the wind doesn’t blow here

The wind doesn’t blow here, it saws. A thousand black-and-white lives hunch together on a frozen plain, bodies so close they blur into a single shape. Dark feathers gleam like oil slicks.

Every so often, the huddle ripples, and everyone shifts a heartbeat. Each bird, their beak down, their eyes half-shut, shuffles toward warmth.

Feathers bristle and press. Claws scrape the ice. The air smells of salt. The outer ring staggers forward, shifting new bodies to the edge. No one commands it, no one breaks rank. It just happens like a tide, an instinct. Against the colorless horizon, their mass shivers as one, a living furnace on the edge of forever.