Next: You okay?
Where have you come from?
You know the answer already.
You haven’t understood the question.
“What!”
Where have you come from?
He could see White Raven out the corner of his eye, gliding along beside him, occasionally rowing with her magnificent wings, or flicking the air ever so slightly to correct course. There was no word for her presence. She haunted Buddy. Insisted he be searching for a word that described her…
“Effulged?” he tested.
White Raven laughed. You make things up, then convince yourself that your words have meaning.
And you don’t?
I think, if you examine your convoluted logic, you will discover that proving me wrong doesn’t prove you right, eh? She shuddered violently mid-flight, like a dog shaking water off its back. Ugh!
“What?”
I hate having to think like you humans; especially you hwanitum.
Buddy clenched his jaw, forcing a sharp retort to dissolve on his tongue… bitter medicine.
Thank you, White Raven coached.
He pedalled on in silence, pushing against the clanking mechanisms of his dilapidated bike, summoning the energy it took to make the thing go… a keystone lover, trying to outrun his rage, trying not to hate Andrea, struggling to keep the word ‘bitch’ from germinating and taking root.
I love her.
Suddenly the bike bucked, the front wheel thumping over something sickeningly pliable. Then the back wheel kicked, throwing him forward into the handlebars. He veered onto the highway briefly, then corrected, wrenching himself sharp right, feeling the tires lose traction, the bike slide out from under him, his elbow and shoulder grinding against the rough pavement.
“What the fuck!” he yelled.
Scrambling to get up, Buddy looked back. Road kill. A raccoon lay on its side, its paws poised to scrabble at the pavement, its snout pointed toward the concrete barrier bordering the highway. Buddy’s anger flared again. A car whizzed by, horn blaring. White Raven alighted atop the barrier, watching, waiting.
What is your word for this?
Outrage!, he convulsed. For a creature so beautiful to be… collateral damage.
And yet you drive, don’t you? Along this very road?
Just because I do as others of my kind, doesn’t make this right, he reminded her. It doesn’t mean I shouldn’t mourn every time I pass a dead, mangled creature in the ditch.
And what of the ants?
Huh?
The ones you crush underfoot on your sidewalks.
“Okay! I get it,” he conceded.
Do you?
“You’re saying we can’t live without causing harm… Without killing.”
And how do you answer?
That I still mourn and revere every victim, and do my best to keep my clumsy feet from crushing ants.
And?
“And what?”
And? And? And? And? And? White Raven cawed.
I don’t understand! he pleaded.
My cousin, Corvus, values road kill. He flocks to it. Risks his life to pluck and peck at the remains he finds by your highways.
What has that got to do with me?
Stop thinking of yourself as a bystander at the feast. Your turn will surely come, whether you spend your life mourning others or not. In the meantime, you—along with every living creature—are a guest at life’s table. Nothing’s wasted. Nature heals itself; death, as much as birth, is part of that cycle.
So you’re saying I shouldn’t feel angry or sad when I see animals killed this way, or as the targets of bloodlust, or in the name of greed and power? The insanity of war?
White Raven clucked dismissively. Of course you should! It’s the ability to mourn that makes you fully human. You, of all nature’s creatures, are the ones who must seek redemption, knowing in the deepest part of your soul the irreconcilable truth that life can only pursue its goals atop a vast midden. Even as you delight in the feast, a part of you craves absolution.
“Oh, for Chrissakes!”
Indeed, she clacked.
Value life, my friend, White Raven said. And the urge to life, even when it doesn’t suit you. Even when it manifests against your wishes and insists on its right to be. Even when it kills.
“Leave me alone!” he shouted. “Go away!”
Buddy righted his bike and fled, but she pursued him, a lambent moon in his peripheral vision.
Don’t be a fool, she reasoned. You can’t escape.
Buddy ignored her. Pedalled harder, as if his frantic desire to outrun her could urge his body and the juddering metal contraption it propelled beyond the limits of physical possibility, as if speed was a matter of will, and concentration, and terror.
Stop! White Raven cawed. Buddy, stop!
He ground on, pushing, pushing, pushing… until he simply ran out of will and power—a bug trapped behind a pane of glass—until, exhausted, he fell over by the side of the road, wishing for nothing more than an end to the pointlessness of it all.
Next: You okay?