He took breath after breath, his body completely still, using the movement of the air to gather his rage, but after each inhalation contracted it, the exhalation delivered more to every part of his body.

He tried to focus on what he’d gathered so far, but if there was any ball it barely stood out.  His heart ached; maybe that was part of it.  Maybe he was getting somewhere.  Oh well, he’d try to transmute what he could.  Remember how it worked: shoot the energy down through your rooted foot, your anchor anchor to the ground.  Concentrate on cleansing it, or maybe trading it in for good chi.  Bring it back inside.

OK, he could do this.  He visualized the energy moving down from his chest, but didn’t feel anything.  But something shot up, and he suddenly wanted to cry.

Sensei!

The image leapt to his mind, as vivid as the day it happened: his Sensei, head and neck stretched over a log, the farmer with his axe silhouetted against the rising sun.  Sensei looks to Sam with an unreadable expression, and then up at the farmer. The axe falls.

With a shout, Sam lost his balance.  He put a wing out to catch himself, and struck it on something before falling against it with a deep thud.

“Shit,” he whispered as he gathered himself, feeling his bruised elbow and opening his eyes.  He looked at what he’d fallen against, bewildered, and then it struck him: it worked!

He had grown!  He was way taller than he had been before, as tall as the farmer.  Maybe taller.  He’d channeled a portion of his rage into growth energy and had unlocked the power to defeat the farmer and get revenge!  YES.

It was still dark, and the farmer wouldn’t be up for a while yet.  Sam didn’t want to confront him in his fortress, there was no telling what defenses he would have devised to keep himself safe from Sensei.  He decided to wait until sunrise and prepare.  He resumed standing on one foot and dropped back into meditation, finding his rage soothed by cold intent and the giddy confidence of his new-found power.

Sam held the feeling for over an hour, and started to feel uncomfortable. Strive for light and warmth, Sensei had told him, but what he felt was dark, cold and sharp. Was this right? Of course it was: it was justice. The farmer had killed, without provocation or reason. He deserved what was coming to him. Besides, Sensei also said that way to the light is always through the darkness.

And this is where his concentration was snapped by a scream and a terrible shattering sound. That scream… it was Ella! And it was coming from the farm house! Oh no, she was the only one left! He ran towards the sound as quickly as he could, and rounded the corner of the house to find himself face to face with the farmer. Fragments of glass littered the ground between them, and from the inside they heard the sounds of struggle.  Sam locked gazes with the farmer, and raised his head into the first wing-fu offensive stance.

The farmer’s eyes were wide, and then they closed. He exhaled and seemed to collapse slightly. “I never would have thought it’d come to this,” he said, apparently to himself.

“You killed my Sensei. Prepare to die.”

The farmer’s eyes squeezed tighter, and a tear trickled down his cheek. He has remorse, Sam thought; good, he has accepted justice and his soul will find peace. Beak ready, he leapt.

She yawned and stretched upward, painfully striking her head against something.  This was also confusing, because there was only air above her when she fell asleep.  She opened her eyes.

Oh!  What a funny joke.  Somebody put her in a really tiny version of the coop while she slept.  They did a really good job too; it must have taken a long time.  Every familiar detail of the the cavernous ceiling was recreated with painstaking accuracy in the one that was now within wing’s reach.  The dusty windows were identical but now only as wide as her shoulders.  She looked down and saw that she was sitting on the remains of a ledge that looked just like her ledge, but far too small and flimsy.  Whoever built this replica didn’t make it very strong.  Maybe it was a prank by the giant lady who took her kids to school.  They’d both been kind of sad since all the other hens moved to the retirement home.  It was nice of her to be so thoughtful.  Ella liked the giant lady, and hoped she wasn’t too lonely.

There seemed to be no point in hanging around in there, and it was really small and sort of uncomfortable.  She looked around.  The hatch where she usually left would be impossible to squeeze through.  The only thing that seemed likely was the giant lady’s door, which was now about the right size.  She felt a flicker of guilt as she looked at the handle.  The giant lady would put her paw on it and turn it, and it would click and then the door would open.  It didn’t feel right to use it, because it wasn’t her door.  Wait!  This wasn’t the same door.  This was a mini prank-door.  She reached out her wing, grasped the handle, turned, pulled, and stepped into the light.

Oh!  The world…

The feeling that she’d been pranked escalated to a paralyzing terror.  The whole world was smaller.  This was impossible.  The indomitable fence around the coop wasn’t even as high as her head.  The area it enclosed was no longer an arena, it was only… an enclosure.  The sturdy crab grass growing around the fence posts looked frail and thin, and in the wind it’s majestic sway was only a stiff wiggle.  Even the trees seemed tiny and rushed compared to the swaying mountainous majesty of the day before.

After about five minutes the shock subsided into a deep unease and Ella decided to go about her day.  For a while she decided to stay in the fenced area, but it was really too small now and she had to move.  She’d normally start the day with a jog, but the shock of this whole thing made her want to just run around like her head was cut off.  She walked around in tight circles faster and faster until she fell over, dizzy.  There was no way around it: she had to cross the fence.  Hopefully the giant lady would understand.  She closed her eyes and jumped over.

The world didn’t explode.  She looked around and decided to start her jog.  She ran across the farm’s yard and hopped over the fence into the field where the cows lived.  She said “Good morning!” to them as she passed, but the cows just stopped, their eyes bulging and grass falling from their mouths.  She ran to the far end of their field and back, her excitement growing as she went: all of this stuff had been way off in the distance her whole life, and now she was seeing it.  It was very exciting.  Maybe if everything stayed smaller, she could help out more, Ella thought.  The tuition for her kids must be pretty expensive.

She went around the south side of the barn where the tractor slept, and turned north to go see the pig pen.  ”Good morning!” she called to the pigs as she approached.

“Is it really?”  one of them replied, calmly, with one raised eyebrow.

“Of course it is,” Ella replied, “The sun is out, everything’s gone tiny and I’m out for a run!”

Another pig looked at her for a moment before saying, “And we’re in a fucking sty, suffering our disenfranchisement under the heel of bipedal despotism.”

“Well, if you don’t clean up after yourselves, that’s your own problem.  And I don’t know what the rest of that means, but it’s probably hooey too,” she said.

“If you can read, take this,” said another pig, who handed her a pamphlet.  ”It’s the latest from Kroporkin.  It explains everything.”

“Oh, these look like those squigglies on the food bags,” Ella said, and then realized that they meant something.  They meant “Hamarchist Morality,” and she almost know what that meant.  ”I always used to think they were for decoration.”

The pigs looked at each other.  One of them said, quietly, “Poor girl, she has no idea.”  They all looked serious and sad.

Well, enough of that, what a downer.  Ella thanked the pigs for the booklet and jogged on.  She rounded their pen and approached the farmhouse.  Through the no-longer-big shiny squares she saw the giant lady, now the same size as her.  She was standing in front of a white box with four black circles on top, and one of the circles had fire coming out and there was a thing on top of it that looked like a round metal feeding trough.  The giant lady was holding something round and white in her hand; why, it was Percival!  Her dear Percival!  She expected he was going to be a doctor, some day.  The giant lady held him in one hand, and then her arm swung down.