Sea-Wings

The Sunshine Queen

                    in the lead

The air she flew in was like a burnished throne. Sunshine, gliding with regal wings wide and still, led her six devoted young, their wings beating with love to follow faster. Her royal beak burned the air blue.

And then she turned. The formation broke into individual acrobats afire. I have never seen such twists and turns, biting the air and goading each other. One young Grog flew as if he had ants in his pinions, head flicking round right and left, wings and tail in aerial convolutions--truly extraordinary. It was if he was discovering every possible bodily contortion he might form in flight or how he might use the air thus.

If it took the Grogs awhile to get airborne, it is the air itself now gone vacant to gaze upon the wings of the Grogs, "making a gap in nature".