The red sun rose above the red sand of the red desert. Waves of heat slammed down against the cracked earth. Sand tainted everything. Particles fused with tree trunks, dissolved into streams, and hid underneath rocks. The world was red and boiling.

But up here the world was distant. It didn’t matter so much. The sand was too heavy, gravity too strong.

The poor land-locked creatures were trapped down there with the sand, why couldn’t they grow wings and fly? Why couldn’t they soar like me? The sky was free. You could fly miles and miles and still have an infinity left to go. And the stars, how beautiful, were almost close enough to touch.

A desert mouse scurried across the sand, breaking the peace and quiet. I dived. The wind roared past me, trying to catch up. I was an arrow, a bullet, a lightning bolt, descending from the heavens to reap my justice. The earth rose up to greet me.

Whoosh.

The mouse disappeared from the earth, we were ascending to the above. The mouse squealed and squirmed between my talons. But it was too late. My beak pecked once, and the squirming died out. Red blood stained the mouse’s ebony fur, spreading and spreading, until finally the blood dropped back to earth, back to where blood belongs.