Break

That day....it was, strange to say the least.  Cold, but that's true of mid winter.

  I'd thought to go ice fishing.  Always had with my dad.  Wanted to do it with my son too, but he was just a young chick.  But hey, fishing solo is fine too.

I made a mistake.  One big enough to kill me, and I know what you're thinking.  How are you here?  Well quit trying to jump ahead.

Anyway, I made a mistake.  I misjudged how thick the ice was.  Dug a hole in it close the shore like dad showed me.  Looked just fine.  Shouldn't have eyeballed it.

Broke through and hit the water too fast to even spread my wings.  The cold was numbing, paralyzing almost.  The little current from the creek started pulling me under more ice.  Air was leaking out of my beak.  It, it got dark.

I kept scraping, clawing, anything to try to break my way back up.  Every movement sapped more out of me.  Every strike saw me losing more air.

I gave it one final hit....and nothing.  I wasted to much time and energy trying to break it again.  Should have swam for the hole I fell through.  Couldn't make it now, panicking had cost me too much.

As everything faded, I looked back at my lost salvation, and something was swimming at me.  Didn't look like anything I had seen before.  But I blacked out before I could make anything more out.

Don't know how long later. I woke up, next to a fire, wrapped in...some piece of clothing, I think a coat.  I looked about, and it was there again.  Sitting by the fire.  It looked back at me.  It looked, kind of like those myths.  The ones you hear in ponyville occasionally from that harp or something playing unicorn.  And it looked old.  Wrinkled, wearing glasses, and a full blue outfit with all sorts of strange things on a belt.  But those eyes.  I never safer safer nor more terrified at the same time.

It asked me how I felt.  How it had happened.  I told it what I could.  It stood up, looked down on me, and slapped me upside the head, calling me all sorts of things for being so stupid.  Almost sounded like my dad when I was my son's age.  It didn't keep it up, just sat back down on a log and told me to be careful next time.  That I wasn't the first time this happened.

I fell asleep again soon after.  When I woke back up, he was gone.  All but the piece of metal I had seen on his front.  PCPD.  Didn't make any sense to me.  I've been back to there plenty of times.  It's still sitting there on a rock on the shore.  Alistair always asked when we went down there what it meant.

I'll tell him when I know...