In the choking city of Pallton, where the smog clung to the streets like a funeral shroud and the children drew suns from memory, the people measured time not by clocks—but by the passing of the swift that never landed .
It was called Ember for the way its wings left faint orange trails in the thick air, like sparks from a dying fire. Unlike other birds, Ember had no feet—only smooth, tapered feathers where legs should be. The old chimney sweeps swore it hatched from a cinder that fell from the stars, and that its nest was woven from lost echoes caught between factory walls.
Ember lived its entire life in flight:
— Drinking rain mid-fall before it could turn acidic
— Catching the last clean breaths exhaled by the drowning
— Skimming so close to lovers’ cheeks it stole their unspoken words
The city’s asthmatic children left offerings of feather-light paper airplanes launched from rooftops. In return, Ember would sometimes swoop low enough to let them glimpse the tiny maps of cleaner skies inked on its underwings.
Then came the day the coal baron ordered Ember shot down, convinced its wings carried the secret of perpetual motion. His marksmen’s bullets always found only smoke—but each shot left the bird’s trailing sparks dimmer, its flight more labored.
On the night Ember finally faltered, every chimney in Pallton coughed up decades of soot at once . The smog cleared just long enough for the people to see the swift make its first and last landing—not on ground, but into the baron’s own shadow as he stood gloating on his balcony.
By morning, the industrialist was gone—only his boots remained, filled with warm ash and the faint smell of thunderstorms.
