Kathryn MacDonald – p. 189

Night Flyer

A shadowed wing ripples across her skin and she brushes her cheek, runs hands through her hair as if it harbours a bat or two. She has woken, tossed covers in a panic, her wild eyes searching.

She is a small woman, almost blind – a skinny broad he might have called her – a woman with the broad hips of one who’s borne children, a woman wrinkled with life’s concerns, a woman whose eyes spark in fear of shadowed things.

She is a woman wanting serenity – the mellow taste of vin rouge in the afternoon when piano practice ends, a harlequin romance to thumb when the fleeting thought of him-of-the-course-tongue enters her mind, but these bats….

If echolocation guides their flight, why brush her skin? She bears the weight of silent bats slipping through the shadowed cracks to touch her cheek – blames herself for leaving him whose name she cannot speak will not speak.