A bird hangs purplish, a bruise against the warming sky. It traces from above as the moorland wakes up, following cracks in the thicket with eyes beady and trained. The air is still. Thistles begin to breathe freely, sensing the oncoming of the winter sun.
A man breathes with them, softening their spikes with the stench of last night’s whiskey, mingling heavy with coffee and a burnt teacake. He crawls silent and unscratched, the earth swallowing and spitting with his movements. Slowly, he levels his shotgun.
A careful finger traces a trigger, eyes look skyward at the bird an ink stain against the grey-blue. though too far away to be sure he feels dark eyes staring back, feels the creeping taunting sensation trickling down the back of his neck. He remembers his boastful disdain of the previous night, staring down his daughter welling up at the thought, some feathered corpse around the military stone of his shoulders. “Don’t get romantic about it”.
Easily said in the safe glow of the firelight, crystal glass brandished in hand, and yet in the split second before he pulls the trigger and splits the morning in cataclysmic two, in the sudden widening of the bird’s great wings he catches something of an angel descending upon him. The shot goes wide and the bird dives like a missile at an emerging rodent in the bush. It is barely even distracted by the scream of his shot.
As his target mutilates its prey in the privacy of the tangled gorse, the man watches breathless as his bullet disappears into the weak blaze of the first strip of sun appearing over the speckled horizon. His gaze follows it skyward, and as he stares into the unstained silence he wonders briefly if he could shoot wide enough to bring down heaven.