South again, and together, he and she teased themselves from flock, and together, they formed their own little us (no bird is only an I). He flew in her wake and she flew in his, dodging and feinting on the breeze, bombing bait balls and darting through the water after fish. Always, they rafted up side by side.

They excavated a sandy burrow with their beaks and webbed feet and then, in its hollow, the egg birthed from her downy under-feathers as the full moon births from the mauve haze of the oceanic penumbra: it surfaced as a perfect, pearlescent orb. But as it continued to emerge, it stretched into an ovate shape and was not like the cold moon at all. Tucked up beneath his fluffy, feathery rump, it was smooth and round and warm warm warm. Tucked up beneath her fluffy, feathery rump it was smooth and round and warm warm warm. Warm warm warm warm warm.

When it wasn’t beneath him he was hunting the ocean for krill to share and when it wasn’t beneath her she was hunting the ocean for krill to share. The orange slough burst from him when he returned to their burrow and found her preening the wispy down of their chick: it burst from him and into their chick’s gaping gullet. Then he preened the chick’s down while she hunted the world, nuzzling the soft fluff with his beak, breathing in that new chick smell.

He and she and the chick were their own us, in their own burrow. No bird is only an I.

Soon, their chick was so hungry he needed two gullet-fulls a day, and they had to leave him on his own to scour the silken plane of the ocean for the darkened rough of bait balls breaching.

Disquiet shrouded him, disquiet as tangible as the light of the near-full moon glowing in the air about him. In his brow, he could feel the beginnings of the tug to be as flock, to leave their chick and span the world.

But not yet—

Their chick would follow his beak after them.

But not yet—he was not as flock yet.

He would slip the message down their chick’s gullet, just like his parents slipped the message down his: on a slick of regurgitated krill and fish. And their chick would follow after them.

As flock.

But not yet—