Shaded angel wings on the back

The gull-drones came in again last night and I didn't go up to the roof to count them. Ruth from the pump house says the number's down to eleven, which means someone's been feeding the nests from the last of the seed silo, and I'd rather not know who. I've been in the old cathedral workshop all week, sorting the salvage Tobias dragged back from the Orbital Yard. Forty-two panels of grey polymer, each one cut like a feather, every edge layered so the light catches it. You'd hate the dust. You'd love the shapes.

Thursday I found the pair. They were folded inside a crate marked for the sky-lift counterweights, and when I unfolded them on the bench they opened to the full span of the roof beams. Two wings, mirror images, with a gap in the middle the width of a grown man's shoulders. Someone built them to be worn, I think, though the straps had rotted to nothing. The top feathers are pale and soft, nearly silver, and they darken as they fall toward the tips until the last ones are almost black, like weather coming in over water.

I didn't tell Tobias. I hung them on the wall above the stove, where the damp can't reach, and sat under them with my tea like a child in church. It sounds daft. But on Friday the boiler went out and I lay awake listening to the gulls, and the wings were the only thing in the room I could make out in the dark.

Come home when the next boat docks. Bring the spare solder, and bring your own pair of eyes. I want you to see what I've hung up before I decide what to do with it.

Love, Nell