up. No goal. No worry. She was a painting of unknown origin left unfinished and hung as it was. Bright and colorful in some bits, and charcoal black in others.

Iris, missed her mother.

"Noon. Appointment." She scribbled into the journal, muttering as she went. "Two-thirty, figure study..." She drew in a billowing ribbon that cascaded along the pages edge. "Four..." Iris sighed. "Follow the Magpie. Again." A smile gapped her cheeks. "The Magpie." She said. Turning her page into a garden of flowers and trees. Her cellphone made quick work of dispelling her drifting thoughts. It called to her in a chime. "It's already time?" Life had never been so easy, and complicated as the day she bought the phone. But she would never truly like having it around. It was, in many ways, a necessary evil. It mocked her plan less lifestyle and she mocked its utter absurdity. She gathered her things. Magpie...

The Magpie you see, was less like something to be followed and more like something to be chased, something she longed to be lost with. It was an unattainable idea. A sketch just out of reach that she could never hope to jot it down. But still she chased it. Through thousands of crisp white pages, through hundreds of riddle addled poetry, and maybe one two many dreams. The Magpie, was a quest for something more. A faceless MacGuffin that she willingly gave every waking moment to finding. This will be the one, this will be the book I find you in. I know it. If anyone could do it, it would be her.