September 9, 2001
the bird man
1 o' 4
by bianca
notes: this story frightens me so much. it's so weird. i can't even deal with it. it's not just like weird, it's pee-in-your-pants weird.
pairing: 2+1
There were reasons that the preserve did not open until midday, under the glare of sun's full hand. Before then, shrouded in early morning mist that beaded on wax leaves, life turned in an omnipresent wheel, with deer being thrown head first into the world, slick with red, collapsing against the moss birthing bed. In gray skies shielded by fog, falcons tore at each others' feathers, tore them straight from the wing as they let loose agonized shrieks. In the corner of the preserve, a bobcat raised an ominous arm, pinning its soft prey with the other paw, and came down with claws unsheathed, again and again. The smell of blood was thick and palpable, clinging to the air in a way that would leave traces for visitors to feel along their exposed skin.
But the does would nip at their babies' ears, urging them into a wooded glen, and a falcon would fall, leaving the other to lick its wounds. The bobcats would eat their fill and retreat deep inside the forest to sleep beneath a green canopy of star-shaped leaves. It was almost acknowledged that early mornings belonged to the primal creatures that still worshipped the earth as their home.
Then the tourists came with their high-powered lenses and digital cameras and guide books. They stumbled over the roots of the trees, upraised in protest to their arrival. They tromped through poison ivy and ate lunch on tree stumps housing ant colonies. They went home sunburned and never came back, though in the end, they were the more dangerous than the animals that roamed the land.
Heero knew this when the dead birds started pouring in on the front porch of the caretaker's cabin. At first he thought it was some kind of sick joke being played on him by his friends fro school; haha, let's leave dead crap on his porch, but when he asked them, there was no flash of recognition in their eyes. It grew worse. He would turn his head and another one would be there, lying on the stoop like an offering, accusing him with the limp wings and glazed eyes.
"They don't pay me enough to deal with this shit," he'd say, but no one was really interested in listening, most certainly not his best friend, Relena, or his other best friend, Quatre. They had their own things to deal with, though they were lucky in that a summer job was not one of them. It had been going on for a week, these dead creatures appearing from the woods, moved by an unknown variable, and he had had enough.
Heero knew that it was dangerous when he filled a backpack with food and ammunition. He knew that none of the other caretakers would dare trespass on the inner sanctums of the preserve, where, most certainly, the birds were dying.
He didn't tell anyone he was going. He didn't leave any trace, and when he disappeared, it took two weeks to discover it, a month to call the search off, and four years to find him, transposed and transformed, a god among the animals, a beast among men.
End Part One
Bianca
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