the Charcoal, the Blackbird and their Art

There once was a piece of Charcoal, of no shape in particular, amorphous as blackness, shifting there and here, water-like. A mucky onion of infinite layers, sliding over one another, rubbing, as palm over palm, trying to wash away its own dirt.

This Charcoal had its own Art, as wild as graphite is tempered, drawing its flood of forms on the bodies of pebbles and stones, painting their outlines with the dyes of the sands and dust. But never did it draw its own nature, for it could not paint upon thin air; only the shadow of its true self could be traced upon the face of the Earth.

The deep self of the earthy Charcoal was flight, and only as it drew falsehoods, as skin after skin it shed itself, consumed itself in the fire of creation, could it approach its own truth. The dirt gone, the shining Blackbird emerged from her own ashes. And as she shook the ash from her feathers, she realised that she would never draw again as she once had, smearing darkness upon the world believing that the images she traced would last. Instead, she started painting with the world, marking the sand with her feathers, her claws, her beak; but never asking the lines to remain constant, but let the Winds change them as they willed. She threw her ashes into the eye of a whirl and let them melt.