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The old man's hands gently caress the birds' feathers, pausing here and there, then resting on the back of his chair. His face is like a landscape formed in prehistoric times – deep wrinkles that look like channels dug by the river of thoughts over a long, long time.
The chair is close to the open window, and the evening sun has left a little gold on the narrow wooden ledge, like a greeting. The old man looks out, but his gaze is not directed at what is outside the window, but seems to be lost in the distance. One eye is covered with a milky haze so thick it looks like porcelain.
His two favourites have hopped onto his shoulders and are gently pecking at the man's thin white hair. He tilts his head from one bird to the other. If anyone else were in the room, they would hear the soft giggles and whispered words: "Is that so?" and "What else is there, my dear?" Then his eyelids droop and the man sighs deeply, breathes heavily and rattles a little. "No, they can't do that", he gasps, like an old man lost in a soliloquy.
The two birds are quiet now, as if they want to take a nap on the man's shoulders, and the old man doesn't move so as not to disturb them. His thoughts drift away, far into the past. So far that no one could follow him, because no one could share these memories. For there is no one old enough left. All are long gone, whether they were strong or cunning, loyal or false. He alone remains, for his trade was knowledge and understanding. This has kept him alive until now and has become a curse. He knows what is happening, he understands. He understands only too well.
Here he sits, far from all people, condemned to experience everything that happens, to see all the threads in the pattern and not be able to end his grief over it. His time should have ended long ago, but then a new age dawned. And there were machines that could spread words and thoughts. New wonders were created, until words could travel as fast as thoughts. And a mad tangle of words and messages, like a net that grew tighter by the hour, covered the earth and even the sky. It was what held him and kept him from leaving like the others. His still powerful mind was able to follow, read and recognise the pattern of these blinking, star-studded threads. And this misfortune had become his curse.
Words, whether written or spoken, were a precious commodity. They were messengers of the inner self, they were peacemakers or fighters. They were necessary because people could not hear what was not spoken. They depended on words, and so it was important that words were spoken carefully. Many an ill-considered word had turned against the person who spoke it; that had always been the case, and still was. But nobody knew that any more; it was like a huge barrel with thousands of holes through which it dripped incessantly, senselessly, wastefully, with a terrible rhythm that tortured the mind.
The old man compared the people who poured words into the machines to fools who threw the egg on the ground and then picked up the shell and thought it was valuable. "Bleating and scribbling aimlessly about nothing and nothing again, they ruin the very home they have." The old man hissed these words to himself, then gently placed the two black birds on the high back of his chair and rose to go to the window and close it. "There will be no more talk today. Tomorrow you will fly out and bring me what I already know. I wish you wouldn't do that." Then he sat down again in his chair, next to Hugin and Munin, Odin's ravens, and stared silently into the dim room.
© "Hugin and Munin: The Ravens of Odin": A short story by Ilona E. Schwartz, 2010. Image credit: The illustration shows the two ravens Hugin and Munin on Odin's shoulders, CC0 (Public Domain Licence).
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