“You see,” said Sparrow as Whisper emerged from the sea and stepped, dry and scoured, onto a small, sandy beach. “We can disappear and disappear – thought by thought and feeling by feeling – but although it may seem to us that we have vanished from the world, we are still here.”
The bird was perched on a rock at the tide line, its feathers dry and smooth, its bright black eyes thoughtful.
“But how…?” Whisper began.
Sparrow lifted one wing.
“There is no how,” it said, “or what or when. But there is who.”
“And where?” Whisper ventured.
Sparrow fixed him in its gaze.
“There are,” it replied, stepping carefully down from its perch, “places where anything is possible.”
