Oswald Heron and the Way Things Should Be

Oswald Heron liked things a certain way.

His days unfolded like well-folded linens: soft, familiar, and free of unnecessary creases. He lived in a willow tree above Widdershins Pond, where the light filtered just right and the lily pads kept politely to their clusters.

Every morning, Oswald rose at six. He stretched precisely. He steeped his tea until it reached a color he called proper. He surveyed the pond. All as it should be.

Until the duck came.

She drifted in one morning as if carried by a thought, quacking a tune that had no rhythm and rearranging the pond with every paddled turn. Lily pads scattered. Ripples lingered. Crumbs floated.

“Excuse me,” Oswald called down after several days of disrupted mornings, “but do you plan to stay?”

The duck blinked. “Oh yes,” she said cheerfully. “I rather like it here.”

He didn’t quite know how to respond.

She was not impolite, only... exuberant. She splashed while thinking. She spoke to the clouds. She left feathers in places he had just tidied.

And yet, she smiled at him every morning. Offered him bits of biscuit (though he never accepted). Greeted the dawn as if it were a dear old friend.

One afternoon, Oswald watched her chase her own reflection across the surface of the pond, quacking with laughter.

“She’s absurd,” he said to no one.

But later, as he brewed his second cup of tea, he found himself watching for her. When she didn’t appear right away, he checked twice.

She arrived, eventually, dripping and singing and absolutely unconcerned with the state of the pond.

“You’ve moved the lily pads again,” he said, mildly.

“They looked bored,” she said, and floated a little closer. “Would you like to try moving one?”

Oswald stared. “Why would I do that?”

She grinned. “Because you haven’t.”

He nearly said no.

Nearly.

But instead, with a long, delicate leg, he nudged a lily pad slightly to the left.

“Too far,” she said, dramatically horrified.

He looked up.

And she was laughing.

And—unexpectedly, unwillingly, entirely—he laughed, too. Just once. Like a kettle huffing off a little steam.

After that, things shifted. Not quickly. But quietly.

He let her bring him tea one morning. It was over-steeped. He drank it anyway.

She let him show her the “best angle” for watching the pond at sunset. It involved sitting very still and saying nothing for five whole minutes.

“I can’t feel my wings,” she whispered.

“That’s the point,” he said.

And she smiled.

They did not become the same. But they became next to each other. Which, in Widdershins Wood, is better than being alike.

Now, the pond holds their habits in a kind of dance.

Lily pads drift, but not too far. The willow’s reflection wobbles a little, but Oswald doesn’t mind. And sometimes, when the wind is right, you can hear two very different voices laughing together—one dignified and feathered, the other round and joyful.

And both exactly where they’re meant to be.

Lady Bergamot

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