Blooding

Canary

Home. Home, there it is. Now the world before her stretched out like a timeline. Her red egg buried to its tip in the snow. A little drake bounding down, kicking up tuffs and playfully rolling around, then he saw it, and indeed he was right, it did look like a blood drop on the glacier. She hatched later. Tumbling out with wide eyes. But she never wailed, the Griffon was silent and curious.

But there was time before that.

When she had been laid. There she was. A red egg nestled in amongst others, hay and cloth wrapped around them like a snake. There were pale, creamy eggs, some small and some larger, some lopsided and some thin. But hers was red. The air was smoky and low, and the scent of spicy incense wafted in her beak

Then the image flashed.

Most eggs were gone. There were discarded shells, gooey with a viscose substance sticking to them. The air wasn't smoky, but clear. There, a figure stood over her egg, he was caressing it. His face was shrouded and so was his body, he was just out of focus like a fish swimming at the bottom of a murky lake, its form visible but its features obscured. It didn't matter. He was dad.

Her mind screamed. For him. His head snapped back, she thought he saw her. He looked at the egg once last time, contemplating something terrible, that no parent should ever contemplate. Then he leant down and pecked it with a tiny kiss and galloped away out of the image. Gone.

The flash.

Only her egg remained. It was dark. Long shadows crept along the floor and the cloth and hay were gone; the rookery was bare like a disused storeroom. A thick aroma of dust clung to the air. She could taste its dirty particles on her tongue. She wretched. A coat of dust crowned the tip of her egg like a snowy peak on a mountaintop. There were faint wails beyond the walls. Something dark had happened. She could feel it. In the air here, pinching her senses with crooked nails. A door slammed opened. A wraith floated in. It was a tall, crooked griffon, but this one was visible, and it would be the only griffon she would ever see beside herself. It was ghostly, the feathers bony and parched and the fur chalk white, she could hear the wind bellowing beneath it. Its eyes were silver coins in two black sockets.

It clasped her egg with crooning, claws; blunt and cracked. She shuddered and felt the freezing palms of death prickle her skin. It weaved its claws between her fur. It made her feathers stand stiff on end like chinks in chainmail armor. She was hypnotized, finally witnessing her mysterious fate. Played back. The deathly grip seemed to happen far away. The wraith carried her away slowly, handling her egg like it was a bomb. It crossed the room in an eternity. It may well have been.

Purgatory is timeless. Eons pass by spirits like trains by passengers. The book had said.

What are? T-rains?

Myths. She sighed, no information about home. Her mood sullen.

Now she knew it all. And more than anything she wanted to be in that evening again. Sitting next to Lusik, with orange juice dripping off her beak. She was always messy.

Then it was darkness. Black. She had become accustomed to it. There was a force leading her through this, a drake holding a torch lighting a dark tunnel. As they continue forward, more and more bones are revealed littered on the ground like bits of trash. Discarded, left. Forgotten. That's what it felt like. A maw of black opening beyond. Permanent and final. There was always something about how final darkness is. Just black. Black forever. Then the blackness became something. Her.

She was disheveled. Her feathers were poking out and her eyes were black with exhaustion. The cheeks were still wet. It was a mirror. There were mirrors everywhere. An octagon of glass, the Griffon looked up and her reflection looked down. The roof was glass and so was the floor. There were ten Griffons all staring. Disheveled and droopy eyed. None of them had tails. A tribunal. She wanted to sink down into nothing. To shut her eyes and forget. Forget poor Lusik, forget her hut. Just, fade away. There's no pain out there in the black.