Category: The Raptor And The Gargoyle

Acting like you know me…”

(Sleep Token reference)

She had waited for him for years, visiting his door, hoping that he had heard her and kept hope inside of his heart.

But when she went to make a final declaration – announcing a bold move to come see him – she remembered his initial rejection of her love as false and fleeting when he had invested in exchanging his life to care for another’s.

So she hastily withdrew and instead chose someone who seemed to be more like her.

And when she came back years again later to check up on him, she was met by his cold indifference as he at last re-emerged, and she could not get a word of honesty from him.

So, again, she left.

And made a decision to not return – for how many times must a woman play “the fool?”

It might not have been what he wanted, but she could tell that it was what he needed.

“I will be your friend and help you mend,” she said. “Take me to where you need me.”

If she could not budge him from his cemented adhesions, she knew that she had to go into his world to better surmise any absolution.

“You would do this for me?” his disbelief mixtured with amazement. “You know that the odds are high against your success, and there is danger in this business…”

He took so long to answer that she wasn’t at first sure that he’d been listening…

Then a sense of his strength washed over her as warmth of his low growling chuckle filled the spaces around them, echoing off the blackened-by-night walls of the high-rise nook where they perched ensconced, gazing at the bright city lights far, far out toward the water’s edge, and way down far below them.

“As you wish,” his voice resonated deep within her mind. “Follow me down if you’re daring…”

“Take me to where you go,” she asked of him. “Show me of your world, and what you value in that sanctum…”

“I know…” she assented. ” You think that due to my form and size, that I am incapable of those things that you seek and desire.

But, tell me, oh still frozen-solid one.

What do you think it has taken for me to endure life’s trials and, yet, still keep returning here?

You think me small because I let you think me small – so as not to frighten you from your precarious perch that you are still so valuing…”

She sighed in slight exasperation, yet contentment, puffed soft against his neck, feathers tickling his nose as his head turned to peer at her with a skeptical, stoney eye.

“I keep trying to find where my heart belongs – as you’ve told me to,” she confided.

“But, my journeys keep leading me back to you.”

“I’m very good at hunting for survival,” she chirped, admitting in quiet confidence.

“And one thing I’ve gotten very good at seeking and finding is the rarest kind of love. The kind where the heart beats deep with passion.

“I can still sense a trace of it near here, somewhere…” and she carefully inched up his arm onto his shoulder to settle against his warm rock neck, feathers gently fluffing.

“We must both feed,” she reasoned. “The darkness in you calls to my own, hidden deep inside of me, just as the light in my heart offers your own’s reprieve.”

“And yet, I still love you…” she affirmed.

“Do you like that I return to you and alight like a bird upon your sleeve?” she asked the gargoyle.

“In truth, it comforts me to see your bright ways return to contrast against the gray of my world’s city. But I worry for you…”

“Why?” she asked him. “There is a sense of home here for me. Can not this make you happy that I return to thee?”

“Because I will never change my ways for you,” he grumbled. “I will never allow your colors, nor your sunlight, to transform me.”

She had left that city of concrete stone desperation to seek the greener vales as he had suggested, knowing that he could not (or would never choose to) break his mold and stretch those binds of remaining ties.

She must only wish him happiness – though an ache of bereft loneliness would twinge deep inside if she remembered how she had once hoped that he would decide to join her.

“Have you considered migrating?” she suggested. “Sometimes it is better to start out fresh in new fields, rather than to be pidgeon-holed by what is “known.”

“I have been taught to forget my own name and to forget that I love to fly as high as I can fly and I love to explore and create things of interest to me when I am with a mate,” she confided.

“I have also been taught that I can only give my warrior’s cry in silence, when I am alone – for others become as quail when they hear my voice’s power, and even my own children seem to fear me,” she lamented.

“My attempts to find a lifelong mate have failed because the males I have encountered are not driven to aspire like me. Even if I “dumb myself down” for them so they are not threatened, they then have felt superior and have mistreated and devalued me.” She shook her feathers agitatedly.

“It seems that to be truly myself, I must not seek a mate. For with one, I am neglected and lonely. If I am on my own, at least I get to keep who I am and have my freedom.

What is your story?” she queried. “Do gargoyles have much better luck in loving?”

On those isolated slopes
Higher than most is where

She prefered to fly and glide,
Rising above din’s civilization.

“I ain’t scared of you,” the raptor sassily retorted. “I ain’t no pidgeon…”

“Wanna know the PSI of these bad boys?” as a claw is held up and brandished.

“300-400 PSI for an eagle – whereas only
around 300 PSI for the bite of a Rottweiler!”

(As he flexes a claw at her, she is screechin’, “Me, too, ‘bi***!'”)

“You know, my kind has been known to just grab and eat birds without hesitating” – and one of his massive claws suddenly broke loose from its moaring to crackling-flex its intimidating strength at her.

She just shook her feathers and tucked her lithe  body farther behind the safety of his haunch while quipping, “But I’m no irreverent pidgeon!”

“For whatever reason, I am glad that you are with me,” she confided.

“You’ve got to learn how to kick off that stony crust a little…” said the raptor to the gargoyle.

It is our capability to expand our imaginations – which either grants us passage, or keeps us from attempting.to become more than we’ve ever before dreamed of becoming.

“You should return to the rolling meadows where there are plump game and roosting nests aplenty,” his gravel-deep voice advised her. “You will find no ready nor easy sanctuary here.”

“Yes,” she admitted, “what you say may be true. But I have found you – and you are something precious, wild, and rare.”

It was almost as if there were a deflection spell about her when it came to finding a good partnership.

She kept trying to do things that “normal” birds and other earthly creatures do, but the difference was that she just naturally and automatically slid beyond barriers of limitations.

In fact, she was becoming quite a capable wind shifter.

“We are the same, you and I, for we both have wings,” she asserted.

She arrived one day to perch next to him, her warm shoulder leaning against his crouching outer thigh to avoid the high-rise, whipping air currents with a trusting closeness he was unaccustomed to and surprised by.

She asked him about his city, the places he loved, and what he enjoyed doing.

But he had been frozen stiff in contemplation looking out over the city as if guarding it for so long, that it was hard for him to break his vow of silence and give her his reply.