Last summer, kingfishers nested in the bank of the stream that flows down to the brook through South Wood. The marshy ground below the tall thin trees shone with kingcups. Bluebells on the higher slopes were a blue mist above the yellow. The tremulous shrill song of a kingfisher – as though it were breathing deeply in and out as it whistled – descended towards me through the wood and along the windings of the stream. Suddenly the kingfisher appeared in front of me, hovered, and flew silently back. In the green sunlight dappled on the water it gleamed like a luminous-sharded rain beetle. It had a glow-worm radiance, as though it were under water and sheathed in a bubble of silver air. It clouded the sun’s reflection with a streaming haze of emerald blue. Now it is slowly dying in the blind glare of the snow. Soon it will be sepulchred in the ice it cannot pierce, crushed into frozen light below the dark cave where it was born.
A fungus of whiteness grows upon the eye, and spreads along the nerves like pain.from The Peregrine, J.A. Baker.
Little Bristling Soul 