(Author's Note: recommended theme music for this is, 'Illenium & Said The Sky - In Your Wake feat. Jeza').
There are no white starlings in Missouri, not in Merritt, not in Cloverdale, not in Kansas City, and certainly not in Smallville.
In fact there are less than one hundred white starlings out in the wild anywhere in the whole world.
White starlings are a critically endangered species found only in Java.
Whitney Fordman had been in Java. Where the US Military eventually said that he had died.
Jonathan Kent had certainly died, and that was back a while ago now.
*
Chloe Sullivan sat at her desk, looking out disconsolately at the scene outside her slatted windows. Well, it was the fact there was simply nothing at all out there, that was the problem. Clark was out of town, Whitney was dead, Lana was in another state on a story -, and she was here, in Smallville, in Summer-time, with absolutely nothing happening at all.
She could mess around with her iPhone and play some damn silly computer game maybe. Or not.
She chose 'not.'
Lucky too because it 'bleeped' just then. 'What the -.' She stared at the screen and the name it had displayed there for the incoming caller: 'Lena Luthor.'
"Yes. Lena!"
"Chloe, I need you to do something for me right away, urgently, and I need you to do it quietly. I want you to go and snoop around somewhere. Can you do that? Can you do it right away? Drop everything and do this."
*
Whitney Fordman had not died. That is, he had died, and in a blazing gun-battle, like the soldier-warrior and physical athlete that he was; he died that way. Except that this was out on a special mountain-side, a very strange and particular mountain-side. The locals out there in that far away, very distant and strange place, had a certain tradition that this mountain-side was the abode of a group of 'sky-dancers' -- kinds of, exotic fairies.
Every now and then, down through countless centuries, some of these fairies, became attracted to very athletic and brave young men. And then, they took them, as in literally abducted them, and brought them into the ranks of their chosen male counterparts, whose main pursuit thereafter, was singing and dancing and playing musical instruments -- none of which skills Whitney Fordman had the least ounce of aptitude in at all.
Just like the Valkyrie of Nordic legend, and the Keres of ancient Greek stories, the Eastern version of these beings were singularly beautiful, but they were also a touch you could say uncompromising, and had the same reputation that the Valkyrie do (and the Keres), of being kinds of female death spirits.
Of course though, they are not spirits at all, they are perfectly real, same as you and me.
Good-looking though Whitney Fordman certainly was, as well as athletic and in the prime of life, brave, intrepid -, perhaps foolish too -- yet he could neither play a musical instrument to the level demanded by these supernal beings, nor could he sing particularly well, and dance, well, he just could not, as Lana Lang could readily testify, had she been before the court of the fairy beings there.
...Which she had not been, thank god, Whitney Fordman thought, looking back over his recent episodes with those strange, almond-eyed girl 'beings.'
Their leader had asked him, seeing that it seemed he was totally unable to learn even from their best tutors, high up there on that mountain top, did he know anyone from back in his previous 'normal' life, who could dance and from whom he might be able to learn...
To him, it wasn't so much that he wasn't really able to learn, but it was so difficult for him to focus his complete attention in quite the way they all wanted him to do. To say the least of it - all those strange massages that they gave him morning and evening, all those weird medicines, that wonderful food, that made him feel amazing, and strong, but also strange inside too...
Whitney Fordman had been briefed by a 'Special Purposes Unit' -- a covert team -- before he had ever even gone up the side of that mountain. They wanted him to give immediate signals back to them if he encountered a phenomenon that J. Allen Hynek once had reported about, and had personally gone out to various tropical rainforests around the world where there had been similar local stories about it: beings who were able to disguise themselves using some kind of 'image shifting/chameleon' technology. Not many people these days knew that it was Hynek who had provided that Predator 'Alien camouflage' idea to the producers of the famous Schwarzenegger movie.
That idea wasn't a 'Hollywood made-up thing;' it was a real thing from the secret files of the CIA and J. Allen Hynek. You can read about it in small inserts tucked away in Wikipedia these days.
Of course it had been all too late for anyone to 'hot extract' Whitney, the soldier, even though he had fired off a last quick message: 'Camouflage thing real. Stop. Have encountered. Stop.'
'Stop' all right. End of messages, really.
So now there was only new Whitney, the metahuman.
He could 'disappear.' He could fly. And he could turn himself into one of those rare birds - the white starling birds.
There he was now, sitting on the front fence post thirty yards from the porch of Martha Kent's modest farmhouse -, a little white starling.
There were summer-time purple poppy-mallow flowers in the front yard, and Black-eyed Susan flowers too. Nothing much else. Martha didn't seem to have the time or the energy any more.
She was not, in the prime of life, as it were, not like Whitney once had been, and quite recently.
There she was though, 'large as life' nonetheless, standing in the doorway, one hand on a hip, one hand on the side frame of the door, the other side across from the hinges and actual door.
Her once blazing red hair had lots of silver streaks all through it, and her skin tone was not the soft, Collagen plump and glowing Irish sheen it once had been.
Her waist and hips though, were kind of still there just the same. Maybe it was that incredible Harris Tweed leather strap skirt she was wearing, Whitney Fordman mused.
It was summer but getting quite late in the afternoon right now, and Martha Kent was wearing knee-high long socks. Did she feel cold these days? Whitney turned it over in his mind. Cold because, what, thinning skin from just plain age? Or 'cold' because, well -, no man...
Martha without a man. Not a good thing, Whitney registered it again for the umpteenth time to himself in his head.
Yes, Martha was a good dancer, and she was a trained dancer, but that was not the most of why he was here now.
He had always had a crush on Martha.
That was really why.
The white starling bird flew right up to Martha Kent, right past her hair, real close.
And then it flew around for a bit and flew back out again.
She thought to herself that she had never seen a bird like that before. And she never had done either.
Her black Dodge RAM was parked out front -, still had its Washington D.C. plates.
