The big bird next to a little bird was as if completely still on the pond’s dusky surface.  He thought it the reason why the little bird floated unmoving as well.  Yet, quite suddenly, the little one fluttered its wings and took off on a swooping glide over water.  He watched.  At one point, it almost hit water.  His heart leaped into an acidic taste in his mouth, for, at that speed, the little one would be hitting a wall.  But the unaffected bird took off instead at the trajectory of a jet towards the rising sun.  The big bird didn’t move a feather, looking alone, taking in as if its fate.  It took him a moment to find the little one again, higher up in the sun’s rays, and see it then arc around and descend at a trajectory steeper than a jet’s.  A nosedive into water?  It slid into a sudden flat taxiing above the pond and came to a stop at its station alongside the big bird.  The big bird didn’t budge, as if deliberately, and he knew then that he had all along been witnessing the two of them as one acting in a duet with the just-dawning sun.