The Blue Avian Orb

It is gathering dust outside the home I grew up in, and several of us are hunting small uplands game birds with shotguns.

Behind my house is a steep gullied depression that leads on down the “wagon trail” to the river below.

Where we hunters are kindred spirits, we don’t necessarily know each other, and are spread out as if in an armed man hunt.

As we descend into the smallish gorge, it is a steep decline to a rounded triangular plateau, before a further descent below.

As we climb down to the plateau, the bowl is covered in a thick fog, at which there appears to be a bright glowing, orb that can be vaguely made out at the bottom.

Apprehension grips at our senses, as we get closer to the circular disc, glowing first dimly, then more clearly as we pass through the obscuring blanket in front of us.

We stop our decent hoping time would help us discern, what truly lay beneath the fog, in time the air currents caused the sheen to lessen in obscurity, and allowed me to peer behind the veil.

What I saw next decimated my concept of reality, and shook me to my very foundation, as a tremor crippled my heart, turning it to ice.

Out my mouth came the baleful quavering of a lost and tortured soul, and I heard my own voice gasp out incredulously, “I…I can see your face”.

Two ominous shadows back lit by the radiance of the orb behind them, emerged from out of the mists that had been previously shrouding them, to reveal an entity with a terrifying larger than human, elongated shaped cranium, accompanied by an equally long protruding chin, not unlike a beak.

If this wasn’t enough to make your blood run cold, the face was without doubt the horror of it all, resembling a shriveled prune, deeply etched with jagged fissures running the length of its face in broken oblique equilateral striations.

Its eyes were wide and oblong like its head, glazed, darkened with the absence of any eye lids, nose or mouth of sort. The whole visage was completely emotionally disturbing, and unnerving, to the point of total panic.

These other world beings were extremely tall, eight feet or more, the first of which was covered in what appeared to be long blue feathers, the length of his stature, the second one with the robes of a priest or shaman.

After my initial verbal outburst of fear, it was obvious that they were aware of my presence now, and in my most horrifying moment of discovery, they immediately approached my location.

Feral panic gripped me and the flight or fight instinct caused me to try and scramble up the steep incline below my mother’s rock garden above, only to find its slope had turned to mud, as I slid down the slope to the lower plateau again.

Next the inevitable happened, as I saw the blue avian and his shaman speeding up to me, rolling like on a train track, their approach far too swift and menacing for me not to misinterpret their intention.

Again the feral fight or flight adrenaline rush consumed me, as I lashed out at the shaman who was encroaching and within striking difference, I cried out “you’re a fucking witch doctor”.

My hand met the wooden wall behind my lower bunk, and not the shaman’s beak, and I realized it was just another night terror, as my heart pounded wildly subsiding into laughter.

I realized in my mad fear and misinterpretation of an alien contact, I had robbed myself of the understanding, and maybe the making of a lasting friendship of two star brothers.