Midflight Birds
Pale birds of the Frozen Moment held still in mid-wingbeat, which move only when no one is watching.
Overview
Midflight Birds are the birds of the Frozen Moment. Each hangs in the still air in the middle of a wingbeat, as a dropped stone hangs on that plane, and none has ever been seen to move. Yet they do move: a traveller who looks away and looks back finds that they are no longer where they were.
Appearance
A Midflight Bird is the size of a dove, slim and long-winged, its feathers pearl-white and silver-grey, edged in pale ice-blue. Each is held in a different moment of flight: wings raised, wings swept down, tail fanned for a turn, beak open as if to call. The light on them never moves, and their shadows on the ice below are sharp and still. They make no sound, and the air around them is scentless. Close to, frost has never gathered on them; they are not frozen, only held.
Habitat and Range
They hang throughout the air of the plane above the ice and the frozen waterfalls, alone or in small, scattered flocks, at every height from a hand above the ground to far overhead.
Behaviour and Temperament
No one has seen a Midflight Bird do anything. Watched, it is still. Unwatched, it flies: a flock seen above a frozen waterfall is, when a traveller turns back, above the next crag, each bird held in a new moment of the wingbeat. They are never found closer to a traveller than they were before, and never nearer than arm's reach.
Abilities
They move through time that does not flow, in the gaps of attention, at no cost anyone can see. Travellers who stand still too long in the plane's stasis lose the will to move, and the birds are a test: a traveller who looks away and back and finds the birds in the same place has stopped turning away at all, and is becoming one of the Frozen.
Life Cycle
No one has seen one hatch, feed, or die. The Stilled say the birds are as old as the plane.
Uses and Dangers
They give nothing. Travellers use them as a gauge of their own motion, and the oldest advice for the plane includes: "keep the birds moving." They are harmless and cannot be caught; a hand reaching for one never quite arrives.
Lore and Belief
Travellers bring home a children's game: one child turns away, the others creep closer, and anyone caught moving is out; some say the game was learned from the birds. Others say the birds are travellers' own thoughts, caught in flight, and that each one is someone's unfinished idea. Neither belief is borne out by anything known of them (see Knowledge of the Cosmos).
Where It Appears
- Overview: Natives of the Planes
In the Writers’ Guide
- Midflight Birds A Bestiary of Caeldon