Father Ravenswood

Father Ravenswood is taking off his dark clothes from his Saturday morning visitations. He strips down until he is nude. He stands in front of the mirror and an old man looks back at him. Years of being the minister of a congregation have left their mark. The moments spent between grief and celebration are intricately carved into lines on his face. His hair is peppered with white through what used to be a midnight black mop on his head. His blue eyes still twinkle as time has not yet extinguished this light.

 He opens the window in his bathroom as he always does before, he takes flight. Sunday through Friday he talks to people about the work of God but on Saturday he becomes one with his creator. The transformation is painful, but he is used to the pain being as old as he is. Nothing hurt more than the first time when he was a boy of 12 and his father showed him the way. It’s a family secret that has been passed through generations. A skill that was acquired by one of his ancestors who was captured by a tribe of Native Americans. The ancestor was released with a small condition being that once per week for the rest of their life they would experience the world through the eyes of a non-human animal to maintain some balance in the worlds. The condition was binding to not only to the ancestor, but to all of their descendants and so he faces his moment of destiny.  

 

His feet start to crumple beneath him as he grows talons where there were toes. The legs disappear into nothing beneath him. His torso shrinks and the expands across the breast. His arms stretch outwards as the feathers begin to grow out of his skin. His head, and this is the worst part, shrinks until he is no longer as sentient as his human form. His nose becomes a beak and his eyesight sharpens. He is aware of who he is, but he does not have thoughts about life and Christianity and his congregation or anything of the sort. He is more beast than Father now and the open window is beckoning him.

 

It is a warm spring day. The kind of day that humans embrace and even the most hardened non-believers wonder at. The apple blossoms are fragrant. The breeze stirs the scent into his small bathroom and he doesn’t wait any longer to leave through the window and sail out onto the breeze. Even in his raven form he has a path that he likes to travel with favorite spots to swoop and soar.

 

First, he goes to check in on the other ravens and see what the morning gossip has in store. Its like when he goes to the café for a coffee to hear the chatter of people to catch drift of who and what is going on. The ravens today are in a tree that is by the river and he flies in and takes a seat on one of the branches. They are all chirping and pecking and a ripple with small bird motions. The cleaning of feathers and preening that could rival a teenage girl. It is mostly the male ravens today and the topic is courtship. He knows this topic well in both human and raven form. He knows deep in his raven body that whatever romantic encounter he has will be short lived so he takes silent flight away from the unkindness and is soaring over the river.

 

This, reader, is what he likes best. There is nothing in human form that quite compares to the rush of the wind beneath the wings. His heartbeat accelerates in anticipation of the updraft or downdraft that could send him another direction. The water which appears murky and brown when seen from the banks is sparkling white from above. The rays of sunshine strike the surface and create a dazzling feast for his crow eyes. He starts to watch for fish which disrupt the sheen on the water for a slight moment. He is hunting now. When he gets the pattern of movement from the fish down he takes a go at it and comes up with prey in his mouth. Luckily, his human appetite has no sway here and he happily gobbles the scales and bones of the fish. He won’t think of these things later either. Maybe in an odd dream he will be eating a fish alive, but when he returns he prays that he might live to see another day as a raven. He will go back to leading his congregation knowing that God is many gods housed in many beings and so he will wait for Saturday to come again.