“Whawhoaa, you have come!” Jehena said said, as I pulled into the thermal beside her.
“I have come,” I said. “I flew north for a while.”
“Ah, North. The ocean?”
“Yes. Fish, breezes, water, waves.”
She looked at me, her head turning, “You have made a poem, then?”
I blushed, “Yes, sort of.”
“Now, or later?” she asked me.
“I… I don’t think it is good enough for later,” I said, and she grinned at me, mocking.
“But it is good enough for me?”
“I mean, I meant…” I stammered. But she just grinned more at me, and we flew on.
A few minutes later, she said, “Well, let’s hear it.”
“I, umm, OK.”
Waves
And fish and smells
And wind unceasing coming
Off the sea
Waves
And sound and movement
Always, always coming
Off the sea
“Well, that is different,” she said.
“I know,” I said, it isn’t very good.”
“I didn’t say that. I said it was different. You use the language very differently than I do… or any of the others. It is short, and very emotional. The word choices are odd for a poem. ‘Fish’ instead of ‘a silvery flicker’, for example.”
“And… the emotion… you express… repressed joy. Childlike joy. I love it.”
“Oh. Really?”
“For a first effort. In ten years or so I expect you to rewrite it and tell it to me again.”
“Oh. OK.”
“Are you back now? Or are you going to go do some more fly around?”
We flew together for several minutes, and then I dove on a wild pig. As we tore it up together I said, “Well, I think I will stick around. I was a bit lonely.”
“Shall we go to the ledge, then? We have a couple of new members.”
“New?” I said, launching off. “Just flying?”
“Yes,” she said, as we glided toward a nearby thermal.
“Two of them? That’s unusual,” I said. And it was, from what I had seen. We Eagles tended to live far apart and had children very rarely.
“Twins,” she said. “their mother laid two eggs at the same time. Or, rather, a week apart. It doesn’t happen often, or so I’m told.”
“Twins?” I said. “Wow, Twins!”
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Von