Fastwinded

– Felix

As soon as Felix turned north he panicked. The faster wind ripped at his feathers, forced the air from his lungs, buffeted his flight. He tried to escape it, to turn around and head back for the safety of the stillness, but he couldn’t move his head. He forgot to flap. For a nano-second, his angle of attack was perfect: his feathers clung to his body, an exhilarating rush gave him a delicious feeling in his head, the wind massaged his skin.

And then he remembered to fly.

The wind picked him up, threw him down, rushed him inland towards the hills. He felt around in his mind, trying to force his north-sensing magnetite to align him, but it was no use. In seconds, the beach was behind him, the hills all too in front of him. He struggled, still trying to turn back, his beak moving as he tried to recalculate his flight formula. He dropped out of the slipstream, falling out of the air, tumbling tail over beak, the familiar high-pitched screeching hurting his ears.

An instant before meeting the ground, he made it out of the dive, and forced himself into a steep climb. Heart thumping in his ears, blood rushing to his head, he reached for his magnetic sense again.

But he was back in the killer tailwind. It grabbed him once more, driving him beak-first as the sand rushed up to meet him. With a deep breath, heart still hammering, no time for an on-the-fly calculation, he turned his body what he hoped was due west. Maybe the hill was safer after all—so long as he reached the lee before reaching the hill itself.

Most of his mind chose to scream in fear and pain, but a small part detached. It found it an eerie thing, pointing one way and sliding another, the wind twisting his neck, trying to snap it like a dried-out weed while forcing his upwind wing over his back, ripping at his shoulder muscles, the air clinging to his downwind side in a dead pool of stillness.

No amount of flapping made any difference to his flight. He turned, flipped upside down; the wind first choking his screams and pummelling into his lungs, next hovering just beyond reach of his gasping beak.

And then he was through. He pulled up sharply in the sudden lee, clinging to the narrow channel of quiescent air, breathing a steady flow of it, rich and cool, coaxing his wing muscles into a semblance of flight. Another breath and the smell of sewage came to his beak and he knew exactly where he was. Like magic his internal map stabilized, north blinking a calming, steady green on his internal display. Following the scent, he forced a few more aching flaps before spying a lone tree and thumping onto an outspread, leafless branch.

Felix wasn’t sure how much time passed. His heart resumed its rhythm first, his vision finding its way back from a dark haze some time after. His breathing stabilized. Finally a dull throbbing in his claws called for attention. One by one, he peeled loose his painful grips on the branch, his blood tingling as it rushed back into his toes. The pins and needles spread up his legs. He shook himself.

From here he could see the ocean with its vicious whitecaps following the southerly, but no sign of the Chip N’ Swill. He searched through Ms’s files until he found a map. It was only four-dimensional, but it told him enough: x) that the Chip N’ Swill was just around the next hill, so not just the keen-eyed customers would have seen everything, everyone there for lunch would have; and y) that the paddock in which he currently sat was the site of the annual mudlark debut.

It sunk in then. That thanks to the curlews, he wasn’t going anywhere. Instead, he would be here, at the sewage works, debuting with the rest of his friends. Possibly under this very tree.

An infusion of anger and determination refreshed his muscles. Hawk it, he was not going to let this beat him! He was better than this. Hadleys, Ferrells, inver-whatevers. Someone would know how to help.

Maybe even Ms.

He lifted off again, avoiding any trick-flying and staying in the thin smooth layer near the hills, a few angry flaps taking him within sight of the Chip N’ Swill.