#progress is like that. the is the bird sharpening its beak.

[david-watts]

had to stop watching the referendum coverage because 1. nobody understands the constitution 2. and instead of actually campaigning for or against they made up strawmen to get angry about which 3. results in the most inconsistent statements going live on the national broadcaster. yet alone being used as justification to halt any progress because it's not good enough in regards to where we as a country SHOULD be but we're not at yet

[warpedlegacy]

WIP Wednesday

Actually making some progress on Book Two of my planned trilogy. Here’s a bit between my OC Theresa and Leliana and Cole:  The cawing and clawing of a dozen or so ravens were already beating into a frenzy. I worried that our presence was disturbing them, but then I saw Leliana holding a bucket with one bloody hand reaching in. She was tossing pieces of raw meat into the cages, and the ravens were eagerly snatching them up in beaks as sharp as any blade.  “Inquisitor,” she uttered in deference, though her head never turned my way, her attention on her flock. “You are here to view our unexpected stowaway, yes?” She nodded toward where Cole was standing in one corner, his back to the rest of us and hunched over a low table. As Taeris and I approached, I could see shifting of fabric from a mound. No, not fabric. Feathers.  The mound shifted again and I saw a round, alert eye almost as large as a coin and the color of a daisy’s head. A black void stared out from its center, fixing upon me with such a keen intelligence it made me shudder, but soon its attention twitched onto other subjects. In fact, it was rarely focused on any one thing for long.  As we came to stand over the table, the full form came into view. It was magnificent - cream-coloured feathers dappled with rich brown like shadows through a forest canopy. Darker on top, paler on the breast and legs. A short, curved beak rounded out its face from which those keen eyes stared. It stood fully erect at about three handspans, and when it flapped its wings in frantic motion I could see where the left wing was slightly misshapen.  “The wing is fractured near the shoulder,” Taeris explained. “Likely it struck something mid-flight.” “She’s afraid,” Cole said.  “You know it’s a ‘she’?” I asked, surprised. “Did you hear that in her thoughts?” “No, Leliana told me.”  Oh. Well then.  Leliana was approaching with the bloody bucket, and I winced at the raw pungence emanating from it. But rather than feed the bird herself, she handed it to me.  “Would you care to do the honors?” she asked. “We are waiting on one of the healers who has experience with animals. In the meantime, food will help calm it.”  Taeris once would have gladly healed her. I took the bucket and reached in, swallowing hard against too many unpleasant sensations and feelings. My fingers slid through wet, slimy gobs of flesh, and I barely managed to resist grimacing.  “Just set it down slowly in front of her and step back,” Leliana said. “Careful movements, so as not to frighten her.”  I did as she instructed, and we all watched, intent and tense, as the bird considered the offering with suspicion. Eventually, hunger won out over caution, and in one fluid motion she scooped up the meat and tossed it down in several lightning-quick jerks of the throat, only to look up expectantly for more.  I smiled. “Alright then, here you go.” I fed her more from the bucket, always careful to grant her space. She studied each new offering as though it might jump up and run away, before darting forward with astonishing precision and accuracy to gobble it up hungrily.  “Are you any closer to a decision about Alexius?” Leliana asked. Her amused smirk as she watched the display belied the fierce glint in her eyes that would put any raptor to shame.  “No,” I said, offering another chunk of meat. I tried not to remember those eyes glaring over Felix’s shoulder as her blade split open his throat. That same image was mirrored by the Envy demon, only with Cullen in Felix’s place. That had been before Redcliffe, but Solas always said time worked differently in the Fade. Could Envy have foreseen that, somehow, and used it against me?  “Sliding, squishing, sickening. She wanted it back but it was too broken. No fixing it now - he’s gone. It’s gone, and so is she.”  “Cole,” I uttered more harshly than intended, desperate to stop his stream of consciousness before it revealed too much. “Please don’t.”  He dipped his head and shifted his feet. “But it’s not too late now. You can still fix it!”  “Fix what?” Leliana’s focus sharpened, and we both looked away. “More memories of your dark future?”  I was struck by too many conflicting emotions to speak, but Cole had no such obstacle.  “It wasn’t the world you wanted back,” he said to her, barely above a whisper. “It was your faith.”  She drew in a hissing breath, her eyes widening slightly - her only outward indication of what she must have been thinking. I had included a rather vague and sanitized summation of her actions from that dark future when I’d delivered my report to the advisors. That was more than enough for someone like Leliana to pull from if she were so inclined.  But then Cole’s head tilted to the side, as though he were listening to some new song. Before I thought to ask what he heard, there was a sound like a small gasp, then a puff of smoke that smelled like the Fade, then he was gone.

[shortstoriesblogthings]

She is waiting...

There is an old proverb that goes something like this: there's a mountain a mile wide and a mile high and once a year a bird sharpens its beak on the mountain. When the mountain has been worn away to nothing, a single day of eternity will have passed. Using this as a measurement of time, calculating the length of time that it would take for a bird to wear away a mountain with only a single day's work every year, she calculated that she had been waiting for a hundred thousand "eternal years".

  In all that time she hadn't moved, not in stance anyway. Frozen in the same standing position as the first day, hurtling through space between planets, she had waited.

  The first planet had seemed hopeful. She watched as the first slimy creatures crawled from the sea, witnessed their first fire, the beginnings of civilization. But then they made their first weapon, their first fight, their first war and eventually, their own destruction, burning the surrounding life with them. She spent a few thousand years there, far more than she should have, hopeful that something had survived, something small that would learn from the mistakes of their predecessors. But nothing was left, even the microscopic flecks in the waters had been poisoned or starved.

  So she left, setting off into the void, searching for another world, her faith and hope damaged by the failures of the planet she had just left. The journey to the next world took a while, she had plenty of opportunities to witness the power of the universe. She saw the birth of a star, the collision of two planets, the death of an entire solar system, swallowed whole by a red giant in the centre.

  Several million years later she arrived, crashing into the world in a plume of blue fire. She was later than she had planned to be, she had wasted time on the other planet, this time she wouldn't, this time hope had no place in her mission. She had landed in the outer edges of a small city, civilization already had a head start on her. She stood and watched, witnessing them. At first, she was feared, then she was worshipped, draped in colourful materials and surrounded by piles of meat and plants, presumably food for them.

  But almost as soon as she had landed, they were gone. In just a couple thousand years the city was in ruins and she had long been forgotten, now tangled in plants and half buried in dirt. Once she had been found by a passerby who seemed to regard her for a minute, then walked off, never to return. Although the city was gone and she was forgotten, she stayed, for as long as there was life, there was still hope.

  That was until the ground shook, dislodging her and snapping the plants that had entangled her for so long. The ground itself began to split, great chasms opening up to spill out hot lava, burning the everything around her. She decided to leave. As she rose into the air, higher and higher she saw that the continents of the planet were tearing themselves apart, the planet crumbling into itself.

  She felt some comfort in the fact that they hadn't exploded themselves through war, rather through their own curiosity. If they had survived they may have eventually become the ones she was looking for. She moved on, to the next world.

  She repeated this process, over and over. Travelling to distant worlds, watching entropy and creation twirling their cosmic dance, destroying stars to form planets, destroying planets to form asteroids, over and over again, a million times in a million different ways. She saw a billion civilisations rise from the dirt, only to be their own eventual destroyers. Occasionally a few shouted out into the void, searching for other worlds, something to prove they weren't alone. Very rarely they actually found each other but every time, they either destroyed each other or themselves.

  She witnessed miracles, tragedy, victory, defeat, murder, birth, progress, degression and billions of special events. She was attacked, protected, worshipped, feared, forgotten, discovered, ignored, vandalized and sometimes expected. She stood upon ice, rock, dirt, land, sea and sometimes gas. Always unmoving, still, emotionless. She had a job to do.

  When she arrived she expected nothing different. By now she had given up searching, she was only carrying out these tasks as there was nothing else to do. Planet #23567823452 was slightly grey and brown, mostly covered with a blue liquid. She landed on the top of a vast mountain, the ice crunching beneath her feet. Afar she could see a small town. This race was already fairly developed, using machinery for their labour and surviving with minimal effort. But this was nothing special to her, she had seen hundreds of planets far more advanced than this.

  She stood for a week before she spotted one of them come for her. This surprised her a little, usually, when she isolated herself from the world's inhabitants she would wait several decades before she was discovered. As she stared intently she saw that a group of them were climbing the mountain towards her, she presumed that this was another civilisation that was going to worship her, why else would they climb a mountain? There was nothing else up there but ice.

  As they drew closer to her she realised that their shape was similar to her own. But then again this wasn't the first time that this had happened, she had met beings similar to herself many a time. The beings were now a few paces away from her, they appeared to be wearing thick material, no doubt to keep themselves warm in these sub-zero conditions. Did they already have these materials built or did they make them especially to meet her?

  The one closest to her remove the material from its head and looked at her. She almost instantly recognised him. Finally creaking out of her normal stance she took a step forward, raising an arm and touching the being's face. She had finally found them after all these years.

  "What did you see?" The man in front of her asked, "Since we sent you back?"

  She had a billion possible outcomes to reply to that, cycling through all of them in under a second, finally deciding on,

  "Everything."

[hurricanewatcher]

July 26: Favorite Quote(s)

So many good ones! So I will choose more than one. Way more!

From Deep Breath:

Those people down there. They're never small to me. Don't make assumptions about how far I will go to protect them, because I've already come a very long way. And unlike you, I don't expect to reach the promised land. 

This is sort of the way I think these days.

From Death in Heaven

I really didn't know. I wasn't sure. You lose sight sometimes. Thank you! I am not a good man! I am not a bad man. I am not a hero. And I'm definitely not a president. And no, I'm not an officer. Do you know what I am? I am an idiot, with a box and a screwdriver. Just passing through, helping out, learning. I don't need an army. I never have, because I've got them. Always them. Because love, it's not an emotion. Love is a promise. 

From Before the Flood

So, there's this man, he has a time machine. Up and down history he goes — zip, zip, zip, zip, zip — getting into scrapes. Another thing he has is a passion for the works of Ludwig van Beethoven. Then, one day, he thinks, "What's the point in having a time machine if you don't get to meet your heroes?" So, off he goes to 18th Century Germany, but he can't find Beethoven anywhere. No one's heard of him. Not even his family have any idea who the time traveller is talking about. Beethoven literally doesn't exist. This didn't happen, by the way. I've met Beethoven. Nice chap. Very intense. Loved an arm wrestle. No, this is called the bootstrap paradox. Google it. The time traveller panics. He can't bear the thought of a world without the music of Beethoven. Luckily, he'd brought all of his Beethoven sheet music for Ludwig to sign. So, he copies out all the concertos and the symphonies, and he gets them published. He becomes Beethoven. And history continues with barely a feather ruffled. My question is this: who put those notes and phrases together? Who really composed Beethoven's Fifth? 

and another!:

You know you've got a lot in common with the Tivolians? You'll both do anything to survive. They'll surrender to anyone. You will hijack other peoples' souls and turn them into electro-magnetic projections. That will to endure… That refusal to ever cease. It's extraordinary. And it makes a fella think! Because, you know what? If all I have to do to survive is to tweak the future a bit, what's stopping me? Oh! yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah: the ripple effect. Maybe it will mean that the universe will be ruled by cats or something in the future. But the way I see it, even a ghastly future is better than no future at all! You robbed those people of their deaths; made them nothing more than a message in a bottle. You violated something more important than time: You bent the rules of life and death. So I am putting things straight! Here, now, this is where your story ends! 

From The Zygon Inversion:

Ah. Ah, right. And when this war is over, when you have a homeland free from humans, what do you think it's going to be like? Do you know? Have you thought about it? Have you given it any consideration? Because you're very close to getting what you want. What's it going to be like? Paint me a picture. Are you going to live in houses? Do you want people to go to work? Will there be holidays? Oh! Will there be music? Do you think people will be allowed to play violins? Who's going to make the violins? Well? Oh, you don't actually know, do you? Because, like every other tantrumming child in history, Bonnie, you don't actually know what you want. So, let me ask you a question about this brave new world of yours. When you've killed all the bad guys, and when it's all perfect and just and fair, when you have finally got it exactly the way you want it, what are you going to do with the people like you? The troublemakers. How are you going to protect your glorious revolution from the next one? CLARA-Z: We'll win. DOCTOR: Oh, will you? Well, maybe, maybe you will win! But nobody wins for long. The wheel just keeps turning. So, come on. Break the cycle. CLARA-Z: Why are you still talking? DOCTOR: Because I want to get you to see, and I'm almost there! CLARA-Z: Do you know what I see, Doctor? A box. A box with everything I need. A fifty percent chance. KATE: For us, too. (Both women have their hands poised over the buttons. The Doctor resumes Games Host mode.) DOCTOR: And we're off! Fingers on buzzers! Are you feeling lucky? Are you ready to play the game? Who's going to be quickest? Who's going to be luckiest? KATE: This is not a game! DOCTOR: No, it's not a game, sweetheart, and I mean that most sincerely. (Do a search on Hughie Green if you don't get the reference.) CLARA-Z: Why are you doing this? KATE: Yes, I'd quite like to know that, too. You set this up. Why? DOCTOR: Because it's not a game, Kate. This is a scale model of war. Every war ever fought, right there in front of you. Because it's always the same. When you fire that first shot, no matter how right you feel, you have no idea who's going to die! You don't know whose children are going to scream and burn! How many hearts will be broken! How many lives shattered! How much blood will spill until everybody does until what they were always going to have to do from the very beginning. Sit down and talk! (sigh) Listen to me. Listen, I just, I just want you to think. Do you know what thinking is? It's just a fancy word for changing your mind. CLARA-Z: I will not change my mind. DOCTOR: Then you will die stupid. Alternatively, you could step away from that box, you can walk right out of that door and you could stand your revolution down. CLARA-Z: No! I'm not stopping this, Doctor. I started it. I will not stop it. You think they'll let me go, after what I've done? DOCTOR: You're all the same, you screaming kids. You know that? Look at me, I'm unforgivable. Well, here's the unforeseeable. I forgive you. After all you've done, I forgive you. CLARA-Z: You don't understand. You will never understand. DOCTOR: I don't understand? Are you kidding? Me? Of course I understand. I mean, do you call this a war? This funny little thing? This is not a war! I fought in a bigger war than you will ever know. I did worse things than you could ever imagine. And when I close my eyes I hear more screams than anyone could ever be able to count! And do you know what you do with all that pain? Shall I tell you where you put it? You hold it tight till it burns your hand, and you say this. No one else will ever have to live like this. No one else will have to feel this pain. Not on my watch!

Best of them all!

From Heaven Sent:

Nothing at all. Instead, I'm going to do something far worse. I'm going to get out of here, and find whoever put me here in the first place, and whatever they're trying to do, I'm going to stop it! But it might take me a little while, so do you want me to tell you a story? The Brothers Grimm, lovely fellas. They're on my darts team. According to them, there's this emperor and he asks this shepherd's boy, "How many seconds in eternity?And the shepherd's boy says, "There's this mountain of pure diamond. It takes an hour to climb it and an hour to go around it! Every hundred years, a little bird comes and sharpens its beak on the diamond mountain."And when the entire mountain is chiselled away, the first second of eternity will have passed!"You must think that's a hell of a long time.Personally, I think that's a hell of a bird. 

From Hell Bent:

Run like hell, because you always need to. Laugh at everything, because it's always funny. Never be cruel and never be cowardly. And if you ever are, always make amends. Never eat pears. They're too squishy and they always make your chin wet. That one's quite important. Write it down. It's OK. It's OK. I went too far. I broke all my own rules. I became the Hybrid. This is right. I accept it.

And that is only from my favourite era! 

From The Husbands of River Song:

Times end, River, because they have to. Because there's no such thing as happy ever after. It's just a lie we tell ourselves because the truth is so hard.

From The Return of Doctor Mysterio:

Things end. That's all. Everything ends, and it's always sad. But everything begins again too, and that's... always happy. Be happy. I'll look after everything else.

From Thin Ice:

Human progress isn't measured by industry. It's measured by the value you place on a life. An unimportant life. A life without privilege. The boy who died on the river, that boy's value is your value. That's what defines an age. That's what defines a species. 

From Oxygen:

They're not your rescuers. They're your replacements. The end point of capitalism. A bottom line where human life has no value at all. We're fighting an algorithm, a spreadsheet. Like every worker, everywhere, we're fighting the suits. 

From The Doctor Falls:

Hey! I'm going to be dead in a few hours, so before I go, let's have this out. You and me, once and for all. “Winning?" Is that what you think it’s about? I’m not trying to "win". I’m not doing this because I want to beat someone — or because I hate someone, or because I want to blame someone. It’s not because it’s fun. God knows it’s not because it’s easy. It’s not even because it works because it hardly ever does. I do what I do because it’s right! Because it’s decent! And above all, it’s kind! It’s just that. Just kind. If I run away today, good people will die. If I stand and fight, some of them might live — maybe not many, maybe not for long. Hey — maybe there’s no point in any of this, at all, but it’s the best I can do, so I'm going to do it — and I will stand here doing it until it kills me. — You’re going to die, too —someday. When will that be? Have you thought about it? What would you die for? Who I am is where I stand. Where I stand is where I fall. Stand with me. These people are terrified. Maybe we can help a little. Why not, just at the end, just be kind?

So many good ones!

[they-them-pussy]

He was... making notes to help him find the Antichrist. Hard-to-decipher notes were not the selling point of him being capable of calculations, it just pointed that he knew these symbols, it was the use.

And he was drunk during the fish scene, which inebriates mental faculties like how he tends to forget big words he would normally be able to call up to memory when sober. And he didn't actually believe the bird needed to get into the spaceship! Look:

"What little bird?" said Aziraphale suspiciously.

"This little bird I'm talking about. And every thousand years - "

"The same bird every thousand years?"

Crowley hesitated. "Yeah," he said.

"Bloody ancient bird, then."

The conversation has a familiar progression, because Azirphale was nitpicking Crowley's story pitch, which Aziraphale is on familiar ground with, given how much he reads. Birds obviously don't live as long as several thousand years so he's questioning the logic of Crowley's story. Continuing down this section:

"Okay. And every thousand years this bird flies-"

"-limps-"

"-flies all the way to this mountain and sharpens its beak."

"Hold on. You can't do that. Between here and the end of the universe there's loads of - " The angel waved a hand expansively, if a little unsteadily. "Loads of buggerall, dear boy."

"But it gets there anyway," Crowley persevered.

"How?"

"It doesn't matter!"

"It could use a spaceship," said the angel.

Aziraphale nitpicks Crowley's story again, which he continues to do so further even down ('pointing out that since it's the end of the universe the bird has to get to, it would be the descendants who would have to get there'/"Seems like a lot of effort just to sharpen a beak" / 'Aziraphale opened his mouth. Crowley just knew he was going to make some point about the relative hardness of birds' beaks and granite mountains, and plunged on quickly.'), and while nitpicking, pitches in story ideas that could smoothen out the story. He doesn't believe that the bird needed a spaceship, not on a way that's like, rock hard solid 'this is the way the universe works'. He was pitching a suggestion while poking plotholes into Crowley's story.

The computer accounts also never specified that he calculated only sales, only that he dod his accounts there, and apparently he did do them considering he was under investigation several times. While he doesn't sell books, he does buy them. And only rarely, when he doesn't have any alternative, sell them. He still does have to pay taxes.

As for the book describing him as not gay, I'm not well-versed enough to tackle that point, especially regarding personal presentation and how angels technically are sexless, so I'm not weighing in on that.

I think the main problem with Aziraphale is that he's not very...emotionally bright? Mostly because of the influence of Heaven and how he understood things to be right. Like, he's, at the beginning of the book, of the mindset that if Heaven says so then that's the way things should be. He rarely questions it. He's wrapped up in prejudice and stereotypes that he's very empathically stunted. In addition to that, if he likes something, he also just sticks to what he wants and never really makes an effort to change it, at least in the beginning, and without Crowley to present to him a counterpoint that slowly gets him to consider rethinking his view of something.

In the beginning, he gives away his flaming sword out of mercy. He knows he shouldn't have done that, but he wanted the humans to have a way to keep themselves warm and to protect themselves. However, he's wracked with guilt because he knows that wasn't exactly what he was supposed to do, because Heven told him otherwise. He reassures himself by saying you can't second guess ineffability. He lies to God's face though.

Also he's rather blunt with his words even when they could be taken as hurtful (telling Crowley he's not sure it's possible for him to do good bc he's a demon, flipped on its head at the end when he says he knew there was always a spark of good in him but that's after his defiance).

He's quite smart when he really wants something done, especially if it's regards to something he likes. He has a bookshop that he purposely makes as unappealing as possible in order to make sure customers don't get in and buy anything. He makes sure that the men who want to buy his bookshop never come back again - which is always a terrifying hing to read but he probably just sends them home lmao.

Initially, when Crowley approaches him about stopping the end of the world, he says it's all part of the divine plan, but once Crowley points out that he can't be certain and tears down all his excuses to keep himself in denial, he agrees. Crowley has to steamroller over his prejudice against the Antichrist too though.

He was also part of slowly influencing Warlock over the years, which in itself is already impressive because teaching children can be exhausting sometimes.

Aziraphale has a l o t of stupid, embarrassing moments, (the.... magic scene.... god I'm not ready to see it on screen) either because he refuses to change his way of thinking, is just really proud of this embarrassing thing or didn't know something was wrong (he had no hand in losing the Antichrist - the nuns misplaced him, and Crowley thought it was Warlock, he believed Crowley). When he is determined, he can be capable.

He is, however, the one who stands first at the very end and goes, Hey, excuse me, this Great Plan, it's ineffable right? I'm about to ruin this demon and angel's whole careers. He's the one who starts to poke holes in it, like does best being the nerd he is, before Crowley joins him in bullying Beelzebub and Metatron back where they came from.

His main deficiency in the story is really that he was a huge prick in the beginning, coupled with the refusal to get with the times but he's not that useless when he actually makes an effort.

i know we’re getting wooby aziraphale rights but i also hope we get kickass and hella smart aziraphale who sat down with the nice and accurate prophecies of agnes nutter, witch and managed to calculate the location of the Antichrist in one go

[silvermp]

Flock Together - Part 1

(part 1) (part 2) (part 3) (part 4) (part 5) (part 6) 

Read on AO3 HERE

----

Her world began with a muffled sort of sneeze.

Warm darkness had cracked open moments before, cold air prickling uncomfortably over wet skin. She was alive, in that moment… But the air was cold, so she did what any warm blooded creature would do in that situation - and sneezed.

Her first memory of her mother was of a massive, dark shadow blotting out the dappled sun. Instincts prompted her to open her mouth, and swallow. She did not experience hunger, in those first few hours. The yolk in her belly still nourished her, for a time.

She began expecting the large bird, and the slimy offerings of food. It sank heavily into her stomach, hunger relenting with each eager gulp. She learned to voice her growing hunger, and her satisfaction in different notes. The other bird sat quietly, watching her with one keen, black eye.

Her body felt… awkward, somehow. It was the only body she knew (right?) yet it felt bloated, lopsided. A dozen unpleasant concepts slithered up into her brain, and the dissatisfaction grew.  Her arms were too short, legs so thin and weak she could barely move them. The bird returned, her hunger quieted, and she fell quickly into unconsciousness.

The next time she properly awoke, her body felt… less sore. A bit less tender, but just as lopsided. She was able to drag her oversized head to look around, blinking against the way her vision swam. The enormous, disgustingly high-definition body of a baby bird leaned against her.

No… that was her body.

She groaned, hearing her voice come out as a warbling sort of croon. There was something twitching at the edge of her brain that said she should be able to conceptualize this into meaningful sounds. Words, even. This body felt heavy, dragging her down away from something that should have been.

Shit.

But the shadowy bird was always swift to return when she woke up, and the desire for food drowned out logical thoughts.

The tightly woven nest still pricked her delicate skin, sunlight feeling too hot, wind too cold, and the ever-present feeling of vulnerability sitting heavy in her chest.

This wasn’t right…

But, it was the only existence she knew.

So she slept.  

----

“Wake up.”

She groaned, tucking her head a bit closer to her chest, wishing the world would just pass on by. A warm shadow passed over her.

“Wake up, before I eat you.”

A jolt of fear shot through her tiny body, and she shot upright, flailing little stubs of arms (wings?) and kicking out with her feet.

She slumped onto her back, heart racing, muscles already tired from that small movement. The shape above her sharpened into the black bird, beak open in mocking, raspy laughter.

“Now that’s better.” It growled, finally stopping the harsh choking noise. It sidestepped around the edge of her nest, peering at her from different angles.

“You wake up when I come back.” It finally demanded, nipping at her tiny stub of a wing. She pulled it away, tucking it closer to her and trying to sit upright. She glared at the bird with as much strength as she could muster, trying not to feel put-out when the bird just huffed another chuckle at her anger.

“Don’t be so prickly, little squirt. You need to eat more, or your flesh will fall off your bones. I’d rather not try hunting down that good-for-nothing this late in the season. Egg laying is a pain” The bird muttered something under her breath, beak clicking with irritation.

These words mean something. She noted with a blooming amazement.

As unpleasant and aggressive as they were, the bird was still Communicating with her. She opened her mouth and gave a pleased warble, the hunger growing stronger with every second. It gave her enough motivation to lift her head and look around.

Food?  She tried to ask.

The sound came out more like a long whine fading into a teetering hiss. She quickly shut her mouth as the crow snickered at her again.

“You’ll have to practice using that tongue of yours, Kuroko.” The bird’s eyes squinted shut in what could be called a smile, if one were being generous about giving birds facial emotions.

“Since you’re awake, You’ll eat something, yeah?”

She nodded meekly, the gnawing hunger writhing like it could carve open her gut. Black feathers rustled as the bird leapt away into the air, the sound of wings blending quickly into the quiet slide of leaves and wind.

A twig popped upright, from where the bird had been pinning it down.

--

She realized with a some amazement that the food she was being offered was changing, as was her skin. Black down spread swiftly across her back and sides, softening the ugly lumps of flesh. She swallowed something crunchy, and something interestingly sour.

“Always so hungry…” the bird murmured.

I can’t help it. She tried to respond, but only trilled a stilted melody.

Something is wrong, her brain whispered.

It was difficult to tell when the large bird was present, or if it had left yet to retrieve some other weird food. Sometimes she wondered if it even flew, or just appeared somehow. No, that was ridiculous. Maybe flapping just wasn't as noisy as she thought it should be.

She'd be introduced to a variety of long or recently-dead things, and a whole host of leggy, crunchy bugs. (To be honest, she preferred the bugs to the meat, but beggars can’t be choosers.)

At night, black feathers draped warmly over her body, smushing her comfortably into the nest.

The crow’s voice spoke softly of old gods, alliances between giants, and the birth of a world. She was enraptured by the stories, listening closely as the bird described a rivalry between siblings and the disgust that beget the gods�� division.

“Amaterasu brought up the sun, and Tsukuyomi pulled up the moon. Susanoo directed the storms and seas…”  

She forgot most of it, moments later, but remembered the joy in listening.

--

“Kuroko, wake up…”

The new-spring leaves unfolded before her eye, time passing in an odd haze of existing-without-direction. She grew restless as the night wind became warmer, and the melody of forest birds shifted tune.  

“Do you remember who I am? My name is Ko----”

She focused on the dappled leaves, watching them shift and dance and cast twisting shadows upon the branches around her. Itchy feathers had begun to develop, and her body had grown nearly large enough to fill up the nest. The crow’s presence became a bit too hot at night, making her squirm when the thick feathers became uncomfortably warm.

She started beating her wings, flexing the quills apart and testing how they caught the wind. It was a marked improvement on the bald, ugly stubs she had been born with. Her body looked more like a spiky sootball than a bird, but it was a marked improvement compared to the  lump of raw meat she had been born looking like. The crow watched her progress, light shining green off black feathers, glinting like pale flames.

How did she know what fire looked like?

---

As her muscles developed, it became easier to look out over the forest, watching other birds and small animals flit around. She felt a pang of longing, and looked forward to the day she, too, could fly. The freedom her bird-keeper must feel, when leaping away from the nest…

Her claws gripped the bark easily, wings pumping absentmindedly as she tried to strengthen her muscles further. She wasn’t sure if it was a gust of wind, or if she really had just lost balance, but she definitely noticed when she started falling ass-over-teakettle down through the branches.

She squawked and scrabbled at the branches and leaves, before landing in a painful pile at the base of her tree.

She lay quietly, panting and getting her bearings for a long moment. The world loomed around her.

She pushed herself awkwardly upright, hunching down and shuffling backward until she was sort-of protected by a large root.

Not good.

Her mind flashed to a dozen ways a baby bird could be gobbled up by passing wildlife - from other birds, to snakes, to cats or dogs. Hell, there might be bird-eating spiders laying in wait.

She eyed the half-decayed leaves suspiciously, heartbeat skipping.

She nearly jumped out of her skin at the dark shape rushing at her, but relaxed when it settled into the familiar feathered shape.

“A bit impatient, are we?”

She shifted awkwardly, tongue sitting heavy and clumsy in her mouth. The apology came out garbled.

The other bird clucked at her, hopping around before stepping closer to her and prodding her sides with that sharp beak.

When she didn’t yip or flinch at the prodding, the bird stepped back, satisfied.

“Find some bugs or something.” The older bird instructed, looking distracted. “Your squealing pulled me away from a good meal, so you’re on your own for this one.”

The elder bird must have sensed her swelling terror, and flicked her tail in irritation.

“Not abandoning YOU, idiot squirt. You need to learn to feed yourself sometime. ”  The bird huffed, taking again to the skies.

She swallowed, watching the bird alight on a nearby tree, turning to stare down at her. She obediently stood up, wobbling a bit as she tried scratching at the leaves and dirt for a bug.

(Honestly, she didn’t know which was more humiliating. This, or waiting for a chunk of mouse to be pushed into her face.)

She hopped over an oddly shaped throwing knife, and a rusty plate of metal in a half-hearted chase after a centipede before deciding it was too much work. Centipedes were bitter anyway.

She did eventually find several black beetles, almost caught a mouse, and apparently that satisfied her mother enough to come swooping in and drag the little rodent back by its neck.

They shared a bloody meal that night, and the black eyes on her back felt much more comforting than the shadows around her.

This isn’t right. Her mind whispered.

Of course it wasn’t she was grounded. Birds were supposed to be airborne, right?

No, why did she know about birds?

She paused, tilting her head to look up at the moonlit sky.

Why did she know about knives, or metal, or how soot looked, to compare myself to? Why do I feel comfortable around that bird?

That was easier - they were both crows, right?

How do you know what a ‘crow’ is? Why would this crow care for you at all?

Those were… very good questions.

She swallowed, the night feeling a bit darker, uncertainty creeping in on her sleep-fuzzy brain.

--

When dawn began sending a pink haze into the dark sky, she woke to find the crow was missing from the branch she had last been spotted on. A warm breeze stirred some leaves, and hunger rumbled in her belly once again.

She ended up flipping leaves over, hopping around the underbrush and kicking over half-decomposed sticks and bark to find little grubs.

One large chunk of bark flipped up, and revealed a coiled up little snake. She stared at it for a moment, frozen where she stood with wings half-open for balance. Then it was moving, and she shrieked, flapping backward and tumbling into a graceless pile. Leaves rustled as the brown snake fled, and she relaxed, rolling upright again with an ungainly flop of wings and flailing legs.  

“Sometimes I wonder why I even bothered to let you live.”

She nearly jumped out of her skin at the sudden voice, chirping in distress and whirling to find the crow standing on a nearby rock. The older bird jumped down, walking toward her with an aggressively lowered head. Where on earth did she come from?

“After all this work, you jump out of the nest like an idiot , and freak out at the smallest thing.”

She blinked at the grumbled words, meekly pecking at a small spider crawling near her feet. Her feathers prickled, and she spread her wings in a futile attempt to show she wasn’t weak.

“You won’t be able to fly.”

The crow snapped her beak with no small amount of irritation.

“Not before a damn cat gets you, anyway. You’re too young and stupid to use the shadows properly, but I’d rather not have wasted all this energy for nothing.”

The ruffled chick froze, feeling her mother looming over her, regarding her with one dark eye.

“You’re the only one out of your siblings that had a lick of Chakra, so don’t make me regret not eating your egg as well.”

Grey eyes widened, and she twisted to look at her mother - she must have been her mother. What else could that comment mean?

Darkness swallowed her.

And Darkness ignited.

---

Kuroko screamed, thrashing out of the shadows and squirming in the woven nest she landed in.

Electric fire lanced through her veins, starbursts exploding behind her eyes. Liquid shadows poured between her feathers, black claws twitching spasmodically as a billion images and impressions raced through an unprepared brain.

Her mother (That was her mother! Kokoro!) sat quietly on the edge of her nest, watching the fledgeling flop around, before growing still.

Kuroko laid for a long moment, panting as words rushed back through synapses. "The Northern Roost was laid to waste by fearful humans” “You were born on the eve of-” “She was jealous of her son’s Chakra, and turned our script against-” “Kuroko, can you understand me? Can you-” “Susanoo, angry at his sister’s insistence, lashed out and drove Amaterasu to hide in a cave, bringing an all-consuming night.” “Wake up, little one, I can’t tell if you’re breathing-” “The Many-Eyed, corrupted, was pulled from their union, and split into the Great Tailed Bijuu. Kaguya was sealed-” “Kuroko, please eat. The Southern Roost is calling, I can’t-”

Kuroko wheezed, curling up a bit tighter, letting the sounds and images and thoughts, oh gods she could think clearly!  Wash over her in convoluted, overlapping trails.

“Are you dying, Kuroko?”

She sucked in a stuttered breath, squinting one eye open at the dark crow perched over her. Her mother’s feathers were flat, black eyes dull in a miserable expectation.

And the darkness of unconsciousness enveloped her at last.

----

When Kuroko awoke, she was alone.

Well, in the broadest sense of the term.

She could see birds swooping through the trees, and a pair of squirrels scampering from tree to tree, chattering at each other and weaving a graceful dance of travel.

For the first time, her mind was clear.

She could recall the legends her mother murmured to her in the haze of twilight, about the moon and sun, and the creation of demons. - and that word meant something now.

She marveled at the efficiency of her own mind, flitting from subject to subject, directed completely by her own willpower. She focused on the word, demons, and found countless mentions over the long weeks she had been alive.

“Humans feared us or worshipped us,” her mother had said.”It depends on the individual, whether they want to call us ‘kami’ or ‘demons’. Every once in awhile, you’ll find one who does both.”

Kuroko stretched her wings, identifying the feathers that had been plucked and named while she watched in a sleepy haze.

“Coverts. Alula. Primaries.” She whispered, stretching her wing this way and that, to make them shift. “Secondaries…”

Kuroko twisted her head around, tilting her head and delighting at the strained position. It was new  and novel just like the rest of her ‘awakening’.

“Tertial…” She flicked her tail. “Retrices…”

“Remember all your feathers, so you can put yourself together again.” Her mother had said.

Kuroko wiggled her tail, considering what that was supposed to mean.

She shrugged, having no idea whatsoever, and deciding that was alright.

The warm darkness still seemed to be pooled in her chest, twisting and pulling with every delighted movement she made.

“Chakra?” She wondered aloud, mentally prodding at it. The silky warmth seemed to ignore her touch.

“Chakra is your spirit’s way of connecting with the world.  It is your energy, your essence, your life. It’s how we manifest, and how our kind can use the shadows.”

Kuroko pondered that explanation for a moment, feeling the warmth shift around her body. She stretched, and the warmth stretched to her wingtips with her. Her mother had such nice things to share.

“I have to go again - I’ll be back soon. The Southern Roost needs me…. I can’t lose them again.”

Kuroko paused, remembering her mother’s words a few nights ago, before she vanished again within darkness. The roost was… “Our home, from the beginning of this world. The crows gather there to breed, and connect.” ... Like a big nest, or a collection of a hundred smaller nests. She couldn’t remember what it looked like. (Had she ever seen it?) but if something was wrong, then her mother was right to worry. That kind of thing was important.

Kuroko flexed her wings again, looking up at the mottled clouds beyond fresh summer leaves, wondering what she was supposed to do to pass the time. Existing in a haze and worked up until that point, but she wasn’t eager to return to it.

She spent a few long hours waddling along the thick branch that held up her nest, stopping periodically to pump her wings and feel the wind stir her feathers. (And her Chakra. How interesting)

Kuroko eventually fell asleep as the sun sank down toward the horizon. She remained blissfully unconscious when her mother came back, squishing against her in the tight nest, and fell asleep.

---

“Good morning, Kuroko. Are you hungry?”

She yawned, shaking her head with a flurry of bristling feathers. Kuroko blinked at her mom, and the unusually haphazard way her mother’s feathers laid. Her memories were still trickling in, but she always remembered the glossy black feathers had been neat and tidy.

She stood up, leaned over, and tugged one of her mother’s back feathers (scapulars her mind whispered) into place.

“Yes.” She finally decided with a little head-bob. “I am hungry.”

Her mother froze.

“...Kuroko? Do you… know who I am?”

“Yes? You’re Kokoro - my mother.”

Something like a shiver ruffled up the bird’s dark feathers, and she managed to hear the raspy words “-get you some food” before her mother swept away into the early morning fog.

[crossingchina]

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Gansu and the Yugurs Pt 2

From the resort area on the top of the mountain we pressed on, winding our way down the backside of the mountain range through narrow two lane roads. The landscape abruptly changed from grassland to dense coniferous forest as we descended from the peaks of the Qilian Mountain Range into a tranquil valley on the western edge of the Hexi Corridor. We raced across a small stream that trickled over the road, shooting water into the air and causing much excited screeching from our young hosts. The trees thinned out in the valley as we approached the Yugur town of Sunan.

Jasmine above Sunan Town

Sunan was the first proper “city” that we came across since leaving Zhangye. It was small but felt like an actual town with businesses and school and homes and a “downtown” area, as opposed to just scattering of homes and farms. We didn’t stop however, we instead drove through town and up to a lookout overlooking the city and the snowcapped mountains beyond. We left the doors to the car open and the music cranked as we got out of the car. One other person was at the lookout, sitting shirtless on a bench under the hot sun. Our driver Birdie enthusiastically greeted the old man.

In such a small city out in the middle of nowhere, it is probably not a coincidence for townsfolk to run into people that they know, but it turned out this old man was one of Birdie’s school teachers from a few years back, and the two of them welcomed each other as old friends, smiling and shaking hands and laughing. The old fellow greeted the rest of us in the local dialect, with Jasmine and I nodding politely and smiling while not understanding a single word. After just a few moments more he wandered off down the hill. Maybe he was tired of baking under the summer sun, or perhaps he was annoyed by the blaring music, nevertheless he was gone from our lives just as quickly as he entered.

Shopkeeper in the middle of nowhere, Gansu

We took a few pictures of the idllyic country town as it hugged the natural contours of the valley. From our perch above Sunan it looked like a small slice of heaven with its neatly arranged identical apartment blocks nestled in the green foothills of the snowcapped Qilian Mountains. Before long we set off once again for the open road.

Convenience Store in Gansu

After climbing out of the valley and deeper into the treeless mountains we finally arrived at Birdie and Purp’s hometown. The village had one dirt road that wound its way through a block of about 20 mostly earthen homes. About half of the homes seemed to be abandoned, with their gates chained shut or the doors boarded. Each home had  At the highest point in town sat a large metal barnlike structure. The home nearest this “barn” was the only house that appeared to be made with “modern” design techniques and materials. I’m sure the town had a name but as far as I know we never learned it, despite asking at least a few times. A meandering dirt road snaked through town, around one set of homes, crossing a small stream and irrigation ditch before wrapping around another set of homes and off towards the snowy mountain in the distance. A number of small clay brick homes dotted the rolling hills in the horizon. Birdie and Purp were excited to be home. They picked up Jasmine like some kind of emperess and excitedly carried her down the road towards the one modern house. That was Birdie’s home. His family were the leaders of this tiny domain. We set our belongings down in the house and headed back for the car. We had somewhere else we needed to go.

Birdie’s home

Near the Yugur Village

Once again we piled into the sedan. Through the small village, across an irrigation canal, past the handful of homes, and out along the dirt road onward into the mountains. The dirt road slowly disappeared and became lost in the wild grassland. Flattened grass and tire tracks from the few cars that made this journey marked our path. Grazing sheep dotted the hillsides and, from time to time, blocked our forward progress. A well timed honk of the horn made the sheep aware just in time to escape being bumped by our slow moving ride. Eventually we found ourselves standing outside of a mud and brick home, perched alone atop a hill, surrounded by hundreds of sheep and a smattering of cows.

Very Few People in China

Birdie’s Grandma’s Home Powered by the Sun

Birdie’s dad, aunt, and grandmother, awaited us inside the two room home. His father sat at the foot of the bed chainsmoking cigarettes, while his grandmother laid on the bed, immobile and seemingly incapacitated, covered in blankets and wearing a hat and face mask. Birdie’s aunt fed the fire of an indoor stove. The fuel was dried cow dung that had been collected and was sitting in a box near the door. The aunt brought water to a boil before serving us the local style of milk tea. It was salty and just mildly flavorful. We drank from bowls.

Dad and Grandma

Gansu Style Milk Tea

The Second Bedroom and Batteries

The home was spartan. The main room was just a bed and two small sofas. A coffee table and a wardrobe. A dining table. A wood burning oven. A few knick-knacks. A poster of a wolf. Birdie said that the wolf was a representative animal of their family and their local culture. I tried to get more out of him but our ability to communicate on anything more than a superficial level was not quite there.  A portrait of Mao hung on the wall. This is typical of many rural homes. And a strange poster of an epic feast was prominintely displayed above the dining table; grapes and wine and cheese and flowers were arranged neatly on the image. It was the kind of spread that had probably never been seen in this part of the world. I asked about the picture. Birdie didn’t have a cultural explanation for this one.

“It looks nice,” he said. Sometimes there is no deeper meaning.

Jasmine and the Posters

The sun was starting to set so we finished up our milk tea and said our goodbyes. Back to the village we went.

In the village, hundreds of sheep blocked the road, drinking from the irrigation ditch that ran through town. We got out of the car and watched and took pictures. Purp noticed a rabbit bounding through the grass. He pulled a knife from his waist and ran off after it. Needless to say, Jasmine and I followed him. He chased the rabbit for a few minutes, over and through barbed wire fences and through dips and over hills, before giving up his hunt. We were having a good laugh about it when something else caught Purp’s eye. He raced over to a kind of small dirt cliff and thrust his arm into a hole. When his hand emerged he was holding a small bird. The tiny bird flapped its wings and squawked its beak in a desperate attempt to escape. Purp calmly held the bird by its feet, proudly showing me and the camera what he caught. He let the bird fly away. Growing up in this environment seemed to have taught Purp a lot about the natural environment and its native inhabitants.

Purp and his Bird

Light disappeared fast and the temperature dropped even faster. From a blistering hot morning at Danxia Mountains, to a cool afternoon in the Yugur Village, to near freezing temperatures as night fell, this part of the world seemed to be a punishing place. It took a strong and smart people to populate this part of the earth.

Sheep Drinking at the Irrigation Ditch

We went inside and cracked open a case of beer while Birdie went into the kitchen to make dinner. He cooked up some “big plate chicken” aka 大盘鸡, a famous, but simple, Xinjiang dish whose main ingredients are chicken, bell peppers, and potatoes. The four of us drank and ate, played cards and sang songs, well into the night. Around midnight Birdie’s 18 year old “brother” (cousin) showed up with a bottle of local baijiu. The alcohol was flowing and the three young men sang us songs. Local Yugur traditional songs, Chinese classic and modern pop songs, you name it, they sang it. It appeared that drinking and singing was one of the ways they found to entertain themselves, with no cell phone signal, no internet, no TV and unstable at best electricity supply.

Drinking Time

Around 3 in the morning as we were starting to wind down, we heard the distinct “clop clop” sounds of a horse approaching. The front door of the house swung open, and in stumbled a drunken uncle, carrying another bottle of baijiu. He could barely formulate a coherent sentence, but we cracked open the bottle and went to work anyway. According to Birdie, his uncle lives off in the hills on his little farm somewhere. News traveled fast through the countryside and so he rode his horse on down to the village to see the foreigner and have a toast. We wrapped up the bottle around 4 am, everyone drunk and happy, and headed to bed. The locals had to be up early as the whole village needed to gather in the big barn to shear the sheep. After the amount that we drank I didn’t believe they’d be able to get up and work in just a few short hours, but since they planned to be up just past 7, I set my alarm for 730 as well. If they could do it, I could do it.

Nightsky in Yugur Country

The alarm seemed to go off just moments after I set it. My head throbbed from the alcohol induced headache and lack of sleep. I checked on Jasmine to make sure she was ok. She was passed out. I chose to let her sleep while I ventured out into the village.

Uncle Sharpening his Shears

Outside the crisp morning air gave me a jolt of energy. I stumbled over to the barn where the first thing I noticed was the uncle and cousin both hunched over their respective sheep, efficiently shearing wool with electric trimmers that hung from the ceiling. They worked without a trace of drunkenness or hangover symptoms (besides bloodshot eyes) somehow. I was impressed. I felt like garbage, and the last thing that I think I could do while hungover is to be hunched over smelly farm animals in a crowded barn. The whole village was working. Young, healthy and strong men sheared the sheep. Women picked up the wool and helped bundle it in large sacks, along with other young men. Women also constantly swept up the poop and fluff and blood and other mess that came along with shearing sheep hundreds of sheep all day in an enclosed space. Older men had less labor intensive jobs. For example, one old man sat in the corner and handed one token to each young man for every sheep he sheared.

Sheep

The old token man told me that they get 8 RMB for every sheep they shear. The fastest shearers could finish upwards of 40 sheep in a day. That’s up to about 320 RMB for one day, nearly 50 USD, which doesn’t sound like much but is really quite a lot of money in this part of the world. The work looked tiresome and hard on the body, and they don’t shear sheep every day of the year, so they must get income from other places as well.

Getting Down and Dirty

Shearing Sheep

They said much of that extra income comes from selling the sheep for slaughter. They told me that most of the sheep goes to Xinjiang Province for meat, though they are willing to sell it anywhere, to anyone, for the right price. Just so happens that the market is in Xinjiang. Lamb is a staple meat in many Xinjiang dishes, and Xinjiang style lamb skewers are famous across China,  so it’s no surprise that the sheep get shipped off to Xinjiang when they are ready to be harvested. The entire economy of the village was based around this animal. There was no convenience store, no shops selling clothes, nothing but farms and sheep. It was quite special to see the entire village, along with this animal, working together to maintain their lifestyle and keep their culture and town alive.

Break Time

Ciggie Break

As the morning gave way to midday Jasmine woke up and came down to check on the sheep shearing situation. The process consisted of putting the wool into a huge bag that was propped up by inside a large box with a door on it. A person climbed into the bag with the wool and continuously stamped down the wool, packing it as tight as possible. A rope dangled from the ceiling above the sack, for the stomper to hang on to and keep his balance and safely work. We were both feeling pretty good and took turns helping the locals bundle the wool, jumping up and down in the bag. When the sacks were full the workers would open the door and pull the huge bundle to the scale. They’d weigh it, mark down the number with a permanent marker on the bag itself, as well as in the ledger, and then a team of men would lift the heavy bag on to the stack. The whole operation was incredibly efficient and well run. Everyone had a job to do. At noon lunch was ready for the entire village. Other women and young kids had been preparing it in a kitchen on the other side of the barn. Soup, bread, rice and some hot dishes kept the laborers full and ready to work for the rest of the day.

Packing Wool

Stomping

In the afternoon Birdie and Purp told us it was time to go. We drove directly back to Zhangye. We took a much more efficient route, straight down the mountain and to the highway. What was an all day trip on the way to the village was just a little over 3 hours on the way back. They dropped us off at Zhangye Railway Station and we posed for a picture together. We shook their hands, thanked them, handed Birdie a few hundred RMB for gas and food and just to show we were appreciative of his time and giving us the experience, and then we said goodbye.

The Road Out of Town

It was a really remarkable experience. I don’t know if I conveyed it well enough with my words. It was just a couple of days. But it was the kind of surreal and fun adventure that I hoped to stumble into when I initially set off across China. Birdie and Purp, if you ever somehow see this, thank you so much those days.

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