The European Shag Has To Be Black.
It was The First Friday of The First Week in the newly created World, the God was sitting on a thick greyish cloud, designing the necessities to occupy the abyss of the universe, kicking a little naughty stub of the nebula with his big hairy leg. He went along the list: light and darkness - check, sky and sea - check, land - check, sun and moon - check, fish and sea creatures - check. A bottle of rye beer was cooling down in the heavenly storage, wrapped in a cold autumn precipitation, waiting for the Good to call it a day. There would be just a couple of things to make on Saturday: animals and men — not a big job, compared to, let’s say, Sun. It is tricky to make the Sun: you have to keep in mind the gravity of the planets, how much sun will shine in Poland to provide a good harvest and will it burn the bleached back of Ashley Pitcher from Maricopa, the US in the summer of 1978 when she goes to see her mum in Allenville.
— Is that it for today, Mike? — The God asks archangel Michael with a loud baritone, which thunders in the freshly created empty sky for a while.
— We have to design birds, boss. — replied archangel.
— With a wave of my omnipotent hand, — the vinyl of his baritone started spinning, — I, the God, create birds on all the continents, let their bodies be big and small, their beaks be tiny like a needle or prominent like a shoe, with the wings span the width of a stream or petite like a rain drop.
Then God paused and rubbed his chin with a knobbly thumb:
— Listen, Mike. There are some most divine colours in the cabinet, I will distribute them over the birds we create.
— How many pieces you have designed? — archangel glanced on the God.
— Around ten thousand, maybe a bit more. Why? How much paint do we have?
— A gallon of black, half a gallon of white, but ten litres of blue, eight of green, five of yellow, three of red. I don’t think we’ve enough for all of the bird species.
— We have to improvise, Mike. Be the most colourful birds at the equator, where the Sun shines the most. I will create the Man tomorrow so that he likes warmth and goes to see beautiful flowers and birds to the tropics. I will create the Man so that he does not go to the northern and distant places, as they will shiver his thin skin and scare him with their barren lands and hostile rocks.
— Doesn’t sound plausible, but have to give it a go, — said archangel. He pulled out a piece of a tanned cardboard with a list of hundreds of continents, countries, regions, areas, islands and even coral reefs. The God started from the hottest places on the planet.
— Congo will get… a cobalt and orange bar-tailed trogon, a blue-headed bee-eater and a shelley’s crimsonwing.
— … crimsonwing… — noted down archangel Michael.
— Australia gets a pink robin, a mulga parrot in turquoise, yellow, red and blue, a splendid fairy-wren in all hues of blue, an azure kingfisher in a deep sea-blue…
— Easy on blue, boss… — advised archangel Michael. The bucket with blue paint was miraculously disappearing.
— Brazil gets a toucan with a rainbow beak, a scarlet macaw, a hyacinth macaw… How many more to go?
— I would say a hundred more places. — sighed the holy assistant.
— My! Do the random colours on the rest of the aves, to your taste.
God turned his head to the shimmering rays of the Sun and travelled with his fingers through the sunbeams as pulling the strings of a harp.
— Complevit, Mike?
— Just one place left - Scotland. But we don’t have much paint to spare.
— Not to worry, Mike, there is no one more creative than me, which bird to design next?
— Puffin. I suggest, we use black, white and a lick of red for the beak.
— Sounds good. How about tern?
— Grey, black and a thimble of red. — Archangel’s voice went less confident.
— Guillemot?
— Black and white, red is done, boss.
— Gannet?
— Also black and white.
— Skua?
— If we mix black and white we get grey, so skua can be grey.
— Good thinking, Mike. How about razorbill?
— Black and white, sir, as well as cormorant. — Archangel lifted his eyebrows and nailed the ends of his mouth to the teeth in an apologising smile. — The white paint is finished now, God-sir.
— European shag. Is he the last one?
— Yes, it has to black, sir.
— European shag has to be black. — proclaimed the God.
Bird design was done, but the God was not entirely satisfied. It is when you serve your spaghetti bolognese, but forget to sprinkle parmesan to top, like a tiramisu without a cacao powder dusted on top of creamy mascarpone. The rye beer was not that enticing when you have been swallowed by the pounding feeling of the inferiority. The hairy legs firmly and equally pressed of the plato of the cloud and the divine baritone stated:
— I know we were pinchpenny of the colours on the sea birds of Scotland, but what if we compensate in the variety of the species, Mike?
— The Scottish shores are vast, but not endless, sir.
— I know, Mike but I will create not only the common seagull, but the glaucous gull, the herring gull, the black-headed-gull, the great-black-backed gull, a fulmar…
— A fulmar?
— Yes, that looks like a gull, but not a gull! - shouts God in excitement.
— Looks like a gull, but not a gull…
— Kittiwake, another look-alike-gull! The lesser black-backed gull… — Got kept morphing gulls to compensate lack of colours by the variety of beaks and diversity of flight paths.
— Sir, why would you create so many similar birds?
— Mike, tomorrow I will create the Man, I have to fully saturate his passion for exploring.
The top of rye beer bottle flicked in the thin air and the bubbly fluid occupied the space of the facetted glass.