"If I could fly I would never come back", you said
She bled on the inside for the poor hatchling, shocked and unsettled by what she had just seen. Shifting in agitation on her branch, Maea struggled to remain where she was. It wasn't to interfere that she was here. Nor was it to judge, or take sides, or decide what was good or bad. Over and over she reminded herself that this must be happening all over the delta, all across the world. Something was eaten so that something else might survive.
But that didn't mean she didn't feel a flash of vindictive satisfaction when the mother crocodile, after safely depositing her babies in the rushes, caught up with the offending caiman and made a meal out of it, instead. It was only a momentary thing, but it shook her all over again. Taking flight to escape the sight of the carnage, suddenly her eyes found nothing but dread in the trees, in the shrubs, in the cobwebs and vole hills. A spider's cocoons held countless victims, paralysed and waiting to be devoured. A badger dug through an anthill, licking up eggs and larvae despite its face crawling with ants. On a shrub, as dawn cast a steely light over the sky, she saw a sweet looking songbird impale a bug on the sharp thorns of a bramble vine, next to the half-eaten carcass of another bird - equally impaled.
It was too much. The world was too much. Cruel, and heartless, and unforgiving - the image of the caiman's tail and rear legs sticking out of the crocodile's mouth before it went down wouldn't leave her - and she... what was she? Why was her heart bleeding if she was meant to be like that crocodile? Why was she struggling like this when Thalassa could look at it and just shrug, without a million questions popping up in her head?
It made no sense. Nothing made sense and as Maea flew back to hide herself away at home where she could process what she had seen, she thought it might be time to dig out that journal Elizabeth had given her.
[FIN]
But that didn't mean she didn't feel a flash of vindictive satisfaction when the mother crocodile, after safely depositing her babies in the rushes, caught up with the offending caiman and made a meal out of it, instead. It was only a momentary thing, but it shook her all over again. Taking flight to escape the sight of the carnage, suddenly her eyes found nothing but dread in the trees, in the shrubs, in the cobwebs and vole hills. A spider's cocoons held countless victims, paralysed and waiting to be devoured. A badger dug through an anthill, licking up eggs and larvae despite its face crawling with ants. On a shrub, as dawn cast a steely light over the sky, she saw a sweet looking songbird impale a bug on the sharp thorns of a bramble vine, next to the half-eaten carcass of another bird - equally impaled.
It was too much. The world was too much. Cruel, and heartless, and unforgiving - the image of the caiman's tail and rear legs sticking out of the crocodile's mouth before it went down wouldn't leave her - and she... what was she? Why was her heart bleeding if she was meant to be like that crocodile? Why was she struggling like this when Thalassa could look at it and just shrug, without a million questions popping up in her head?
It made no sense. Nothing made sense and as Maea flew back to hide herself away at home where she could process what she had seen, she thought it might be time to dig out that journal Elizabeth had given her.
[FIN]
Maea
