Tumble stretches on his tiptoes, wings flapping wide at the seabirds wheeling far above the ice. "Come DOWN!" he shouts. But the wind drags his words sideways, and the birds just keep circling, silver specks trailing lazy arcs. His feet screech on the packed snow as he paces, head tilted back, watching those circles shrink.
Tumble scrambles up the tallest ridge of blue-ice, bouncing and flapping. "Over HERE!" he shrieks, again and again, until his beak aches. He bounces. He flaps. He shouts. The ice jostles hard under his belly. Above, the silver specks barely wobble in their lazy circles.
Then he slides down the other side on his belly, skidding across the smooth snow with a long squeal. Scrrr-eeeee. He stops. The birds are still just tiny dots, no bigger than his thumb. The ridge groans and crunches behind him as he tilts his face up, up, up.
Tumble gives up climbing. He plants himself on the wide flat white ice, head tilted fully back, both wings folded tight against his back. The birds' shadows drift across the snow like slow gray ribbons, weaving and unweaving, gliding past without pause. He blinks once. Then twice.
Then one shadow slows. Stops. A tiny seabird drops down right in front of him with a soft plop. It blinks at Tumble with one round black eye, preens a speckled feather, and pays him absolutely no mind. A little puff of down floats up and lands, slow, on his flipper.
Tumble leans in close, his nose almost touching the tiny bird. It tilts its head, opens its beak, and lets out a small, dry crack. Like a twig snapping. The bird hops two inches left, hops two inches right, hops back, and settles. Tumble's flipper presses flat against the ice.
Tumble sits very still. His flipper is frozen to the snow, a small gray paddle pressed flat into the white. He stares at the whole wide sky reflected in the bird's one round black eye. The wind flattens the snow around them both, pressing it smooth, pressing it still. Neither moves.
Tumble pokes a small pebble toward the seabird. It hops back, hops forward, hops back again, bobbing its head like a little metronome. The silver circles wheel overhead, and Tumble doesn't look up anymore — just bob, bob, bob. They share the whole vast frozen sky, right here on the snow.