Panorama
Paul Wayward examined the flock formation in befuddlement. In scrutiny of the aerial dance above him, he laid motionless on a hillside slope near his loft. Beyond the nerve-like branches of the surrounding trees, a deep blue sky hosted cotton-white clouds and a wide breed of birds. Every season Paul, the Bird Man as some neighboring tormenters tagged him, would take great delight in the appearance of Canadian fowl. The rocky, hard earth underneath him felt creamy as if he was adrift in an endless sea: His heavy trance removing such bodily irritations from his mind. Paul’s lash-less eyes darting to and fro, while ticks pulsed faintly, like small bodily hiccups, across his left shoulder; his laborious breathing now slowed and measured. His sudden physical calmness relaxed his right hand enough to allow for the weight of the revolver to drop gently to his side – placing Paul’s final moments of existence in detectable suspension. The flying creatures of the heavens had captured his will once more, as always. An odd smile- a crooked, black line across his serine face- masked his inner disorder altogether. Reaching up to his left brow (this time), he systematically pulled a few roots and set them, after giving each one a close-up inspection, on his tongue; and in a quick, husky gulp, the soft bristles sank accumulatively inside of him like a pile of hay.
The brick that had smashed his storefront window ceased projecting itself repeatedly in his mind (the broken shards of glass on the floor, cages tipped-over and dented, two female Parakeets and a Cockatiel flapping up and across the ceiling, squawking aplenty), replaced, instead, by a temporary beguiled amnesia. Paul felt himself adrift among the bouquet of quills before his charmed gaze. He knew something was assuredly odd about the sight before him and it equaled only to one thing- a foe was nearby. Focused in on a flock above and slightly behind him, his look followed a line up the hillside, and beyond the rocky face near a cluster of trees where some of the braver acrobats rested on high branches. Nonetheless, Paul’s eyes lingered upon the rhythmical, hypnotic lift, sail and drop of the flock in curvesome unison. Paul was sure that a predator was in the proximity of those trees, for he searched every limb of every tree and the ground near each bark but was unable to detect any indication otherwise. Artless eyes now following his nose- his staunch discernment now pushing him up the stone bank with determined zeal. The gun left behind, forgotten.