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// Chapter XXXIV: Indicative 
// Story: Subjunctive 
// by Integral Archer 
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	Three times now have I tried to cast myself into the sea; three times now have I failed.

It would be to hit the sea, break something, and then drown, I thought. It would have been proper to die in the way I was meant to have died. So that’s what I did: I went out far from the beach, over the sea, then folded my wings against myself and let the wind scream past.

When I first began my fall, it was comforting. This is how it should be, I thought. I had the understanding I so desired; now, there was nothing left. Here I am, taking the last steps, to die, and with my death to finally rid the world of my kind, to achieve the end the subjunctive had so long been striving toward.

But then, as I approached the water, the satisfaction died away in proportion, and the regrets came back. Though I tried to think about what those regrets were and how they were irrelevant, I couldn’t. Eventually, I stopped falling with certainty and fell instead with the suspicion that I would be leaving something undone, not understood. At the ultimate moment, my wings would twitch, and I’d hit the water, scream in pain, and float for hours till the tide washed me back onto the beach, bruised, covered in sand and seaweed, and ashamed. When I finally touched the beach, I couldn’t even remember the feeling of regret, and I convinced myself that it had been just cowardice. Yes, I was a coward, for it was time for me to die, and I couldn’t do it. I had to do it—but let me be a coward for a little bit longer, I thought . . . I need to work up my courage to do it. Then, after some hours’ contemplation of my abjectness, convinced of my worthlessness, understanding everything, especially the necessity of my death, I would take to the sky once again, to the spot as before, fall as before . . . and then have that compunction come to me again during the flight, twitch my wings, then fall into the water intact as before.

This I did three times. After the third time, I was too weak, too hungry and thirsty, to ascend again.

What was wrong with me? Why couldn’t I end my life with the only moral action I could ever undertake? Was it mere cowardice? No, because it was precisely a fear of cowardice while falling that caused me to save myself. It was a feeling that death would be another evasion.

But evasion from what?

I couldn’t say, and I was too weak to think. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d eaten or slept.

A vulture landed beside me. It cocked its head to one side, eyeballed me curiously, and took a tentative step forward. Another vulture landed beside the first, and both began to approach.

Vultures, trash-collectors, stupid and slow, easy to catch for a quick meal. They were potential food, right there for me . . . but I remembered the smell back in the forest, the smell of rot. These vultures might have been there, might have been doing their abysmal cawing and squabbling over the remnants of my family. I couldn’t eat them . . . the thought was more repulsive than any other. Dying of starvation and having them eat me—that was more desirable.

They eyed me, and I eyed them. They took a step closer.

If I couldn’t even justify eating to sustain my body, then I didn’t deserve to remain on the earth as a creature that lived, breathed, and had moments of soaring happiness in the contemplation of the love of life, and to have the exaltation he had once obtained when he proclaimed his existence, declaring his name to the land, the ocean, the horizon, and the sky.