We span the world, we span the world.

As a chick, he followed his beak up out of his burrow and saw for the first time the sky and sea thrown wide. He waddled about the headland, beating at the air with his wings until, one day, it bore him and the sky took him.

He tumbled through the air, shooting up on plumes of heat rising, and dropping on shafts of cool air sinking. Spotting the rough water of a bait ball breaching, he tucked his wings to his body, plummeted after his beak and burst into the ocean, which was dense, so dense and slick and cool, buffeting and reverberating against his oily wings. Bubbles flurried in his wake, krill and small fish pounded down his gullet in great gulps.

When he popped back up through the filmy surface, he discovered it was true: his beak had tugged him into flock. All around him were other fledglings, digesting and preening as they floated in a raft, which rippled on the ocean swell. They chittered as they rose and fell with the waves, marvelling at the motion which was so different from their still, warm, dark burrows, and gazed up at the sky and out across the expanse of the ocean, wondering at how big the world is and how much space there is to soar through.

Their beaks drew them up, up and along.

They catapulted through a grid of contrails which unfurled with the earth’s magnetic force and were crisscrossed with columns of heat and cool that sometimes, but not always, condensed into clouds. They spread into formation, spanning forwards and backwards and sidewards, and as flock, they undulated across the sky, drawn by the mesmeric pull in the bridge of their brows and the whoosh and whistle of soft air rushing through tunnels of air wound dense, the pressurised wrench, the urgency that tugs them, soaring on on on, soaring soaring soaring until, suddenly, they stopped.

They burst into the water and into the sky, and hunted and rafted and scattered, and hunted and rafted and scattered, and so wove into the greater flock, the adult flock.

As flock, they hunted and rafted and hunted and rafted until their beaks drew them up, up and along. As flock, they hurtled south again along tracks of air, flowing and rippling across the sky; drawn by the mesmeric pull through the whoosh and whistle, air soft, air dense, the pressurised wrench, the urgency that tugs them, soaring on on on, soaring soaring soaring until, suddenly, they stopped.

Her scent drew him towards her, as sure as the need to migrate drew flock north then south again. North then south again. North then south again. North then—