NIGHT EAGLE

I began writing the 3rd volume of my Shapeshifters trilogy this morning. It is surprising me already. I sometimes weep when I write: the themes touch me deeply in ways I don't understand. I finished the 2nd volume last week. Writing requires solitude, we are living from deep inner connections. Then the book comes to an end, the inner connections fade, and the everyday solitude becomes oppressive, a disconnection. And I begin to flail.

So this morning came as a relief. The opening image was pressing on me, making me weep, so down it went, and it unfolded. Here is what I wrote:

The Eagle flew through the night, heading north-west. Hour after hour in the freezing remoteness of Earth’s upper reaches, mighty wings grasping a fierce purchase in the scant atmosphere.

In his solitude he felt keenly the presence of the stars, their myriad tribes shining down with an intensity virtually unhindered at this altitude, each constellation seemingly with a quality and story of its own.

Or so reflected Queen Elfina. This was her first experience of Shifting fully and physically into the Eagle. For the first couple of hours this kind of reflection had not been possible. The initial downward sweeps of the Eagle’s wings had flung her out of herself and into her distantly remembered home, the entire cosmos.

And there she had stayed, unformed, blissfully at one with the vast ocean, the Eagle a flickering point of connection, a wave on the surface.