We’re getting pretty close to a culmination, here. Although the fourth story in the chapbook needs quite a bit of expansion.
More from “Polly Want”:
It was wrong to judge alien ecosystems by one’s own, Blid knew. But [birds] were simply horrible creatures. There was one video showing a large aquatic [bird] called a [heron] that was hunting smaller ones called [ducks]. The [heron] would stalk and capture a [duck], one by one, then half-strangle it using the two nightmare needles it called a ‘beak.’ Once the [duck] was sufficiently stunned — and usually half-drowned in the process — the heron would then somehow manage to swallow the [duck] whole and alive. And then the [heron] would go onto the next one, its prey still struggling under the skin and scales — no, [feathers].
Blid thought maybe that was it. The [birds] were all so patient, so methodical, it seemed like they weren’t really alive in the conventional sense. Shake-shake-shake, chomp, shake-shake-shake, chomp — over and over again, like a machine.
“Only they’re not machines,” he told Trindy over another lunch. “Machines don’t have those eyes.” Blid hunched down a little over his meal after that, as if talking about a [bird’s] eye might attract its gaze. Which was silly, of course. They were all on Terra! Except for the one in the Consulate, a treacherous voice in his head told him.