F3: ‘Silver Eagle’

For me, it’s been a fairly odd few days, and I thought I’d try something different. As such, this week’s F3 is rooted firmly in truth.  Behold!  Friday Flash Non-fiction:

SILVER EAGLE

It’s dusk and I’m outside the library, watching the skies. A temporary reprieve from tales of the American Empire, urban ghosts, and sweatshop cyborgs unable to wash the blood from their hands. She said it’d be soon, but I still don’t know what I’m looking for.

Even now, the bald-headed Frenchman stalks the corridors of my mind, filling the air with his musings on life and death. Slumped against a wall with needles in my feet, I can but scream.

Trying to shake the image, I stretch my limbs and continue the sweep. Will I even see it? Through last night’s cider-fuelled haze, I should have thought to ask for more details. Instead, I left with the name of a Slovakian sociologist. Brilliant.

After a couple of minutes, I’m joined by L – a friendly face from a class I took last term. We chat about essays. Thoughts of my unwritten tale. Of pirates, terrorists and criminals – hiding in a shell they forged from the discarded fragments of a dying nation-state. She smiles. I tell her how, yesterday, a seagull stole my lunch – plucked from my hands with a flapping of wings. She seems suitably outraged. It’s cold, and I worry that I’m talking too much.

Then we see it. A light out to the west, where the twilight fades to sapphire. We watch in silence, L and I, as – wings outstretched – it cuts an arc across the heavens.

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This work is licenced under a Creative Commons Licence.