through water darkly

A black headed gull dives to grab a glint in the water, something caught by the brilliant sunlight. It folds back its wings and dives, then backdraughts and open-fans its tail feathers and reaches to the water. A sound, a ploik and it closes its feet to find nothing there.

It moves to flap its wings and lift itself away, but it has already been tricked and trapped in the dark water. The glint was itself and the water had used the sun to bring the bird to its realm and create it anew. Light bleeds through the hollow chambers of its bones through its feathers and there, there in the water dark it sees itself anew take form and take flight as it breaks in the light and is swallowed and reformed by its brilliance in the river of shadows.

A shadow made cannot be unmade and the bird watches it disappear deeper into its dark element as it rises in its element of sky.  So it skims low over the river searching for where its sepia twin might also be in flight. It glides over the water but it is gone, it is flying deep in the river dark.

The gull stutters in flight and flaps its way to a landing on the bank. A great wheeling circle of its kin are overhead laugh-crying out at this new thing that has entered the world. The bird feels the full loss of its shadow's migration to the depths. It pulls back its head and opens its throat and ululates to the bright sky where its lost family turn in the up draught and leaves it to its calling.

While there is still the sun opening the portal to the dark river it must find its shadow self and return it deep inside itself before the bright light dims and it is lost to the liquid world. It gives out a cry and rises to a great height, turns then, tight in arrow flight, dives and plunges into the water. The light catches its splashback and wake, sparkle rippling.

The air dims. A cloud has found the sun and the bright world reflected in the river is gone. The door is closed and the bird is aswim now in a new dream. A few moments pass then, unseen till now, the shadow bird emerges from the shelter of a bridge. It waits for the wavelets to settle around where the bird entered and when it does he lets out a strange bubbling cry and takes to the sky. The water has breached the air. Off the shadow bird flies to populate the clouds and bring the water in deluge.