The Bird That Sang Over Donbas - 21Dec24
Dawn broke over Ukraine not with a bang, but with silence. Where artillery had punctuated every sunrise for three years, now only the whisper of wind carried across the scarred earth. A nightingale rose on this new silence, wings catching the first gold of morning.
Each wingbeat carried it higher above the demilitarized zone, where war's litter sprawled below like a child's abandoned toys—if children played with titanium-shelled robots and missile casings and the crunchy styrofoam of drones.
The bird's shadow flitted across fiber optic cables that writhed through the ruins like spilled intestines. It passed over darker shapes too, ones that had once stood upright, had once breathed and dreamed and fought. Now they lay in neat lines, as if even in death they couldn't forget their training.
The nightingale's wings dipped, caught a thermal rising from the warming ruins. It had learned to read these currents during the war years, when smoke columns and explosion-heat had rewritten the sky's geography. Its ancestors had known simpler thermals, ones that rose from sun-warmed wheat fields stretching gold to the horizon. The bird's throat fluttered with an echo of their ancient songs, melodies that had once guided scythes and sowers through summer days.
Spring's first breath rippled across the wasteland. Below, a single stalk of wheat swayed, impossibly golden against the gray earth.
The nightingale banked, drawn by some deeper rhythm than thought. Its ancestors had woven their nests from wheat stalks like this one, had trilled their dawn songs from perches just like this.
The stalk bent as the bird settled, a wrong note in nature's symphony. Something glinted beneath the soil—metallic, patient, hungry.
The wheat stem bowed further, its fragile architecture failing against the laws of physics. The nightingale's talons tightened, sensing the impending betrayal a heartbeat too late. As gravity claimed its prize, the bird's wings carved desperate, awkward patterns in the air. Each feather fought for purchase, each muscle strained against the pull of earth and its buried teeth.
Time stretched like a held note. The ground rushed up, its secret waiting just below the surface. The bird's throat opened, but what emerged wasn't its usual evening aria. This was older music, raw and vital—the sound of wheat fields burning, of rivers changing course, of wings beating against the void. It sang of everything that had been and everything that might have been, a song of life flaring bright against the darkness.
The American in Kyiv - 30Nov24
Viktor's beak crushed through the drone's casing, sparks dancing across his pink, narrow tongue. The taste of lithium and circuit boards – breakfast for the third time this week. Three stories below, civilians scrambled for cover beneath the awning of a bombed-out café, pointing upward as smoldering pieces of Russian technology rained down on Kyiv's emptying streets.
Sunlight ricocheted off a thousand broken windows, turning the city's skeleton into a glittering labyrinth. Where office workers once typed at computers, pigeons now nested in abandoned cubicles. Viktor banked past the thirteenth floor of what used to be an insurance company, his wingtip brushing against a curtain fluttering through a shattered pane.
A vibration in the air. Viktor cocked his head, focusing. The sound wavered between A-flat and G – enemy drone, not one of theirs. Ukrainian drones purred at a higher pitch, a detail he'd internalized after countless training sessions with pieces of bloody rabbit as rewards. There – a glint of metal by the twisted spire of the international center, trying to hide in the building's shadow.
The wind rushed past as Viktor tucked into a dive.
One hundred meters.
Seventy.
Forty.
The drone jerked left, its algorithms detecting the threat too late. Viktor's talons, honed by generations of salmon fishing in American rivers, punched through plastic and metal as easily as scales. Wires sparked and snapped. The drone's rotors screamed, then died.
Back at the converted parking garage they called base, Viktor landed on his perch, dropping the mangled drone at Oleksandra's feet. She crouched, turning over the wreckage with a gloved hand. Her tablet showed a fresh impact marker on the map – Viktor’s fifth red dot this week.
Movement caught her eye. At the far end of the garage, handlers fitted the next bird, Hawk-eye, with a new tracking bracelet. The peregrine falcon preened, showing off the sleek British-made camera harnessed to his back. A small crowd had gathered to watch, their whispers echoing off concrete walls: "Fastest kill time yet... Ten seconds from launch to intercept..."
Viktor's talons gripped the perch tighter. The rabbit meat Oleksandra offered lay untouched.
Another explosion rattled the windows. Three kilometers east, judging by the sound. Viktor's wings twitched, muscle memory ready to launch. His gaze fixed on a point between the buildings where black smoke began to curl skyward.
Oleksandra's radio crackled. Static, then: "Single contact, bearing zero-three-zero."
Through the garage's open wall, a high-pitched whine cut through the city's background rumble. Viktor's head snapped toward the sound – two distinct tones, not one. His body tensed, recognizing the harmonics of twin attack drones.
Across the deck, Hawk-eye's handlers rushed to prepare for launch, checking cameras and calibrating tracking software.
They hadn't heard the second drone yet.
Oleksandra's fingers hovered over her tablet, awaiting launch authorization. But Viktor had already left his perch, wings spread wide against the morning sun. Behind him, Hawk-eye's handlers shouted in surprise as the falcon launched too, both birds riding the same thermal in an unplanned tandem ascent.
The American eagle and the British falcon, banking together toward the sound of twin engines.
In the moment before he tucked into his attack dive, Viktor caught his reflection in a skyscraper's mirrored surface – no longer the pristine white head and brown wings of his airshow days, but something weathered, scarred, and magnificent. Like Kyiv itself, he had been transformed by war into something harder, fiercer, and unquestionably free.
The Spirit of Peace - 26Nov24
The empty crystal decanter rattled against the window frame as another explosion lit up the Moscow sky. Elena Petrova steadied it with trembling fingers, the glass cool and unfamiliarly dry against her skin. Outside, through frost-laced windowpanes, orange flashes painted the night – Ukrainian ATACMS missiles finding their targets. The Kristall Distillery, Moscow's oldest vodka factory, burned in the distance.
"Tick, tick, tick," her kitchen clock counted the seconds. Elena's fingers drummed the same rhythm on her grandson's latest letter, the paper soft and worn from repeated folding and unfolding. A drop of water fell on the ink, blurring his words: "Even Sergeant cried today, Babushka. We toasted Pyotr's death with kvass. Kvass! His hands shook so bad he spilled most of it anyway."
The local market's shelves gaped like missing teeth. Where rows of vodka bottles once caught the fluorescent light, only dust remained. In the corner, Old Dmitri, the store owner, hung a handwritten sign: "No vodka. Don't ask. Try water." He caught Elena's eye and shrugged, his shoulders heavy with unspoken words.
"Three thousand rubles!" A voice rang out from a small crowd outside. "I'll pay three thousand for a single bottle!"
"Five thousand!"
"My son's wedding is tomorrow!"
Elena walked home, pockets full of mortality payment but grocery bags empty.
At home, she opened her cabinet – the good one, carved oak from her mother. Behind the false back panel, her fingers found smooth glass. One bottle left. The last bottle of Stolichnaya in all of Moscow, perhaps. She'd been saving it for Victory Day.
Through her window, a river of people flowed through streets that hadn't seen such crowds since 1991. Their signs caught the settling sun: a crude drawing of a vodka bottle with a slash through it, another showing a dove carrying a martini olive. Elena's Order of Maternal Glory medal felt heavy as she pinned it to her lapel. The last bottle of Stolichnaya felt heavier in her pocket.
As they approached the Kremlin, the cowardly began to hang back. One hundred meters from the gate, a circle formed, none daring to come closer.
The crowd parted for as she pushed through to the front. She raised the bottle high. The seal cracked with a sharp pop. Her hand was steady as she poured the vodka onto the ground. It splashed against the concrete, running in rivers between the feet of the protesters.
A young officer stepped forward, riot shield lowered. His radio crackled. He silenced it, then reached inside his jacket. The crowd tensed. He withdrew a flask, unscrewed the cap, and turned it upside down. Clear liquid pattered against the ground.