This short story is about a bird that expresses her views about the pandemic.
As the world fell dead silent and she could finally see clearly, with no smoke nor a soul to be seen, she felt peace. At one with her inner self. She spread her wings to their fullest, filled her lungs and soared through the sky with no fear at all – no fear of being shot, of being hit by stones, no fear of the human world. She owned the sky and that was limitless.
She heard the rustling leaves and smelt the lush, fresh green grass. Swirling through the wind, her beak cut through the fast breeze as the clouds barely touched her. She saw the oceans, meadows and rivers, long and short. She saw all the buildings and houses shut, with all the people inside. And it all seemed so insignificant. But with that little insignificance came anger and hatred – hatred for all the people who had tried to hurt her, anger at those who had orphaned her. She was treated so poorly in the human world. Humans would throw all kinds of things at her for their own pleasure and entertainment. This burden of emotion overcame the tranquility, and it should be noted that she hated the likes of humans.
This emotion was so heavy and overpowering that it dragged her down. Her feathers felt like knives and her beak, a sword. All she wanted to do was hurt every single person, and hence, made it her mission to make humans’ lives a living hell, as they had done for her.
She felt that humans being locked up in their comfortable homes was not punishment enough. She wanted them to have the same treatment as she and every other creature she knew. The actions of humans disgusted her to the core, with their inequality, injustice, superiority and inferiority issues and the list just keeps going on.
It should be noted that she was not always like this. When she was but a young chick, she loved the idea of humans and heard numerous stories about them. She always wanted to have an encounter with a human. That was until she did meet her first human. It was a man. He was tall and strong. She was so excited. She was sitting in her nest in the tree when it started shaking suddenly. Her parents held her and all the other chicks tightly. The tree kept shaking vigorously till it fell, and her parents fell right under one of its heavy branches.
She was so innocent that she did not know that it was the human who had cut the tree. She realized it when she tried to run to him to ask him for help. All he did was kick her away. She was so naive that she thought he did not see her, but then he cut down another tree right in front of her.
Instead of reaching new heights in the sky, she went low and deep. She dwelled in darkness, living in the past. She made alliances with others who had a similar mindset. She dreamed of a day, a day when Homo Sapiens would kneel to her. She and her followers trained and trained for vengeance.
As the days slowly edged closer to the attack, she started to remember a little soul in her that used to irk her to do the right thing. This little voice slowly grew fainter and fainter in her. All her life she had listened to that voice, and now she started to miss it.
It was her one companion that followed her everywhere, all the time.
All the followers that she gained now did not bring out the best in her but led her to more anger. Mourning the loss of her innocent voice, she changed her quest to find it, although she knew that she would only find it when she found peace with herself, her surroundings and the people of earth.
She knew instantly that she would have to let go of the past and the pain and the trauma and be one with it. She would have to let go of her ego to complete the task, no matter how hard it may be. But she knew she would not be able to let go of her traumatic past till she had a good enough reason to do so. So, she went to numerous houses with a more open mind and peeked through the windows to observe what they were doing.
In the first house, she saw a whole family sitting in the living room eating popcorn and watching a movie. The children were roaring with laughter! It seemed to her that they were enjoying the movie the most. Through the next window she saw an old man eating a bowl of cereal for dinner, but hardly any milk was left. He was eating dry cereal and he seemed quite unhappy and hungry. Just before she moved on to the next window, the doorbell of the old man’s house rang. It was a young lady with a new carton, full of milk. The old man could not contain his gratitude and blessed her and insisted that she join him for dinner. That was when the little bird moved on to the next house. As she peered through the next window, she saw the cutest little baby in a nursery. The baby had big, bright, beautiful blue eyes and the tiniest little dimples the bird had ever seen. The baby looked at her and chuckled and there was a small twinkle in the corner of her right eye.
The bird had seen enough to forgive them. She saw that not all humans were cold in their heart, and that some of them were just like the characters in the stories she had heard of them.
When she had that realization, all was quiet and everything stopped. Her heart had rhythm to its beat, her feathers felt soft and delicate. There was stillness and serenity. And while all that happened, the silence broke when she heard the innocent laughter of the beautiful baby girl.
The sound of the laughter echoed in her heart and woke her spirits. It marked a new dawn for the little bird for she was filled with joy and happiness, feelings that she had never felt before. This feeling made her feel closer to the little voice and felt like she was at the highest point in her life. She was so filled with this high that she just could not contain it and wanted to share it so that everyone could feel this feeling. With that thought, she rushed to her followers and told them exactly what she felt, why she felt it and that she had forgiven all the humans, and that they should too. She described it as a divine revelation that had dawned upon her.
And at that moment, while she was speaking, she heard a familiar little voice inside her saying, “You did it!”
– NYAISH CURSETJI 9B