Selina De Luca

This is my second submission to the Literary Taxidermy competition. The first and last lines are taken from Edgar Allen Poe's story, "MS. Found in a Bottle".  Photo by stein egil liland on Pexels EVENING SONG Of my country and of my family I have little to say. Neither of my two former homes sparks even the tiniest flame of longing or love. I have no memory of my origins before the Winged Ones came in the night and whisked me off to live with them. My parents must have presumed me dead, but they neither prayed for me nor prayed to me, and they did not pursue finding me – or so the Winged Ones said.  I had, they told me, the Voice of the Sky; even as a little one they heard my small voice singing in the wind, and they came for me, scooping me up in their arms and soaring off into the endless dark of the early morning sky before the tip of dawn could witness their flight. The human child with the Voice of the Sky was now theirs. There would be nothing to go back to in the h...

This story is one of my submissions to the 2022 Literary Taxidermy writing competition. The first and last lines are taken from the poem As I Grew Older by Langston Hughes (as per the requirements of the competition). These first and last lines have been reimagined into a new story, titled: A THOUSAND SPARKS OF EMBER Image by Adonyi  Gábor on Pexels It was a long time ago when I last saw or felt a smile. We naively went about our lives in the shadows then. If we were happy, our happiness was bound up by our ignorance; and if we were unhappy, it was the brief unhappiness of an everyday inconvenience, or the bittersweet sorrow of the passing beyond of a loved one whom we knew we would see again tomorrow.  It was not yet our time to step into the sun, and we knew nothing of what lay beyond. We knew nothing of what it was to suffer, or to be caught under the slaughtering arm of an enemy. What was an enemy? How were we to know? We lived isolated and alone, carefree and content. All...