Nature-Human

There is little warning that my flight is about to commence.

I awake to the normal flooding of white light into our chamber as the crack is pried open by the Flesh. I wait patiently for these openings, this predictable pattern to my existence, so that I may study what lays ahead. It has already been Black, Orange, White, Orange, Black, Orange, White, Orange, Black, Orange, White, Orange, Black, Orange since our unboxing.

I have always wished to serve in the Orange time, but Flesh has come for me, and I shan’t complain at such a gift.

On this opening, a blue talon reaches down, digging into the ruffles of Above, reaching through to my body beneath and bunching my centre in its grasp.

As we rise, I feel my edges fall away to the side. There is still a warmth to my back. Below has also been caught in the Flesh’s clasp.

The Flesh sweeps us across the field, a strike team of three called to action.

I scrunch, I flap, I wave.

I didn’t know I could make such shapes!

My body is fluid in a way I didn’t know possible, and in duty I have already found such joy of movement.

We come to a rest close to what must be the floor, swaying by the side of a billowing blue leg, stuck in the Flesh’s talon. It is a mesmerising speckled grey below us. Shoes hurriedly shuffle across this moonscape littered with bits of detritus, my transparent packaging colleagues trodden on and strewn about. A familiar sky-blue edge of a small, sheeted rectangle is ahead on the floor, covered in an unfamiliar colour, perhaps a pile of—

The talon jerks back up with dizzying speed, shifting and softening its grip. We fan out a little, and another talon grabs onto Above, scrunching through all our bodies, folding us in half and returning us to some natural flatness. Flesh approaches Flesh, not on their shoes but on their back. I can see now they are the centre of the room, with all others orbiting around this table. And we are there, at the very heart of it, closer than any of those other Flesh, shoved by the talons onto the table, right into a pool of oozing red liquid. Two legs above frame our zone of duty and there too a Crown, another Flesh under our care.

It is the change to the weight of my own flesh that I could not have anticipated. As I fill with red, I feel the weight growing of Above on my left edge, and Below to my right. I become aware now of other combatants piled below, saturated in red.

My back edge remains at a flutter as the ooze forms a rolling, advancing topography across my body. The liquid has totally consumed my front edge. It flows through me with a rush more menacing than that of flight. It bears down on my fibres and through my layers.

What do I become when I have absorbed all red?

The advance ceases. I feel the heaviness of Above and Below who have given much more of themselves to the red than I have.

There is a whole legion surrounding me, drenched in satisfaction.

I am apprehensive in my knowledge of what exactly has just occurred, but the Crown is no longer above us, no further combatants have been called in to join us, and the Flesh voices have settled into a relaxed chatter. We have calmed the fray for a higher purpose I do not understand.

The blue talon grabs us, the heroic legion all heaped together, surely off to be celebrated.

I hear a final gurgling scream met with laughter and I plunge into darkness.

There is joy above I cannot know.

Take me Flesh, take me and my regimen to the place of rest we deserve for our service.

And then let me be flat and lightened, ready to serve again.