the albatross [prose] - ❈

I

I couldn't feel anything but a stale, sulphurous smell. I couldn't even open my eyes, I felt like light would have blinded me, so I just stayed still, for a long time. I can't really tell how long, neither what passed through my mind or any of my thoughts or emotions. I'm not even sure I was sleeping. I might have been in a  trance somehow or in a kind of passive-wakefulness, I can't tell what was happening around me though, or where I was until I finally was able to open my eyes. The light was partially gone but I could feel the just enough warmness of Sun right under my plumage, it was not burning but stinging so I finally decided to move.

nothing. I sensed nothing.

I didn't feel any heaviness of my body, my action, those large, feathered wings that crowned me king of skies a long time ago. I had never felt such a thing in my life, I was delighted but somehow guilty for not carrying that weight of royalty. So the next thing I did was to unfurl my wings and take a few steps. I looked around. A beach, an empty cold beach mingled with the dark waves of the north sea that harshly met the shore. Other few steps, tried to bring balance through my body stepping on the cosy sand and some stick on the ground. My heart started beating faster. Scare? worry? guilty? thrill? I couldn't think well and yet, I couldn't feel any stain in any of my moves, it was as if I didn't have a body anymore, nothing to push to do anything.

'Stop overthinking' I said in my mind. Few more steps and my feet left the ground, I was back at my realm of clouds, wind and dust. All of that was still there, very still, very real, it comforted me. Wind and its smells and odours could spread all in my snout yet, Clouds and their dump would pour my plumage. 

It all felt so real but weird at the same time, Wind was not just spreading on my body, it felt like actually crossing it. Clouds were not pouring my feathers to make them dunk as always, I felt as dry as I had never left the ground. The northern Sun was not that powerful to dry a whole albatross in such a short time. It felt weird. I felt weird. 

I was like the shadow of my own body, real but impossible.

A gust of sea-breeze made my skeletal soul wince, it was just me and my soul. No body to carry, no weight of wings to unfurl, just the load of an old soul  destined to stay forever. I really couldn't think of an explanation. I tried to remember something, how did I end up there? why? My mind felt dizzy, I don't know how to describe otherwise that cold perception of nothing that was being  the main character of that wintry morning. The closer thing I could think of was being a shadow, that was exactly how helpless I was feeling. Or, a ghost ?