gull

gulls live on coastal water and the beach in small loose flocks, busy where the albatross is vast: short beats between glides, a lot of standing about on the sand, a cry pitched up from vanilla's parrot. and the reason they exist: where the water holds a shoal, the flock gathers and wheels over it, crying, folding now and then to drop to the surface. a dive takes nothing; the fish are the sea's. a sailor who sees birds working the water knows what is under it, and needs no map, no HUD and no number to know it. the gulls are the instrument.

at dark a gull that knows calcite within reach goes home to it and sits the night. skerry's rookeries are calcite, and the rookeries generate with gulls on them — gull joins skerry:rookery_birds the data way — and so is any calcite you lay on your own rock. build a rookery and the gulls will find it.

a line in the water near a gull brings the gull. it hangs off your shoulder crying, and any fish that hits the ground or the water as an item — thrown to it, dropped on the sand — it takes on the wing, and then leaves you be for a while. from the ground only: never from a hand, never from a chest; the magpie's larceny stays the magpie's. nothing owed, nothing tracked, no drops, no taming.