The limbs protruding from its back had a familiar shape, from a distance. They were wide and great, close to the torso, their lower borders softly angling up until they met the tops in distinct points. They beckoned for some turbled troubled freedom with their chain-weaved tapestry and heavy clinking.
Their flapping produces some great cacophony of a novel character. Eroded chimes fill the air, erratic, purposeless. Impossibly, its feet lift off the ground - and fall back onto the sands a moment later.
What a sight it is to see it trying. Sometimes, it seems to hover for a moment; the thin waves narrowly miss its feet. I know I'll see it fly someday - after some uncountable number of low plunges into the sands and the seas; of many careful preenings to its tangled linkages. It's going to take off, and it's going to fly in a way it hasn't before. Immediately feel the way the wind flows through its feathers differently; come back to this beach, one last time, to thank it. The lapping waves will wash over its bare feet one last time. It'll know that it won't see this place again - and then it'll finally disappear.