The Wings of the Morning
A garden shed. 4.30am.
"You've been in there a day now."
"... I ... sorry, what?"
"A day. You've been in there. Since like dawn yesterday."
"... Really?"
"What are you doing?"
"Me? ... Nothing."
"You've done something."
"No."
"Yes."
"No."
"Yes."
"Maybe ... You're leaving soon right?"
"What have you done?"
"Nothing! ... I just ..."
"Yes?"
"Look, just, don't freak out alright?"
"I assure you I am perfectly calm."
"For now."
"Yes. For now. Later may be a different matter."
"Listen, you have– you can't– ... I took something, some things."
"Were they yours to take?"
"Tec-technically, yes."
"Technically?"
"Yes."
"How 'technically'?"
"Um, we're ... the custodians of God's creation so one might construe um, some things as, ah, in part, possibly 'ours', hy-hypothetically speaking?"
"What have you done?"
"Just ... please don't freak out okay?"
The door opens. Deep midnight blue. And then, soft fluttering. A faint blush of peony, a lightening to indigo. A sudden streak of vermillion, scarlet slash. Violet, violent wash, a creak of movement. And then. Lobster, pumpkin, marigold, kowhai, buttercup, lemon, diamond, light. Light bathes the insides of the shed. Wings.
"Those– ... Those are ..."
"I know, aren't they amazing?"
"You took the wings of the morning."
"Yeah."
"The wings ... the wings of the morning. You took them!"
"Yeah."
"It's four-forty-freaking-five!"
"So?"
"Sunrise! The ... SUNRISE! You have ... you took the wings of the morning and shut them in our garden shed."
"You're freaking out."
"What?"
"You said you wouldn't but you are."
"What?! ... You have to take them back. You, you ... I don't know how you did it but you, you have to undo it. Now. In fifteen minutes there's supposed to be a sunrise!"
"I was going to put them back."
"You were?"
"Yes. I'm not stupid."
"You aren't?"
"I resent that remark."
"But thoroughly deserve it ... What were you thinking?! What use could the wings of the morning possibly be to you?"
"I was going to fly to the uttermost parts of the sea – the westerly parts, you know, rising from the east, travelling like the sunrise ... I told you I'm not stupid."
"Why?"
"Because I'm not, I had a plan. I wasn't going to deprive people of dawn."
"No. Why fly? Why take them at all?"
"I thought ... I just thought ...
If I take the wings of the morning
And fly with them over the sea,
No matter how far or how fast I've flown,
I'll not be alone.
My God will be ever with me."
"Sweetheart, He's here right now."
"... I just thought, that, I might listen better. Up there, in the silence. In the beating of wings, the hiss of wind past my cheek, and endless expanse everywhere."
Pause.
"I can't let you go, you know that."
"No, no I don't!"
"If you go and are disappointed how will you bear it?"
"I won't be! I think I won't be."
"But if you go and you hear Him, how could you ever come back to earth?"
"I would. I think I would ... I'd want to tell people what I heard!"
"That would be very unselfish of you ... but you stole the wings of the morning; does that strike you as an unselfish thing to do?"
"Borrowed; I was going to give them back."
"You shouldn't have taken them in the first place. The secret is listening in ordinary circumstances."
Pause
"Five a.m."
A garden shed, two people stand by its open door. 5am. Dawn breaks.
The paraphrase is Nigel Eastgate's not mine.