Species Extinction

The creature – part flier, part nymph – and, being a singular child of its parents, wholly unique, skimmed a short distance along the shore. It stumbled awkwardly as it landed. It was still trying too hard, still putting too much effort into landing elegantly, instead of effortlessly floating down onto the rock as its brothers and sisters did, instinct sure-footing them.
It shook off the misstep and stretched to its full ten centimetres height, then held still and silent while waves flicked onto the grey-black rock. First one, then another reached and fell back; dark outlines printed where saltwater had briefly washed. Only its eyes moved, followed and paused, moved and returned, measuring how the water rose and fell as it pushed against the wind, how the wind curled and streamed, pushing against the water. And how both moved together, each compelled by the other.
The creature opened it wings. They were longer than its body, their upper tips above its head as far as its arms could reach. Tiny veins pulsed through them, spreading strength as they seemed to spread a patina of green-bronze and blue. It waited, tamping down the urge to launch itself into the air. All around it, near and far, its siblings alighted and rose, each dancing its own dance but every dance one that its parents and its parents’ parents had created and re-created thoughtlessly a thousand times before.
Its heart beat, just like its parents’. Its head lifted as theirs did. It hopped backwards as a tongue of water splashed within millimetres of its delicate legs. The colours in its wings reflected the colours of the multitude so that the mass rippled from emerald through turquoise to sapphire. Rich – the bank of colour was rich, a blooming of millions of bodies, each distinct and, essentially, identical.
Each individual fluttered and landed alone, rippling with energy and oblivious to the lazy rolling of the colony, which governed their erratic manoeuvres and was determined by them. Yet our creature saw not just its neighbours, sensed not just the rhythm of the living cloud, but saw the colony for the entity it truly was. It watched and became aware that it could do as the others – be part of the gathering – while holding something of itself separate, apart from the drift.
The creature watched, and saw how the swarm pulsed to the same rhythms as the wind, growing here where the breeze dropped, diminishing there when a gust eddied across the shore. It remained. It considered. It appeared exactly as the others – but it was unique.
It decided to wait, not to be gusted into the air, not to shift as the air shifted, but to fly aslant the next flurry.
The heedless throng of creatures – part fliers, part myth – tumbled along the shore, arms brushing wings, torsos twisting effortlessly to slide under and over each other, safe in their instincts to be carried by the wind towards the distant scrubland where low, spare bushes would provide safe haven overnight. Tomorrow the sun would urge the creatures back onto the desolate shore to drift back and forth, at one with the wind and the wind at one with the sea – all intimately bound together in shifting, unchanging nature.
But the creature, our creature, had made a decision. It had…thought. Not a big thought, just “There, not here”. Just “Wait…not yet.” And this set it apart. Not just apart, but different – in a way that would not be replicated by any of its brothers or sisters – not this time, not for this species. Had it survived, its offspring would carry that difference encoded in their mother’s peculiar gene. And then the course would be set: a line that diverged by unimaginably tiny increments over unthinkable millennia until what the creatures would have become was utterly unlike what they did become.
“There, not here.” Not words, but a coherent will: to act, rather than be acted upon. And that thought held such potential. It was transmitted from the creature’s brain to its wings, where blood pulsed to a rhythm that had never been felt in the world before. It was carried to its limbs, held taut in readiness, will-power – for the first time, ever – fighting instinct. It rang through its senses and changed them utterly so that now all its body was in thrall not to a mere brain, but to a nascent mind.
The creature watched the waves, tensing for the right moment. It heard the susurration of a thousand wings as the company billowed up, blending into a single sigh of movement. It felt the breeze shift, and knew it was now.
It launched itself into the air, its body tilted, ready to slip sideways. But its elected moment was off – just a gnat’s breath off, but enough to allow its feet to be caught in a small runnel of brine which ran ahead of the main wave. The surface tension between its legs and the skin of the water, only a single molecule thick, was sufficient to catch it and hold it fast. Its wings held out longest – half a second longer – but they too succumbed as the creature stumbled and spun to its knees, whipped around by the current. The weight of water was more than the pulsing life within could overcome. It strained – briefly – thrashing upwards to gasp the freshening air, its eyes fixed wide on the endless sky.
And then the tiny body was whirled away on the tide, the potential created by possessing the only thinking mind on earth still-born.
Time passed. Twenty-three million years slipped by as the world tested the designs thrown up by evolution. Some were competent, well-equipped to flourish in their particular habitat. Others, while no more exotic or bizarre, seemed alien within their environment and struggled to survive.
But then came The Ice Age, which carved out new landscapes, and crushed all – nearly all – life. When the glaciers retreated, only a few species remained. And it took another two and a half million years for their future to be assured enough to call the time we live in the Age of Mammals. From then until Lily Young strode along the shore, a mere two hundred thousand years had passed.
The wind whipped tendrils of her hair out of her hoodie. Her Doc Martins crunched over the flint pebbles as she leaned into the breeze. In the distance the high calls of children rose and fell. Most families had already left – the air was chillier now and shadows were fading as the day dulled. Cars revved up and carefully negotiated their way over the gravel past the low marshes to reach the road and familiarity.
Lily glanced up and realised a sea fret was approaching. She pulled her collar up but walked on, pausing every now and then whenever a particular rock caught her eye. Occasionally she would pick one up, or kick it, turning it over to examine the hidden underside. Most she discarded – no imprints of the fossilised plants or ammonites she hoped for. Occasionally she would keep one, shoving it into the deep pockets of her duffel. Later, in her studio, she would polish them, the better to bring out the image embedded there. Then she would sell them to a gem or craft store in the seaside town just up the coast. Her fossil rocks were mundane, but there was a good enough trade from tourists to make it worth her while.
But finally one call breached her concentration. “Lily! Come on! It’s gone five!”
She looked round, narrowing her eyes against the wind to spot her partner, a silhouette on the low skyline, beckoning her back. She cupped her left hand to her mouth: “Five minutes!”
“Oh for crying out loud!” she bellowed. She knew the kids would be whiney by then, cold and hungry, all the fun drained out of the day. And she saw her wrench the car door open and fling herself in, slamming it shut with real force.
She realised she was no longer willing to broker peace, her patience with her scraped away by the children’s needs. She glanced briefly at the rock she had picked up a moment before. Yup, some sort of…but was it a fossil? Nothing she could really make out, too many lines angling out from the central blotch. Not recognisably a plant, and clearly no ammonite.
Accepting the inevitable, she dropped it and began to climb up the low embankment, back to the car. The rock clattered as it landed, the noise lost in the rattle of the next wave breaking. The side Lily had scanned was uppermost now. As the first tiny droplets from the sea fret slicked its surface, the low light caught it so that the shape etched there stood out in sharper contrast.
And now it was clear. Here were the legs, delicate but unbroken; above them wings splayed either side of the body, their rippling translucence hammered down into nothing but the faintest of outlines. There the arms, crushed flat by the weight of time, but still with fingers no thicker than an insect’s antenna; the head twisted round at a sickening angle. And the eyes, eyes which had been loaded with intelligence, now vacant, mere impressions in the flint.
The creature had been no precursor of mankind, but was the forerunner of what would have been a wholly different species. That it had existed at all was so extraordinary an event, awareness of it had survived in genetic memory. This subconscious knowledge was so powerful it emerged time and again as an archetype in mythologies separated by time and distance.
Had Lily recognised even a part of what she had held in her hand, the myth would have taken its first uncertain step towards truth – only a historical truth, but a step closer to an authentic, tangible existence nonetheless. But Lily dropped the stone, carelessly distracted by more pressing demands. And a world in which there was no such thing as tiny winged hominids turned on.
“Settle down, then,” sighed Lily over the children’s bickering, as she buckled up her seat-belt. “How about a story?”
She paused. “Shush while I think…” Her children quietened down & Lily dredged up a well-loved tale. “How about a fairy story?”

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