Seagull Sorrow
By Rachel H Grant
The feather flew in to Brian’s garden like an avian secret message in a bottle. There it lay on his doorstep, royal mail from the skies. Slowly, he bent to pick it up, a twinge in his back eliciting a groan. It was a dark grey speckled feather. Brian smiled, recognising the signature of a baby seagull. They were the sweetest local urban wildlife, their squeaks a pitiful lament on life, a poem of pain.
The next morning the baby flew in to his garden, strolling through the badly cut grass, whining like a lost soul. Brian smiled, opening the back door to say hello. The little seagull stared at him with impenetrable black eyes.
Friendship comes in many shades. Brian fed the little seagull every day, life turning up in volume as a smile flowered in his soul. The young bird’s eyes sparkled with mirth, as if laughing inside at this strange world. “I will call you Samuel.”
Brian looked in to the black eyes and read an idea. A children’s book about a baby seagull who never grew up, a friend to an old man who fed him year on year. The man grew young at heart while the seagull refused to age. And then the man in his story wrote his own book, about an eternally young seagull and his old man friend writing a book …
However Brian’s real seagull did grow up. Year after year the gull visited the garden, a friend who would never desert him.
Brian smiled as he looked in to his grown seagull’s pale yellow eyes, little suns of shining humour. An idea itched deep inside his mind. Another children’s book, about a seagull who reversed old age in his human feeder.
Brian laughed out loud as he wrote and wrote into the night. An entire town began to feed baby seagulls, gaining eternal youth in the process. And the babies never grew up, earning the town the nickname of Seagull Surprise.
Brian continued to write, book after book. Baby seagulls were local heroes, avian custodians of the community. From nursing homes to chip shops, seagulls became favourite visitors. And the nursing home witnessed a reversal of age in its residents, while the chip shop became an international sensation.
However, as he wrote late in to each night, eternal youth eluded Brian. His bones began to ache, and his eyes failed. Then the fatigue encased him in a fog he could not escape.
Finally the tumours in his body overcame him. There would be no more stories.
Then the day came for him to pen another story … but in the sky.
Samuel the seagull still came to the garden everyday, a shadow of a story unwritten in his heart. Then somehow he found Brian’s grave, a seagull’s sixth sense and the longing to say goodbye. And from then on, every day the seagull would visit the grave, sitting on the fresh grass as though it were a magic nest.
Day after day, winter through summer. He became known as the Graveyard Bird. Mourners would pause by Brian’s grave, and nod their heads.
And one day Annabel, a writer, arrived in the churchyard. Surprise danced with sorrow in her heart. A Greyfriars Bobby style seagull! And then she began to write, and the graveyard seagull story travelled the world over.
For stories never die, they live forever in the hearts of their readers and inspire more tales wherever they go. And new seagulls will be born, and the story starts over as friendships flourish like feathers in a magic breeze.
And a seagull’s sorrow is but a whisper in the wind, feathers that will go on forever even as one day they are forgotten.
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