Stillwing

The morning fog clears paths for me. The dew that clings to the grass shakes as I take my flight. I am called Stillwing. It is not a name given to me by friends or family; it is one that I have picked. For generations my wings have fluttered and sent out small vibrations through the air that ripple and lightly shake the crisp leaves that clutter my space. I have been called a hummingbird by children of all sorts who have chased me through my woods over the years. I have seen beavers, squirrels, deer, and frogs make their homes and lose them in a span I would consider short, but that proves to be their lifetimes.

I am not god, nor am I beast.

I am Stillwing.

I have served as guide, as confidant, as surveyor of the wilds. Some would find the solitude in my longevity to be a tiresome burden, yet I find it rewarding. I drift, wiggle, and wobble through the branches and the brush. I spend my time observing the critters and the creeks. I have seen rivers carve their own graves and fill them again before the frogs learn to croak once again. Often enough, to prevent myself from lingering in the past, I tell myself a story. Of all of them that I have held onto, one in particular comes to the front time and time again. The one of the boy who spoke to the river.

Once, in my flight through the pines and the oaks, I came upon a small boy. Alone. He sat by the river’s edge and stared blankly at the soft currents that gently formed around his toes and again congealed on the other side of him. I first noticed him because the river was quiet. There was no rustle of brush that fought for the water. No singing frogs sharing their tones. No sound of the water he decided to briefly inhabit.

When I took flight to see what he might intend for my woods, I heard him speaking to the river.

“Hi, Mom,” he said.

I thought it odd that a boy might call the simple river his mother, but I flew closer.

“Miss you,” he shared.

Again, an oddity. How might he miss what was already present?

“Dad doesn’t know I’m here, but this used to be your favorite place.”

If the river was his mom, was the tree his dad? I pondered the words of the boy. I had encountered children before, but historically I had been greeted by laughter or yells. Never had I felt like an intruder in my woods.

I flew closer. The boy noticed me.

“There’s a hummingbird here, Mom. I remember those were your favorite.”

He studied me.

“Is that you, Mom?”

I cut through the air around him in a pattern of vertical dashes.

“Thanks for coming, Mom,” the boy offered.

He looked to me, but I was above the river, and clearly not the mom he spoke to when he looked at the crisp, clear water. The river rippled when he spoke, but not from wind or pebbles that occasionally collapsed from the riverbed. The flowing statue of the woods answered, soft as breath, and I thought perhaps it knew his name.

The waters hummed.

“School starts soon.”

As he spoke, his breath hummed in the air like my own wings. We both echoed the waters below.

I had spent my existence in flight, but for some inexplicable reason I felt I should linger by the boy. I rarely felt compelled, yet the boy was different.

I heard a loud echo from outside my wood, and the boy ran from his mother. So I continued my routine flight of the woods.

The next day, to my surprise, the boy returned to Mother River. Again, I felt compelled to visit him. As I made my appearance, the boy said, “Hi, Mom,” toward me.

I thought maybe we were both confused now.

I flew lower to lead his eyes to the river.

“It is colder today, Mom. I guess fall is coming. You loved fall, right?”

He asked the river a question, but my attempt to lead his eyes to the water had failed. I flew quickly to see if his gaze might lose me. It did not.

I flew closer to him to try and leave his field of view so that he might focus on his mother. Instead, he looked down and held his hand over his shirt. He closed me into the small space between his chest and his hand. Another entity might have felt claustrophobic, but I am used to small spaces.

I am Stillwing.

My wings, ever present, faltered for a moment in their rhythm. I did not choose to break my consistent stride, but I was not mad that it had happened.

He looked down at me between his palms.

“You told me to keep moving, even when the water is cold. So you can stay by the river, and I will keep walking, Mom. That way we are both moving. I will come back when I am ready.”

He lifted his hand to let me fly away, but I did not take off immediately. When he stood, it briefly frightened me, but I hovered in the spot for a moment and watched him leave my woods.

I did not see the boy again for some time. Every so often he would reappear at the river, but never for long. One day, a day I did not know would be the last, he stopped coming altogether. The boy did not need Mother River any longer, so it seemed.

When I complete my rounds of the wood, I have since taken to lingering in the spot where the boy had sat. It hums back to me sometimes. We talk for a while. And I stop where the boy talked to the river, where the voice still lives in the water and whispers through the reeds.