Short: The Song Of Dead Sparrows

They gathered, insubstantial, as the silver horned moon reached its zenith. Their bright, moon-like eyes glittered and shone as they mingled in the night. Only the silent stars were witness to their wispy, ethereal forms.

Descending, they wheeled and swooped, dancing in the cool air above the small town. Ghostly, eerie cackles, imagined memories of half-forgotten sound, escaped their vaporous, phantasmal bodies. They flew and fell to the town, alighting upon gabled rooftops, fields and the empty, silent streets.

Not a single living, sleeping human stirred at their passing, as they cavorted and gallivanted in the deserted streets, lit only by the dull glow of the mute moon. Their smoky, boneless limbs twisted and writhed about them as they leapt in the streets and slithered across rooftops. Their eyes glittered hungrily, happily, glowing as the full moon does on clear nights during midsummer, as they slid down chimneys, down eaves, down the boughs and trunks of sleeping winter trees void of leaves. Coiling, uncoiling, and coiling still, they passed through alleys, crept up staircases, and oozed down sewer drains. The smell of rotting roses followed their passing, clinging to places like an idle winter chill.

They then spun and cavorted under the star-dogged, horned Devil's moon of that lonely winter night. They danced merrily in the fields where the fall fireflies lights once stirred. They swayed quietly at the feet of children's beds, their forms but vapour shadows. They leapt over tombstones, laughing raucously in the cemetery. All with a sound of a whisper, less perhaps, and to music only they could hear.

And then, they left, fleeing upwards through a cold sky barren of clouds, their forms swirling as they sped over rooftops, trees, fields and yards. Their many, ephemeral limbs coiling behind them, their bright, moon eyes joyous and full. They floated up from sewers, chimneys, trees, and tombstones, falling back towards the stars from whence they came.

At dawn, the children awoke from vague, terrible nightmares, their covers flung about them from their nights fear-caused thrashings. There was no birdsong that morning, no lonely crow greeted the cold suns arrival, and no sparrow sang, for all the birds in were frozen and lifeless within their nests, their crannies, and holes...

[[This was written in my paper-and-ink journal, dated 18/08/2k7.]]