He sits on a branch, shifting from one foot to another as he puffs his feathers out against the cold. His beak, once a sharp point, is now blunt. Even his lovely charcoal feathers have lost their gloss and sit raggedly like an ill-fitting coat. He stretches out his tired old wings. For a moment ...
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Death
Fiction: ‘We ran as if to meet the moon…’
I don’t have any friends, so when I get lonely, I talk to the moon. The moon can be a most brilliant friend. Sitting there alone in the yard outside the orphanage, I’d look up to the sky and tell her all of my secrets. She was my light, even in the darkness. Sometimes she’d ...
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Fiction: ‘The Cowardly Soldier’
Under the torchlight, the clearing is filled with an amber glow. The wind is still and all is quiet. Through the branches that arch across the sky, there are thousands of stars glinting in the night. But he doesn’t notice these things. He can’t see the moon ripening into a golden orb, or the snowy ...
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Fiction: ‘Through the Wall’
Last night I could hear them through the wall again. Our walls are very thin. You can hear everything, even when you don’t want to. The voices were angry and started yelling all those words that mum made me promise never to say.
Laney started crying. She’s my baby sister. She’s only one year old ...
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Fiction: ‘Winter Flowers’
The ice advances steadily, encroaching upon the land like the rise of floodwaters. Crystal after crystal forms an icy crust upon the ground. Even the leaves on all the trees that refuse to shed their plumage for the winter are preserved in transparent cocoons. Every once in a while you can hear them tinkle as ...
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Fiction: ‘Starry, Starry Night’
‘All these years, and I’m still afraid of the dark,’ she admits quietly, avoiding his gaze. ‘I know that I shouldn’t be, but it’s not like there’s a switch to turn it off. The human mind just isn’t that simple.’ ‘Are you afraid right now?’ he asks. She brushes a strand of silver-grey hair away ...
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Fiction: ‘Destruction’
When I came to, the first thing I saw was a brilliant yellow sky dappled with fleeing birds. They were racing away in flocks that didn’t normally fly together. Wedge-tailed eagles soared alongside sparrows, while snowy cockatoos streaked through the air beside pitch-black crows. There were so many of them; more than I could identify ...
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