The day Della received the shabby looking little box, she was dwelling in her melancholy ruffled thoughts not trying to put them in a particular order at all.
The sunlight poured down in wide rays through the curtains in the sitting room, allowing tiny dust flakes to spin and whirl in distant waltz.
Della was trying to read a book and her eyes found it impossible to move from the fifth line in the past half an hour. Her thoughts ran in all possible directions hitting the vast lanes of the place she was born. The river and the golden cloak it wore silently and heavily along the banks of the town washing every pebble on its way down to the Big Blue.
Oh, dad look at that feather! How could anything be so beautiful! What is the bird that wears it?
Many years after this Della wouldn't be completely convinced how a real little heron was supposed to look like. She kept the blurred image of this wonderful bird tucked in the hug of her belief it was a little hero coloured in blue. Oh, she loved the thought of heroes existing in life.
It’s a blue heron, princess. Old people say that if you happen to find a blue heron feather, the bird will guard your heart with the purest love ever known to men. It’s a token, lovely. You are going to be invincible... So, it is a little blue hero, isn’t it, dad?...
“You are going to be invincible”, the old man’s words echoed between two flaps of the heron’s wings and it was in the moment the graceful silhouette dispersed above the river, when the girl caught what a blue heron was supposed to be with a curious glimpse of her eyes. He was so little...
The cottage was gloomy and bleak today. The sun never shone as warmly and lavishing, as it usually did at the river banks.
Della loved to walk down the river pretending to wait for the love messages her beloved would carve on a crab’s carapace and her heart used to sink in the view of any blue glimmer in the sand…waiting impatiently for a love to come and the blue heron to return.
Blue heron
The doorbell chimed like the bells on the church’s dome. It startled her, took the last part of her breath and brought her back to senses. There was a dark blue figure at the front door, tall and alluring in appearance that glimmered with the shine of the brass buttons, all in a neat row. Della hasn’t seen somebody so dignified in his stately presence and as uncertain in his manners as only a little blue heron could be. She stood caught in the image and the reflections of the past, not being able to say a word for she didn’t expected any kind of visitors today. The person stepped behind and with the due manner of the daily routine, he handed out a small and shabby box to her.
The sender have put a certain urgency on the delivery, Ma’am…
She muttered a very pale "Thank you" and signed his papers in a haze. The door closed smoothly behind her back and she saw a million of blue feathers dancing in the sun ray shining through the curtain. Her fingers trembled slightly to find the rope and unpack. There was a tiny yellowish paper on the top with her father’s handwriting on it. The next Della's heartbeat was blank.
"I saw the little heron today, princes and I need to follow him into the light. Inside is a small feather we are leaving for you to keep until we meet again…Love, Dad."
The little blue heron
The room sank under Della’s feet. She leaned against the wall. The light was brighter and it seemed like it soaked everything in it – the sofa, the book, the memories, the river and its sparkling glided surface…the little blue heron. She was able to see the bird quite clearly now – grandiose and majestic in its posture, it waded in the waters heavily and steadily. The little blue heron has returned. Della sighed and felt her heart was strong enough to bare all loves and their carapace messages. She pressed the feather to her breast thinking how anybody could be so invincible.
This is my entry for the challenge run by 
Prompt: Little Blue Heron
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