(every title I think of disappoints me)
Author's Notes: I have the vague feeling something should go here, but I hope it shall pass. The important thing is, I am able to write (even if I am not able to focus on NaNoWriMo as I had once hoped...)
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"Sometimes, I think I could almost envy him," I said the words half to myself as I watched the little creature slumbering on my finger.
John heard, of course, and gently returned the little fellow to its place. "You envy him? I don't know I've ever heard anything so ridiculous."
"Society is so innate in him. It is his whole life. And it comes easy... and without it, he would die... but it does not worry him. I... I have never known what it is like to belong."
"You said yourself without it he would die. And he is not even a thinking animal. Could you really trade your lot for his?"
"Of course I could not. But sometimes I wonder. It seems... It seems to me that human society is not so different from his. A bustling hive of intrapersonal connection in which every man knows his role but me."
"Walk with me." John said, and I readily acquiesced, taking his arm and following him down to the small pond.
The pond lay between three seperate properties, belonging to none, but the walk that led down to this segment of the bank was ours. Across the little pond was our nearest neighbour, a farmer with several swans in addition to his ducks and chickens. There were at least three swans, and had at one time been four, though for some time I had not observed the last. Today, two were on the water, the largest of the group and his mate.
"Ah, good, they're out. Do you know much about swans?"
"I'm afraid not, aside from being familiar with Mr. Kettering's."
"I'm not asking for a monograph on the subject." John laughed, not unkindly. "You have a basic familiarity with the things?"
"Yes."
"They mate for life."
"Then in that respect, they are better than most men."
"Hush, you. They live in pairs, quite simply, but as far as I know, swans are every bit as happy with their lives as bees."
"Moreso, I imagine. I am not sure of the capacity of bees for true happiness."
"My point is, not all men are bees. Some people are swans, content not to flit about sociably, but to limit themselves to the truly important attachments."
"It is a fair point."
"I'm glad we saw this pair." He pointed. "I spoke to Mr. Kettering the other day, down the shops, he was telling me about them after I expressed a friendly interest in his waterfowl. That big one, the largest, went rather too far afield once. He thought he'd lost it for good. After a fortnight he was sure it had come to a bad end, and after three months he was certain he would never see it again. It got itself lost the night before a big storm and spent those three months penned up on another farm, until the other farmer, a friend of Kettering's, discovered a bird that was not his and returned it."
"Ah." I said. I was not sure what else there was to say. I doubted he wanted me to comment on the correlation between the swan's sense of direction and the weather, though that seemed to me to be the most remarkable facet of the story.
"That whole time the swan was missing, his mate mourned him."
I turned, somewhat sharply, to find John staring out at the water intently. His gaze did not follow the swans. It did nothing but avoid my own.
"Three months seems a long time for a swan."
"It would have done so its entire lifetime." He assured me.
I grasped his wrist gently. "Lucky its mate had not really died."
"Yes." His voice was tight. "Lucky."
"A poor swan, knowing he would be mourned and staying away so long."
"He was in a pen."
"How do you think a swan apologizes, for a thing like that? Is a swan's capacity to hold a grudge proportional to his capacity to mourn?"
"Her capacity."
"Yes. Of course. I meant, well, in a general sense."
"I am sure that her joy far outweighed any sense of being hard-used. Perhaps she was presented with some particularly fine duckweed."
"It's beginning to get cold. Come back to the house with me."
We trudged back up to the cottage in silence, though not an oppressive one. The silence remained as I prepared tea-- with fresh honey-- and he stoked the fire in the front room. Settled in together, I rested my head over his heart.
"It seems as though I am not cut out to be any creature at all."
"How fortunate it is that we are human beings, then." John smiled, his fingers carding through my hair.
"Very fortunate."
"I forgave you years ago, you know." He took the cup from my hand before it could drop, placing it alongside his own on the low table.
"I always suspected you of being too good to me."
He kissed the top of my head. "Never too good. I think we are just good enough. I think we are far better for being together than we might have been without... and I think that now, it is time for bed, and in the morning your mood will have changed completely, and there shall be no more of this curious depression."
I rose and followed him to our bed. I could not be certain until the morning came, whether or not he would be right, but I held out some hope, and that in itself was a strong indicator.
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~Finis~
~Glas