"It was knee-deep in wet grass, wearing lederhosen, and looking, frankly, unbothered by the fact that it was not meant to be real."

Joy Wren spent thirty years in financial technology, where she developed an intimate yet enigmatic relationship with the pivot table. She has since retired to the Cotswolds, where she swims most mornings in a natural pool she's fairly sure is haunted by something benevolent, and spends her afternoons hunting the Coaloc Orphy — a creature so rare that most naturalists insist it exists only as a rumour with feathers.

She has seen one exactly once, mid-flight, in a fluster of abigails, and has not stopped thinking about it since. She dreams, often, of sitting it down and discussing the finer points of lederhosen construction. Every so often, without warning, a spreadsheet formula rises fully formed from the dead in the middle of the night. She writes it down anyway. It usually becomes a story.

One (1) confirmed Coaloc Orphy sighting, 2019 — witnesses: 42 uncontactable abigails.