It was like being home. My brothers and sisters crowded around in the nest, welcoming the prodigal slug. All my wandering and wondering had brought me to this dangerous and safe place, a hair’s breadth from catastrophe.

I felt like a cuckoo, placed with a family under false pretence, not knowing how to respond to kindness. However I was comforted and warm, surrounded by downy love, high above the madness of mankind. All I need do was preen myself and look at the view.

The surrounding clouds began to shape themselves into bulbous faces, full of wrath and rain. I squeezed my eyes tighter, fearing that my halcyon days were over and this experience was just an illuminated fragment from my own twisted mythology. The mountains melted.

I was lying in a bed of crumpled dreams, desperately hanging onto the memory of a memory. Cruel truth had emptied the love nest. I had to begin the story again but I couldn’t put my feelings into words.