Tread lightly for you know not that which lies beneath your feet

Havelock has made his decision. One which he has deferred making for so long. Perhaps for me? Perhaps for Fricka? Perhaps for little Fricka and all those like her? Perhaps for the one chick which he tries to save each year? Perhaps for himself? Who can know? Who will ever now know?

He has decided that life without Myfanwy, finally, is no life. Whatever small compensations he could conjure for himself to assuage his pain, they are no longer enough, and he has chosen. Rather than a life without her, he will have unlife with her. And who dare challenge his choice? It is his, and only his, to make. It was always so.

I found him that morning, out by the test rig, dozing in the early morning sunshine. I didn't want to wake him but I needed him to keep an eye on 'little Fricka' while I wrote my blog. Laying my wing across his back, I felt him, cold and stiff. There was no warmth left in him. No charity. No love. No life.

Wherever Havelock may be, he is no longer here. No longer in the rookery. No longer by my side. What remained of my father was no more than empty, cold, dead flesh. Solid bone left rigid through the night. Stiff feathers useless, for protection, to insulate; there is no longer warmth to retain. The life has gone from that which was so alive. The penguin that was Havelock has departed and all that remains now is food for the bonxies.

There is a switch in every penguin. At certain times, you press the button and the penguin in front of you becomes a non-penguin. It is as simple as that! As every chick dies, its parents flip the switch and there is no chick, no to-be-penguin, no beloved, no heart's dearest, no tender fruit of your union. Just a husk, empty now, barren, a shell that once contained a penguin but contains one no more.

If the penguin is no longer a penguin, in what way are they different from the snow? From the rocks? From the concrete around the station? From the remains of half digested fish left by over-stuffed chicks intent on mayhem? In no way different. So we leave them. Where they lie. A stiff and frozen reminder of the price we will all be asked to pay. For life exacts its own cost for this life. A price for this joy, this excitement, this suffering, this contentment, which we all, penguin or human or orca, must pay, whether we will or no. Only by paying the real cost do we come to appreciate the value of what we have bought.

Tomorrow? Next month? Next year? When is not important. Only the inevitability of the final settlement remains.

We ignore them, these empty, lifeless urns, full now only of ashes. We cast them not a glance as we waddle from one side of the rookery to the other. After a few days, they are little more than feathers on skin, discarded remnants from an alien and bizarre haberdasher, just rags in scarlet drenched snow. Even the husk, now empty of the penguin that once was, becomes truly empty, a meal of guts and lights for a hungry petrel. Such is the life, and the death, here.

You would, I think, consider us heartless, cold, callous to so treat those we loved. Those we reared. Those we spent the long winter protecting; to the very limits of our endurance and sometimes beyond. Why else would we suffer, as we do, through the harsh winds, the freezing air, the hunger, if not for love? And, if for love, then do we not debase, besmirch, demean our love, in acting so? Is love so easily switched off? Like a table lamp? Is our love no more than a meal for the bonxies?

We do not love the husk, the empty shell, the ash filled urn. We do not love the feathers, the bones, the guts. We love the penguin. If the penguin has gone, what is there left to love? Except the memory?

And memory has no shell.

We buried him, Cozy, Sparky, Fricka and I. Beneath the test rig. All day we shovelled snow with our wings. It was not easy nor deep, but deep enough we hope to preserve him from the bonxies. That much, at least, is owed.

Never before. The rookery has been keening long into the night for three days now.

Little Fricka will not eat.

Little Charlie does not speak.

But tomorrow is a new dawn and, with each new sun, there is always new hope.