M.A. Padilla

I’m alive, as it were. Sorry if any of you had been worried…strange times. I’m not sure what to make of all this, but I’ll give it my best recount. We watched each other for a moment. The little—feathers? Its ears?  Antennae? Anyway, they twitched over its head while it lingered. Long, shining claws curled and then relaxed from arms held at its sides. No mouth that I could see, but the trees were dark, and the creature blended right in. The wings were hard to make out, but I know they tower over its head. They’d have to, of course, to be able to make a creature that big stay in the sky. Something weird with its feet. Bit like a bird I think. Talons like an eagle, the strange scaled skin of its lower legs. Fuzzy son of a bitch. It was quiet, and it didn’t come any closer. I got the gumption to look away and snatched a pencil off my nightstand. I doodled it down, tried to catch the general look of the thing. Some time in my marking, I looked up and caught the blur as it disappeared into the trees. The breath I let out was loud from all the blood in my ears. 

There was no plan. I chewed on my fingernails and ogled my drawing. My eyes scanned the page top to bottom over and over. There’s just no fucking way, right? Wrong. 

My journal hadn’t been closing properly. I finally noticed when I couldn’t stand to look at the sketch anymore. Some of the pages were folded and smashed, chunking up the flat layers. Others—were missing. It seemed the rule of not looking through someone else’s journal without asking did not apply to menacing yet coy cryptids. The missing pages were ripped without any precision. Tears straight from the spine, from the corners, half a page here and there. I wondered what he felt was worth keeping, to read more than once. I scoffed at myself as I sat there. Quite a leap I had made, asserting it could read. Hm. Could it talk? Would it talk to me? Shit—like I’d get close enough to ask. I couldn’t explain it then, I doubt I can explain it now, but I wasn’t worried it would come back. I laid in bed pondering the psyche of it, not whether or not it would return and rip my spine from my body. Foolish, or wishful, but I was intrigued. 

I went back to the edge of the field where I’d first found him. Where he’d found me, I guess. By the trunk where I’d fallen asleep, a shriveled clementine peel. He fucking peeled it. How many clementines had he seen before? He had known the fruit was on the inside, and he knew not to smash it. The sorry rascal had made off with my snack, but I couldn’t help but grin about it. 

What had he taken? Later, I flipped through my journal and tried to piece together what works had been between the intact pages. Among the missing: a half-baked poem about nature from back home, all the pages from a short story about a farmer and a coyote, and some sketches of plants and birds. The only similarity between any of them was the presence of wilderness description. Maybe for him, reading about a wilderness unlike his own was like reading fantasy. My favorite drawing of a Cardinal was gone, there aren’t any here. I wonder what he thought when he saw that red bird. Is he curious about other parts of the world? About what I know? I know how it sounds. I also wish I wasn’t such an idiot—but listen—it could’ve attacked me if it wanted. It’s got wings, and it’s easily 7 feet tall at the head. No shot it couldn’t catch me that night. It just didn’t try. Clementines and literature huh? I can swing that, I think. I’m gonna try something. I’ll update soon.

P.S. I find myself calling it ‘he’ pretty often. I think I’ll stick with that.