Theodore Featherstone's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Theodore Featherstone crouched behind a stack of painted stones, his feathers stiff against the cold. All night he had watched the flock sleep among the soft, scoop-shaped dunes. No one had asked him to. No one knew. He counted three exits from the yard, then four, then three again. One day, he told himself, they would trust him. One day he would be their guardian. Then he saw it. A low shape slipping past the rust-red fox marks painted on the cairn. A real fox, circling the soft sugar perimeter where the flock lay curled near a melting bowl of bright ice cream. Theodore's throat tightened. If he called out now, the flock would wake. They would see him hunched in the shadows. They would know he had been watching them all night, every night. They would call him strange. They would never trust him. The fox crept closer. Its paws pressed quiet prints into the golden sand. Theodore shut his eyes. He pictured the worst case, then the next, then the next. He opened his beak and screamed. The flock scattered awake in a storm of feathers. The fox bolted into the dunes. And there stood Theodore, alone in the open, every sleepy eye turning toward him with the same hard question: what were you doing out here in the dark?