Under the Stars - Foggy Night

The cold, humid air enveloped Grackle’s body as he crawled out from his nest under a fallen tree. The moonlight reflected off the bright white markings developing on his face, pulling his attention for a moment and startling him. The air was cool and heavy, and it crept under his feathers to make him shiver. He wasn’t used to the chill. He had grown accustomed to the muggy hot weather, the searing heat near the fires, the lava spilling into the sea and sending up scalding steam.

His feet carried him towards the coast. Though, if he walked anywhere long enough, he would surely end up at a beach eventually. He had heard talk from fliers of the other sides of the island. At first it had alarmed him, realizing he was surrounded by nothing but open sea, but eventually the idea got pushed away by other more important things. Like not starving to death. He could hear the waves lapping weakly at the sands now. Low tide. He stepped out onto the ashy sand, looking out at the ocean.

Grackle hadn’t noticed just how foggy it was until he realized he could barely see the water from where he stood. Now that he was standing face to face with it, he almost wished he had stayed in his nest. It was…. His breath caught in his throat, and he coughed breathlessly. Looking to either side, he stepped out further from the trees. He couldn’t see very far down either side of the beach, but at the very least that meant no one coming could see him either. He stopped at the high tide line, looking out at the lazy waves on the receding water.

There was something suffocating about the dark and the damp surrounding him. At the same time, there was also something deeply comforting. Maybe this is what a mother’s feathers were supposed to feel like. All enveloping and constant. He sat down at the high tide line. He would regret the sandy feathers later but right now he just wanted to take in the moment.

The moonlight gave the fog a milky white color, that slowly diffused into dark grey. The air was still, and the fog with it. Grackle considered for a moment that it was almost like the fog was holding its breath and waiting for an easy meal to reveal itself. His mind wandered across the waves and into the hazy horizon. He still wasn’t very large, and malnutrition certainly wasn’t helping. Maybe he should try catching fish sometime. He had seen some long-snouted dinosaurs doing just that a few days ago. He would have to make the best use he could of the ever-shortening daylight, though, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to try something so new with so little food in his stomach. What he needed was a good scavenge.

His mind wandered further into the fog, what did the rest of the island look like? He knew there was a human settlement nearby, melted and in ruins from a recent eruption. He had never seen it, though. I’ll visit before the end of winter, on another night like this. He tilted his head back and looked up at the vast grey and white nothing above him. Usually, he had the stars to keep him company, but it was only the moon and the moisture tonight. The fog didn’t feel quite so oppressive anymore. He dragged his tail idly through the sand, back and forth. Back and forth. The shuffling of the grains lulled him deeper into the comfortable fog now enveloping his mind. I wish every night was like this. Calm and quiet. No blood, no bellowing. He thought about the scene he had witnessed the other day. The sun was going down earlier and earlier, and it seemed some of the animals weren’t as quick to adjust. He had watched as two cryos hunted and disemboweled a severely disoriented iguanodon. The bellows of that poor beast still rang in his ears, the pleading, the bargaining, and finally the death wail. He gritted his teeth. Scavenging and living off the small mammals he could catch was much better than what may as well be murder of your own kind, at least in his mind. He threw his attention back out into the sea, hoping to get the horrible noises out of the front of his mind.

Eventually, he got up. He wasn’t sure how long it had been, nor did he care. He retraced his steps back through the fog. Up the beach, through the woods, and back to his nest. He crawled in and turned around and around, before shoving himself up against a crevasse in the den and dozing off. He drifted off to sleep, imagining it as a journey out into the fog and the waves. Down, down, down he spiraled into the deep dark abyss until he hit unconsciousness.