Category: Xenofiction

Flutter

February 2nd, 2025

Octavus Decimus Gradus

Amethym swoops down from the clear sky. Bright green hills roll beneath her tiny body. They grow larger as she draws nearer to a pearl flower in a thick patch of bushes. A cluster of long, weathered buildings zips past her vision. The fat domestic birds waddle in the midst of the buildings, gargling in their strange dialect. While Amethym approaches the pearl flower, Aquem darts into her vision. Before she can protest, Aquem winks his tiny black eye at her, only to peel away and hover in front of a red flower instead. Rolling her eyes, Amethym eases into a hover before the pearl flower. Her bill threads like a needle between the petals, diving into the pool of succulent nectar. She draws it into her body. The nectar tastes so sweet. It floods her body with a wash of vitalization. Excited, Amethym flares her wings at an even faster pace, rising in the air and leaning into the flower to reach the final drops of nectar.

Aquem’s thrumming wings draw him beside Amethym. His bill dunks into the pearl flower, nudging Amethym out of the way. She draws backwards, huffing at Aquem. The shine of his teal feathers catches Amethym’s attention even as she peels away. Amethym darts to a new flower, ducks behind it, and keeps an eye on Aquem. He pulls his bill out of the pearl flower and eyes it, tilting his head in confusion. She giggles to herself. Empty. He darts away, taking a moment to scan the farm for her, but she remains hidden. He jets away in a flurry.

Amethym dips in and out of the shadows, trading the warm sun for the cool shade in a wonderful dance of comfort. She stops at hundreds of flowers, consuming their nectar in turn. Dozens of hummingbirds float around her. They bob and weave through the trees, bushes, and flower beds. They are blurs of gold, teal, ruby, and garnet spiriting throughout the farm, blessing the landscape with their heavenly colors. They settle into birdbaths to clean themselves. Their splashing sprinkles the chickens below with droplets of water. The hummingbirds laugh at the clucking protests of the fat domestic birds.

Dusk approaches, soaking the colors of the farm with an orange glow. Amethym grabs hold of a little branch. She tucks her wings into her body and tightens her grip. Her eyes droop. Her body falls forward. The world fading black, a flurry of teal feathers perches beside her.

—

Amethym stirred awake an hour later. Starlight flooded the trees with silver. She dropped from her branch. Her wings, a blur in the night, snatched her out of the free fall. She began to drink more nectar, loyal to the route she’d carved out for herself on the bountiful farmland. Nocturnal creatures skittered above and below her, gray shadows streaking through the darkness.

Ducking behind a bush, Amethym roosted on a pipe that ran along one of the buildings. She shuffled toward a cluster of flowers to drink from them. Buzzing began to tickle her ears. Her purple head tilted toward the sound as she paused with her bill still nestled within the flower. The buzzing grew a little louder. She leapt off her perch and descended into the bush. Thick, leafy branches choked out the starlight.

A body lay the bottom of the bush. Its green and yellow feathers glimmered with hints of silver light. Flies buzzed around the body. Amethym snatched one in her bill. She hovered above Citrim’s body (for that is what it was) as the flies scattered. She remained suspended in the air long enough for the flies to regain confidence, returning to the body despite the wind she made. Amethym felt a poke on her tail.

She beat her wings in a rapid burst, jetting her upwards with sudden haste. She cracked her skull against a branch. Turning around to face her attacker, she gasped. Her tweets were rapid and angry as she told Aquem off, calling him a fool and a jerk, among other things. He chuckled, then looked at the dead bird in the bush. Snagging a fly from the cloud as a sort of toast, he offered a word of respect to the fallen bird, Citrim. He and Amethym retreated to a bundle of flowers on the other side of the bush, escaping the morbid scene and trading the buzzing flies for sweet nectar.

As she drank, Amethym thought about the dead bird. Citrim had seemed a healthy character, born in the same generation as Amethym and Aquem. She shared the odd nature of his passing with Aquem, who shrugged. Perhaps he was injured by an owl, escaped, and died there. Shame the owl didn’t eat: he may be hungry yet. Nudging her goodbye, Aquem darted away from the bush.

Amethym flittered back to Citrim. She whipped up a breeze with her little wings to scatter the flies before planting herself next to the unfortunate corpse. Citrim was not the same size as he had been in life. Amethym’s head snapped to and fro as she noted the details of his body. The pattern of his feathers seemed distorted. That made sense, especially if the flies had burrowed into his skin. But that didn’t explain his eye. The beady thing was nearly shut, though not closed. Rather, it was swollen over, forming a band rather than a circle.

A fly zipped back to his body. Amethym snapped it up and ate it.

Inspecting the body again, Amethym noticed it wasn’t only his eye that was swollen. Little bulbs of flesh dotted much of his body.

Desperate shrieking tore Amethym away from her investigation. She fluttered to the top of the bush, scanning the area for the source of the cries. She caught a glimpse of Aquem disappearing behind a corner. She raced after him. As she turned the corner, he noticed her presence. One of his wings gave out and he crashed to the ground. A dark flurry of motion obscured him from Amethym’s view. Through the cloud, he cried for her to stay away, to fly away. One final squawk punctuated his life.

Amethym retreated, perching herself on the roof, looking down at the sad scene. Tiny creatures continued flitting all around Aquem’s body. They dove into it and pulled away with jarring flight patterns, circling and diving back in. They were relentless. From her distance, Amethym couldn’t make out what they were. She dove off the roof and returned to the trees. She hoped that there she would be safe from these new killers, whatever they were, through the night.

The morning light rose, whisking away the gloom and damp of night. Amethym hurried to gather the hummingbirds, leading them to Aquem. The group observed from a distance as the chickens pecked at Aquem’s body and the flies surrounding him. She told them of the cloud of attackers, then led the group to Citrim. The disturbances in his skin were much more visible in the sunlight, even under the shade of the bush.

The hummingbirds left the body and perched together in a tall tree, overlooking the lush pasture. They discussed the killings, linking them to the same murderer.

Jasper’s wings thrummed as he settled onto a branch beside the group. His wings beat at a lower pitch, revealing the slowness that racked his aging body. He attended to the group’s theories. During a lull, he chimed in.

“Wasps.” With that, the old bird drifted away in a breeze.

Amethym shivered, her feathers puffing. The rest of the group likewise displayed their shock. Horror crept over them. Jasper was straightforward, yet his song had been thick with warning and melancholy. The group lifted off of the tree and swooped toward the ground, dashing together through the air.

Along the tree line, they spotted more bodies. Gold, teal, ruby, garnet; every color scattered along the beige dirt, swarmed by black flies.

The group flew with haste away from the trees, ducking into the stable. There, a light brown, papery coil was stuck to a corner. As they approached it, a yellow insect flew out from it, orange legs and wings glaring like fire. Two more emerged, then a dozen, then two dozen. The hummingbirds backpedaled through the air, twisting to dash away at full speed, panicked chirps echoing through the building. Amethym chanced a look behind her. A bright blue bird was overwhelmed by the creatures. He squawked terribly as his body heaved and his wings began to slow. Amethym popped out of the building. She heard him slam into the wood, his cries dying off behind her.

A stream of the killer insects writhed out behind the hummingbirds. They chased in a relentless pursuit, unrelenting even as more birds were stung, slowed, swarmed, cut down to the ground, and left dying. Hoping to create distance, the hummingbirds tore away from the farm. They zipped over the pasture. Still, the buzz of the insects continued, growing louder, and louder. A sudden screech of a hawk drowned them out for a moment. Frantic chirps rang from the birds as they urged each other to separate. So, they did.

Amethym dove toward the crops and fluttered as fast as she could, low enough that her feet skipped over the dirt. She scrambled toward the farm, listening for the buzz of the wasps. She risked lifting up over the crops when she was sure she had lost the insects.

She rose to the height of the farm buildings. Chickens clucked carelessly as they plodded throughout the farm. They inspected the dozens of dead hummingbirds scattered along the grounds. Each one swollen with the venom of the wasps.

Amethym dove towards a window. She floated in front of it, her heart in overdrive, and poked the glass with her bill. She rammed it with her skull and scratched it with her claws. Something inside began to move. It grew larger… larger…

The window opened. Amethym slipped inside the crack, flitting from position to position, hovering in front of the farmer. She choked out pleading chirps, her head frantic as it snapped to and fro.
Avian Procession

July 3rd, 2023

Trigesimus Sextus Gradus

“What’s the mouthfeel of that spider?” To you and I, of course, it sounded like a series of gobbles and an avian wail of inquiry. To the gaggle, it hardly needs mention, the sounds read exactly as reported.

“Gooey, squishy… moist. It provides a good coating. Crunchy at first, naturally,” came a chipper reply (a cluck and a purr, nonsense to us. And such would all of the following speech sound to our ears). Mergle swallowed the spider and apologized to her mother for speaking with food in her mouth. Even for turkeys, it’s an unbecoming habit.

The inquirer happened to be the master of the turkey flock. She was leading her comrades through the lake-adjacent forest, their ancestral home. Their claws still sunk into the white ground-above-the-ground for most of the route, though the white shroud had slipped off of the trees by now. Some of the trees were regaining their feathers. Over the past few days, the slow-falling sky had turned to fast-falling sky, drenching the forest in the smell of fresh eggshell-to-be.

Thus, the turkey maidens (and him, who I will introduce later) marched toward the cherished Clearing Place. The turkeys of this valley preferred to congregate there first, for it was the fabled nest of the First Hen. Her spirit presides, in purified form, above the valley, visiting the gaggles and gangs now and again to usher in reiterations of the cycle. At present, she was hidden, prancing behind the stagnant, gray, brush piles of the sky.

The master bird stopped with a cluck, prompting her comrades to meander into an imperfect line alongside her. Stretched before them was the scratchy, black, frozen-not-slippery-river on which the Smelly Things roared. The hen purred, her head snapping to pause over segments of the river. It was quiet, today, and no Smelly Thing passed them by. The river gleamed, and in the glimmering she made out the writhing forms of long, pale bodies. Her tail ruffled.

“Let’s have ourselves a snack! The frozen-not-slippery-river is peaceful and fruitful, it’d be a shame to leave it unharvested,” she whooped. The others cheered with gobbles and purrs of their own. Claws planted on gravel, the hens stretched over the blacktop to snap up worms, spreading themselves further along the length of the road. Hearing the plucking of her brood grow distant, the master stretched her neck, kicked her strong legs, and strutted onto the hard, scratchy surface. She snapped up three worms in rapid succession, purring loudly.

The other hens, necks tired from reaching to the center of the road from the shoulder, plodded after her, seeing that it was safe to stand upon the frozen river. The spoils were bountiful, and each turkey ate her (and his) fill. The master garbled and trotted to the opposite edge of the road, whereat she ushered her compatriots back onto the pebble-filled frozen-not-slippery-river bank. Satisfied that the road was clear, she stooped her neck and took a mouthful of pebbles into her beak, swallowing them carefully. She trotted up and down the row, making sure the rest had consumed their portion.

Desperate yammering cut through the silence. He squawked and flapped his feathers loudly, generating great alarm among the hens. The turkeys snapped their heads upright and scanned either side of the river, bodies tense for fear of a screaming-fast Smelly Thing.

Instead, they saw a Spinning Thing carting a featherless biped.

“Such a ruckus could drive us to danger! Will your alarm ever match the threat, Freggens? Or are we condemned forever to bear the clatter of your feeble spirit at every drop of a leaf?” the master bird scorned him. The bird who had wailed, with a gray eye and patches of exposed skin, hung his skinny head and waddled to a distant edge of the group of hens, who danced away from and gobbled at the biker as he safely, slowly, passed them by.

“Hup, now! That’s plenty of refreshment and featherlessness for now. Form up!” The master bird reordered the gaggle. As a unit, they trudged back into the forest, leaving the frozen-not-slippery-river behind them. Freggens made his way along from the rear, pouting as he went.

“This way, dearies,” the master bird chirped, ushering the gaggle up a hill. Stepping through the white ground-above-the-ground was not preferred, especially uphill, but the wise master bird knew that the crest of the hill would have a very shallow coat. So the gaggle bore with her, careful to trace each others’ steps, carving a path through the forest. Freggens, mulling his mistake, chose to forge his own path behind the hens. He did not deserve to walk the easy trail blazed by their marching line.

Such went the pack, cooing and gargling various conjectures and positions on topics political and apolitical alike, with Freggens distantly trailing, stinking of scorn, for many an ebb of wind.

Mergle chittered and growled. Her mother stopped, and the hens began to circle up. Freggens, head down, didn’t notice the change in pace, and continued trudging along.

The master bird scanned the forest in the avian way, snapping her neck to and fro, angled in curious positions. She caught a sliver of orange fur whisking behind a trunk. She hollered and flared her wings, arousing the rest of the gaggle, who made themselves large and loud. Freggens, shocked by the display, leapt into the air with so little control that he landed on his side.

The sliver of orange popped up from behind the trunk, revealing itself to be a creature lesser in size than the master bird herself. It had orange fur, and green eyes, and sharp fangs and a long tongue, and its name was

“Miss Vue, you villainous wretch!” The master hen called. Her voice began with a bite of rage, but gave way to relief by the end of her greeting.

“Margelgel, my friend! What a fine gaggle you have found under your wing,” Miss Vue replied, strutting toward the pack.

“They are. Quite attentive, you found? And ready for a fight?”

“Quite, quite. They are well-prepared for predator response. The hens, that is,” Miss Vue glanced at Freggens, who was now stumbling back to his feet. Margelgel followed her gaze.

“Indeed. Thank you for the drill, as usual, my dear,” she gobbled. The other turkeys relaxed, returning to their smooth, striding formation. Freggens, twice now embarrassed, lagged further behind than before, wattle like a waterfall dragging along the ground. Miss Vue joined the group, chatting with Margelgel about the waning winter, and other topics apolitical.

When they came upon the second frozen-not-slippery-river, Miss Vue gave her regards and slipped back into the woods. Margelgel clucked, and the turkeys formed a tight, three-bird wide line. When she decided the Smelly Things were far from their path, she began to trot onto the black ground.

“Come along, dears,” she encouraged, “the Clearing Place is but a few paces hence. And they’ll be no more excitement ‘fore we reach that sacred plot.”

Uplifted, the birds began to skip along the road. All but the six at the end of the lines failed to hear the Smelly Thing passing behind them, and even those six paid it no mind, for it was, after all, behind them.

The gaggle pranced their merry way along the familiar path. They celebrated as they poured out from the trees into the Clearing Place. It was beautiful, even with the still-gray-sky above. Turkeys from many other packs were streaming in to the place as well.

Margelgel spun on her claws to count her gaggle, haphazard-like, for confident she was that her hens were safe. But, her count was off. She seized in cold, eyes wide, and looked her group up and down.

“Where, pray-tell, is Freggens?”

Category: Xenofiction

Flutter

Octavus Decimus Gradus

Avian Procession

Trigesimus Sextus Gradus