Secrets of the Night

A story was born secretly in the bosom of this wondrous night! The critique sleeps somewhere between the lines…

The Nest

The birdwatchers were looking for a rare bird that many assumed to be extinct — the tempestatem tranquillum commonly known as “serene storm”. The last time she was seen, she was flying very low over the Krimson highlands, a region in the north of Klovistatia. The last image of that bird is a sketch made by a child known by her inability of representing what she was seeing. She could be looking at a tree and drawing a flying cat even if there was no cat in the tree. A broken old chair could be a stubborn donkey wallowing in the dust, a pillow could be a boat loaded with feathers, a puddle of rain usually turned into the Pacific ocean… So, who could really tell that in that drawing was the last sighting of the tempestatem tranquillum…?
Anyway, birdwatchers liked to believe that it was. In fact, they believed in much more than what they knew. They knew so little after all. They knew the “serene storm” was a bird, they knew she could fly, they knew that no human hands had ever touched her and, since so many said that they had seen her in so many places in the world, they assumed that she didn’t stay longer in any place. It was an insufficient knowledge indeed, more hypothesis and possibilities than certainties. None had ever seen her eyes or listen the beating of her heart. Probably, the only one who knew something about her was that child that had invented her in her drawing, even if she didn’t really ever seen the real “serene storm”.
Well, by this time, some of you may be thinking that I am an omniscient narrator and consequently suppose I have seen her, at least once. Well, I can’t tell you who I really am, but I am not omniscient… just a narrator… that sometimes flies and sometimes is just another birdwatcher in the forests of this wide world... Keep silent and alert! Perhaps you are lucky enough to get a glimpse of her yourself… crossing the dazzling sunlight or in a misty quiet dark night.
As in any quest, the fundamental questions have to be made. Usually a wrong question leads to an erroneous answer even if the answer is brightly logical. Poor logic! It doesn’t have a place in the world of “serene storms”…
That child hadn’t the ability of seeing (just) the things as they were because she saw with more than her insufficient eyes, had an astonishing ability of making questions, ponderous unusual questions. Probably, her drawings were nothing more than possible answers to her strange questions.
One day, when she was invited to show her sketch in a birdwatchers meeting, she asked and answered wondering to herself:
—Does she have wings at all? Are wings really needed to fly? In my drawing, she has plenty of wings… some are still, some are waving, some are covered of feathers, some are transparent, some are falling, some are growing…
In this moment, some of the ornithologists got up to observe more attentively the sketch as if something had escaped their cunning eyes… It had and it hadn’t; they hadn’t seen all those wings… because they weren’t there! Now the child was redrawing the bird in her mind. But that didn’t matter at all. Since they were in search of a vision, “what it seemed” was as good as “what it was”.
—Does she have a nest or does she sleep on the clouds? Perhaps she sleeps while she is flying or perhaps she doesn’t sleep at all. Perhaps sleeping is her way of flying. Perhaps she keeps flying to never wake up…
—Does she have a family, a mother, a father, brothers and sisters, children, roots on the ground like a plant?
—Does she want to be found?
—Does she really exist or she prefers that no one knows that she exists?
Well, I have a final revelation to you. Last night while I was staring at the sky I saw a shooting star falling in the forest without sound or destruction. I ran in the direction of the dazzling light. It wasn’t far from my home. When I was very near I walked the more silently I could until I was able to touch the giant light itself. The star seemed to be alive… in the center I saw this same bird… So you see… it seems this bird doesn’t belong to this world… all is nothing but a vision and visions do not get extinct… Look at my new sketch… a bird that lives on a star… The star is flying back to the sky… her wings are giant and made of crystal. Look at the sky! There’s a new constellation and the brightest star is the one with wings. In my drawing I called it “Constellation Yet To Be Found”!

São Ludovino, 27/9/2013 – 2:27 a.m.