Nine Taps

Out of the cave and along the creek, your chirps come back from everything: a cedar elm, a ledge of limestone, the flat side of a heron asleep on one leg. Each chirp returns as a tap on your wrist. You take a moth. You take another.

Then, between one chirp and the next, there is a place in the air where a chirp goes in and does not return. You fly through it. Farther along the creek there is a second, and then a third. At the third you stop. You are not hanging from anything. Your wings keep going.

You send one long falling chirp into that place. What returns is not your chirp: nine taps, slow, each followed by a gap as long as the tap.

On the bank below, a person sits against a cedar elm. Beside them on a root is a small gray box with a red light on it.