#note
The Penguin
Originally written on December 19th, 2024
A sharp white bisects the cloudless blue sky low down along the southern peninsula. Going down a bit gives rise to white saddles and points. which appear to be mountains. jutting out some seventy miles off into the distance. Turning around there is a break in the white, a rocky beach upon which waves do not crash because the water is still and is broken up by large flat panes of ice, some over a mile wide stretching far out into the ocean. The land is silent and deafeningly so. The sun is still in the sky but at such an angle that it will soon set over the tundratic desert, upon which it will introduce a new kind of cold.
A soft wind blows across the flat stretch of land. It is heard by a group of penguins, a dozen or so, which are walking single file towards the sea where they will then walk along the ice for some time and then dive into the ocean to hunt for fish. They will hunt for themselves and then for their families, which sit some distance opposite the direction they are currently walking in a small alcove which holds a few dozen or so penguins and their children, each eagerly waiting for their next meal.
The group have been walking for some time. They waddle slowly, occasionally stopping to mingle amongst themselves in their penguin language which consists mostly of snorts, squawks, and chits. They waddle slowly, moving side to side, on account of their knees which are so far inside their body and so undeveloped for land travel that they look as if they are moving on tiny stilts. Their flippers, which are accustomed for swimming moreso than walking stick out gawkily. If an unaccustomed individual were to view a single penguin waddling in such a way they might wonder if the penguin were stunted in its development, or if it had been trapped in a dark hole all its life and were walking now for the first time, each awkward movement a practice in how a penguin should move. And yet this is not the case.
One of the penguins stops suddenly. He (perhaps it is a he, perhaps not) does so without sound or announcement. He merely stops in place and looks around disoriented, the other penguins behind him course around him like water around a stone. The last one stops and turns around while the others continue on ahead. It moves over to our penguin, who continues to look around, and squawks at him. The human equivalent might be, “Hey, what gives?”. Our penguin does not look at him, or respond and seems unaware of his presence. Eventually the other penguin, aware of the ever-widening gap between it and the others, decides to hobble over to its group, leaving our penguin alone with the wind1.
