Be careful what you ask AI for …
Yesterday morning, just after 7 a.m., I saw her in the sky.
A great blue heron, wings wide and regal, flew across our backyard and landed right on the chimney. She was stunning. The kind of breathtaking that stops thought mid-sentence. For a moment, everything stilled—the pond, the trees, even my worry. As I bent down slowly to pick up little Shelby, she saw my movement and flew away. We haven’t had a heron at the pond in a long time. Back then we taught Bitzy and Bo to chase off the majestic waterfowl. They were quite adept. And soon with enough “discouragement” the herons came to leave our pond alone.
After I saw her in the morning, I gave AI a picture from our wifi cam saying that I missed catching he and asked AI to insert an image of the heron into the scene for me.
That’s way too big. I thought to myself.
But it wasn’t.
Because last night, under a moonless sky, she came back.
Not as a visitor, but as a hunter.
Not from the skies, but from the shadows.
Black and white footage from our night vision wifi cam shows her there—for two full hours—stalking the pond. She paced, watched, peered in, and sadly struck. She caught something. It’s on the footage. A flutter of movement in her beak, a moment of triumph for her, and a jolt of grief for me.
Had I been awake when she was hunting I might have been able to scare her off. But I didn’t notice until 4 a.m. I spent a half hour downloading all of the footage on my android phone. So sad. Before I realized, it was 5 a.m. And sleep such a distant possibility. I had uploaded some of the images into a thread in AI and it offered me this little “sleep story” to help me mentally let go. I listened to it read aloud and smiled at the image it created. And then driffted off to sleep until the 7 a.m. alarm for Shelby’s Kepra announced.
Keeper of the Koi
There once was a pond nestled in a sacred garden, hidden behind veils of leaves and branches that knew the names of every fish below. In this pond lived not just koi, but ancient spirits—keepers of time, color, memory. They shimmered in copper and gold, each scale like a tiny lantern, their movements painting soft spirals of wisdom into the water.
One night, under a dark and moonless sky, a shadow passed through the trees.
The heron, tall and silent as a ghost, arrived at the edge of the pond. Her feathers glinted cold like silver blades. She had come before, but this night she returned with unfamiliar hunger and the cover of sleep.
But something was different now.
As the heron leaned forward, a ripple of golden light shimmered from the depths. The water began to glow, soft at first, then stronger—until it rose in the form of a koi spirit. This was not a fish of flesh and bone. This was Shiohana, the ancient guardian of the pond, whose name meant “petal on the tide.”
Shiohana hovered just above the water, translucent and aflame, eyes wide with knowing. Her voice was not sound but vibration, stirring the leaves and the pond’s breath.
“This is not your place of hunger, hunter. You will not take what glows with memory.”
The heron hesitated. For the first time, something deeper than instinct reached her heart. A long pause held between them, until the bird lowered her head—not in defeat, but recognition—and slowly stepped back.
From that night forward, a circle of protection shimmered invisibly around the pond. Only those of peaceful spirit could draw near. Shiohana would rise again whenever needed, glowing brighter than the stars above. And if you ever saw a glint of golden light on the water where no fish swam, know that she is watching.
And you, Karma—you are the one who called her forth.
She remains, because you remain.
Sleep now, Keeper. You are not alone.
After Shelby had her Kepra and Ruby had her insuline, I walked out to see the pond. There was a slight drizzle and very overcast and crisp. The koi know me and always come to the surface when they hear my footsteps and see my shadow. But this morning even the schools of tiny mosquito fish fled when they saw me approach. Yep, the pond was on predator alert. Most of the fish were burried in the mud and muck at the bottom. The big 18″ koi were hovering low in the center depths. I couldn’t see who was missing. My guess is the little orange pealscale tri-tail was one of her meals. From the closeup on the cam, it seems to be about the same size. So odd (statistically improbably), just yesterday I said to the southern man that I thought I noticed a fluke on the pearlscale and we should fetch her out of there today and remove it with a pair of tweezers. The beak of the heron was definitely not the tweezers I had imagined.
The pond is sacred to me. The koi aren’t pets; they are companions. Spirit-keepers. Teachers. Some have survived against all odds, others born here, golden flickers of life that grew beneath my gaze. Indeed Bitzy chose the pond as her final resting place.
Last night’s evens were sad. But the pond lives on. If I needed a reminder … the yellow iris bloomed. I know now not to be surprised at the synchronicity.
It all gives me pause to remember, All That Is. Because under the surface of every quiet moment, I know there are still flickers of gold. Still life. Still memory. Still love.
