White Peacock

(A story written years ago that I thought I'd share. It was intended to capture the spirit of war, the sadness and the bitterness. It was written in response to a painting by Abanindranath Tagore titled 'The White Peacock' for the ThinkArts archive)

A song hums in the air; a forlorn, long forgotten tune. It curves around the dusk sky, each and every dulcet note piercing the thrum of the humid breeze.

The world spins on, unnoticed, as hundreds of men’s breaths go still. The world spins on, as it always does.

Darkness clouds the battlefield, thick as fog. Flames leap up to the sky, licking the air clean of all mercy. Orange and red. Red and orange. Their fury remains unmatched. They dance and they dance, but the job is done. The heartbeats are long gone, leaving but the hollow shells behind.

And in the soul of the darkness, it stands. A picture of purity, stuck in the heart of this bloody, war-torn realm. The bird without colour. The bird of the soul. It stares.

The White Peacock.

Its feathers glisten under the wink of the flames that bow at its sight and scamper away. It stands on the black ledge, as the breeze flutters and whispers apologies to the snow white crest lying upon its head. The bird lowers its head.

It has seen so much.

It has seen kingdoms flourish and catch dust, seen oceans turn to the very sand that birthed them. And with those very eyes, it sees the distorted picture that lies before it.

The earth soaked in red. The world on fire.

It was never meant to be this way. It was never meant to be so broken.

The song carries on, as it always does. The song of life doesn’t even stop for death.

But as it reaches the bird, the hum dies down, settling against the snow white plumage. It thrums in every being of the creature, giving it strength, for the time has come.

The white bird looks back, purity of the wide world in its essence, trapped in the hungry fire. It looks back, just once through the smoke; at the lives led and remembered, at the darkness so crowded in misery, and then—

It leaps.