Vachon Imagined

She stood at the edge, looking out at the wide-open space, reminded of how small she was, and how irrelevant her concerns seemed against all of it.

Holding a small pebble, she sent it across the pond.

One ripple.

Then another.

Then another.

Until the ripples became so furious that they opened a space in the water.

And then the birds came.

First one.

Then dozens.

Then hundreds.

They poured from the trees and erupted from the reeds, holding her anger and despair in a tied knot of deliverance, lifting into the sky in great sweeping waves. Their wings beat against the air until the sound became a single, rushing pulse.

They circled the opening, tighter and tighter, until there were no longer individual birds, only motion.

A living spiral of wings turning inward.

They descended in waves, one after another, each flock disappearing into the opening and drawing the next behind it.

More came.

Faster.

Closer.

The sky itself seemed to fold inward.

And as the opening widened, so did something in her.

More birds.

More of herself.

Until there was no separation between the movement of the birds and the movement within her.

She was no longer clenching.

She relaxed into the knowing that somehow, all of this was working together.

And again, she disappeared into the void, as though she had never existed.