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Today, I set across on the lake as I do every morning before the sun cleared the trees. I push myself off the bank, gliding through the water. I bathe in the stillness of the day, in the wisps of dew hovering above the water like dragonflies, in the pale orange sky, in the welcoming shadow of the tree.As laughter and the sound of crunching gravel spread over the ripples, I paddled back to shore, each flipper fulfilling a flowing row one after the other, like how my mother had taught me to do many moons ago. Hazy pristine peace cradled the land.I crawled up the sandbank, shaking off the droplets of mist from my white feathers. As I was slinking around the corner of reeds, a group of humans walked down the path, their rumbling laughs warming me. I turnt the second corner to my nest.A red rectangle peered out. Grainy and rough and splattered with yellow. My stomach is drowning, I step closer. Yellow blood oozes over the twigs and feathers that made up the nest, white shards lodged into my chick’s squished grey bodies.I’ve seen humans spew water from their eyes, sometimes wailing, sometimes silent. I had listened and felt a portion of their pain. Of their sorrow, grief, regret. If I could do the same I would, in the hopes that streaming water on my cheek would soothe me.So I curled around the outside of my nest, chin resting on the raised skirting. For the first time I wept. Their distant laughter behind me made my blood boil. I cried until I saw their small bodies waddling through a blue glow.I looked behind me to see a human stooping over my nest, a flash coming from the black box in their hand, but even if they wanted to, they couldn’t do anything to us now. We swam together, one foot after the other. The sun rose over the trees. My signets followed behind me, water undisturbed as we carried onward towards the distant shade.May death embrace me warmly, for in this realm I cannot be touched by the cruelty of man.