Paper Bird

By R.C. Polk

A man of small stature and gray hair found him self lying flat on his back in the middle of a desert. This desert was, in fact, not a desert in the normal sense of the word. There were large oversized pencils sticking point-down into the desert floor in perfect aesthetic rows as far as the eye could see. This desert was a dry rocky desert with features far too bleak for one to possibly imagine anything worse that could possibly exist. The man laid there in a small rough clearing, surrounded by the pencils. How this man found him self lying flat on his back in a desert was quite the paradoxical question. The answer, both in theory and in practice, was not an easy one to achieve, although with some patient observation, the answer would become apparent.

The man lay there, he bore his hands into the hot floor of the desert as if the sand may perhaps be cooler underneath the surface, and it indeed was not.
The man felt the heat cover him like a large thick wool afghan with its rough surface rubbing against his skin. He could see no shade visible, save for the slivers of shade the giant pencils offered. The man felt a pool of concern boil in his stomach and overflow threw the rest of his body. He seemed to have forgotten the manner of how he had gotten to this desert in the first place and he grew more concerned with the fact that he could very well die if he did not get out of this conundrum.

Perhaps he could just get up and start walking. No, he would need a plan first. He could call for help. But who would hear him? He could see nothing but pencils and white sand for miles. The man could erect some shelter out of the pencils. But they seem too be too well rooted in the sand for him to simply pluck them out. He would need water, but there were neither wells nor oasises, only sand and pencils. He could not die,
but he could find nothing for him to live. Now, the concern was steaming through his veins, his heart pumping more and more disconcerting each moment. He must do something; he must have a plan.

"Hello," He asked the air. And not getting an answer.
He would need a better plan, he knew. Surly there must be something out here. Surely. Nothing came. Or, at least he thought nothing came, and what that nothing was is was a small object floating haplessly in the air. Appearing to be a piece of trash floating in the wind, The man could not tell. He looked in wonderment trying to decipher exactly what it was. The man tried and tried, and he could not fully understand what hovered above him. So, in a vain effort he decided to concoct a theory as to what this object was. The man sat there on the hot earth and stared, pondering, not minding the desert or the pencils or the heat. What little time there was meant nothing anymore, not his deep thirst, not his fear of dying, he dedicated all his mind to this object. Surly once he knew what this object was, he would be safe. He lay there, not knowing how long, and he stared. If one might observe him, supposing at all one could possibly find a desert of this sort, one might notice that The man looked like the earth would swallow him whole at a moments glance. Distracted and confused. Sand was beginning to collect in the crinkles and crevasses in his clothing and hair; it covered his skin in a fine rough mache layer to the warm sweat on his skin. Drool was also collecting on the side of his mouth and his eyes began to gather a rich, thick gauziness. Still The object still merely floated, as though it was awaiting some kind of instruction, assuming that a piece a trash in the wind could receive instruction at all.

He decided, finally, that this object had to be living. A bold stroke for such a small mind, yes, but it was an important one none the less. With the way it floated, he thought, it must be a bird of some kind.
So, in his head he labeled the object, The bird. And so, the newly labeled The bird floated in the air above him, gliding along in that almost divine way as it had done ever since he had first yelled 'Hello' at the bird. The man began to wonder if The bird would ever come down. Still laying there and not moving, and not quite thinking of his atrophic legs he wondered different methods as how to coax this bird into coming down to him. Shooting it wasn't an option, he knew that right away, there were no guns in sight. Perhaps he could use one of those large pencils like a spear,
but those seemed far to long and heavy for him to possibly throw. Keeping in mind the circumference of his small clearing in the forest of pencils, he would not have much room to maneuver either. He didn't notice all of the drool down the side of his face or the fact that most of his body was buried under the thin sand from the gentle winds that began blowing at some point during his pondering.

He eventually just yelled at The bird, minding that the only reason it appeared to him in the first place was that warm hello. The man wasn't quite sure what to expect, but the Bird slowly began to circle down towards him. Finally, he would receive some purpose.
As it came closer and closer on it's descent, it became more and more apparent that this was indeed was a bird. But, a peculiar species it was.

The bird looked like it was folded. Folded in an origami fashion out of old newspapers that one would find laying in the damp gutters of dirty city streets.
The bird's wings had been ripped many times and taped together rather clumsily with old yellow tape. Many dull coffee stains marked its rough, crinkled newspaper skin. The bird fluttered its paper wings and landed on The man's thigh.

"Hello," The man said.

"Hello," The bird said.

"I require some assistance, if you don't mind," The man said.

"Oh, not at all, please, what will you need assisting?" The bird asked, the sound of crinkling paper as it spoke.

"I've come to find my self in this desert, and I was wondering if you might lead me out of it," The man said.

"Why would you want that?" The bird asked,

"I could get severely dehydrated, I might even die"
The man said.

"Once someone usually gets here, they don't want to leave," The bird said.

"There are other people here? Would they perhaps, if it isn't too much hassle, provide me some water?" The man asked.

"Well, not here here, in fact, there is a lot of here to go around. Here there. Here over there. Even here here. You could look, but you wouldn't find them." The bird said.

"Why?" The man asked.

"Too busy, but we aren't here to talk about them, are we? Nope, we're talking about you." The bird said,
fluttering its crumpled wings.

"I'm not sure I follow your line of thinking," The man said.

"All most people want is to get here, and you want to leave?" The bird asked.

"Well I don't see anything particularly special about this place, so yes, I would rather like to leave," The man said.

"Now, that's no attitude at all. There is a lot to see, a lot to finally see." The bird said.

"Finally?" The man asked.

"Well, yes. That's why you're here?" The bird asked.

"I just woke up here," The man said.

"What were you doing before you came here?" The bird asked.

The man had to think hard, he had almost forgotten he was anything before here. "I was laying down," he said.

"And you're still laying down," The bird said.

"I see," The man said, understanding rooted him.

"I can show you, if you like," The bird said.

"I think, I would rather like that," The man said, his mind set.

The bird fluttered off his thigh. The man rose, his heat cooled, his thirst gone, his concern had simmered. Euphoria became him.

"Follow me," The bird said.

And the man walked, for the first time. Staggering alongside the bird into the endless profusion of sand and pencils.