Yesterday, I began to write a story.

I didn’t know until it started that it would feature a girl, an egg,  a yew tree and a feather. But it did.

Then I went for a walk amongst the corn rows, as the sun set and a hush fell,  just as the giant stalks were coming to life, chattering , peering and pointing at the strangers in their midst. A vast sea of green faces, curious, animated, laughing, mischievous. Clap clap clapping and a-rattling their spikey green limbs, rattling. A festival of foliage. A tribe of triffids. A clan, a gathering, a chorus, a congregation. Waving.

And I waved back.

 

As we strolled home. I found an newly hatched egg on the path. My second such find of the day as it happened.

After ten more paces, we looked up. And a yew tree looked down. I knew there would be something else: then, ten more paces, I saw it. The pub, patriotically named for the Prince of Wales, and there painted on the signage, were 3 white feathers. 

Sometimes, the universe leaves you in no doubt that it is trying to communicate, and it is the job of us mere mortals to decode and decipher the information. In this case, I am still scratching my chin. 

But here is how the story begins:

One day, KooKuri fell from the stars.

Stars that shone in an ebony sky a million years away.

She fell, not like you or I might: that is, in the wink of our father’s eye and the blush of our mama’s cheek, but rather like a feather would.

Like the feather from the breast of a snow white dove.

Lighter than a passing thought. Softer an angel’s caress.

A feather to make a wish upon.

She tumbled, and cascaded and floated until the world found form and she a safe place to land.

When that day finally arrived, and it was a Thursday, I remember clearly, she alighted on the branches of an ancient Yew, and there she made her nest, cultivated from twigs and leaves and a warm lining of hope.

It was nearly time.

Nearly time is the same as almost time, but nothing like in time, on time, or for the unlucky ones, out of time.

As KooKuri didn’t own a watch,  for they hadn’t yet been invented, she understood the concept of time only by the journey of the sun in the sky, and the rumble in her belly. Never the less, Kookuri knew that it was almost time. And she was ready.

To behold her, is to be transported to a dream of the realms of heaven. Her skin is luminous, and shimmers with all the promise of a desert mirage, she wears the distinctive and intoxicating aroma of morning jasmine and woodsmoke, and her hair is like melted charcoal and as lustrous as a raven’s wing. She is adorned only by the blessings of the Mother Maker.

She is neither small nor large, young nor old, sharp nor blunt. Were you to meet her, you would not see her. You would not know her but you would not forget her. She is everywhere, she is nowhere. She will see you whether you would like it or not. But you would like it. And she would know the answer to the question that had not yet formed on your lips.

All this and more is the magic and mystery that is Kookuri. Kookuri who fell from the stars in the ebony sky a million years away before the earth found form. And she has been sent in answer to our prayers.

High up in her Yew tree eerie, Kookuri, gave a little burb, spun around three times anti-clockwise, clicked her fingers three times, and lo and behold, blow me down,  if it didn’t just go and happen, right there in the embrace of the tree, just like the oracle said it would.

Kookuri laid an egg.

tbc.