HOW A BIRD MUST FLY

[RaindropsKeepFalling 884]

 

 

HOW A BIRD MUST FLY

 

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The roads were musty that day.  The endless snow pelted at each roof where families huddled together in warm blankets.  The mothers tended their children, comforting them.

“Play tomorrow, darling,” they’d say as if they were a hen to their chick. “It’s cold.”

Lost in little understanding, the children were bored.  

 

    Only a single soul longed for the colder days.  The times where it wasn’t enough to envelope yourself in scarves. Only to stay inside, pulling a dusty book from the shelf, curious for its contents. Her name was Cajsa, and she was barely a child.

     She delved into the poetry of the atomic-sized things.  The little dewdrops sliding from the petal of a flower.  The lost feathers that fell from the sky, clipped by a feline perhaps. 

Since she was a smaller girl, there was an unending pressure in the rat-race of the Imperial system.  She’d glance into the sky, lit up by little spotlights, dots: the stars.  Did they worry all the same?  Did they hold a pang of underlying guilt?  She wished to be a star, left as a concept, only a bright moment that dissipated as the sun rose. 

    Thus, she disappeared.  In the midday warmth, she crept from the wide concrete roads, into the past: the tropics.  The tall palms, the sand left in the heel of her boots, the bright sun further tanning her freckled skin.  Romance: a true love to find one day, packing your bags and taking a leap without a scarce look back.  The idealistic sentiment had been instilled since she was but eight.  She hadn’t met the boy; instead, she figured, it was the place.

    In 1801, Cajsa Serene Baelius vanished without a trace.  It was not an abnormal night.  The birds chirped amidst the leafless trees and the snowfall continued, pelting down on an unlucky passerby.  Yet, the girl was gone.

    Two notes remained. One lay in her dusty desk.  The second slipped under the crack of the Wick’s door in the aurora. The countless books she’d rant about had gone with her.  She’d dare not leave them behind.   

The first note was in her scrawling cursive, edges ripped as it had been in a rush.  All she had time for was to scrap the page from her beloved journal.

To My Parents 

Spoiler

 

  By the time you are reading this, I’d suppose I have gone. It makes it no better, but I’ll excuse myself with “I’m sorry.”

I’m sorry.  I’m sorry that my anxiousness would get the best of me.

I’m sorry for the eccentric rants that went on.

I’m sorry for breaking apart what you tried so hard to keep glued together.  

 

     If I was only not myself; I would make you proud. You’ll start angry, then feel sad; it is my cowardice.  I find it worse, speaking out in a harsh yell: I am this!  The cries,  I’m fearful of their echo. I am a selfish girl, that way.   

    If only the world was a more lovely place.  Or I was a more lovely person.  If I was perfect with golden goals, set in the stone.  Like those aging statues of the leaders of yore.  The memories they hold, of people sure what they wanted.  I don’t know if they were sure.  I just must believe that somewhere, somehow, there is a modicum of fairness.  If it is not true, it is what ought to be. If that is a crime then go ahead and prosecute me, for I would plead guilty.

I do not mean to be ungrateful. Simply entertain me, however, and read a small story.  

    Once upon a time, there was a girl. Her name was Pepper.  She was a happy child, without a care in the whole wide world inside her city.  Along came chaos with tales of demonic things.  It left her anxious.  She grew up a little, and the whole world decided to migrate to a whole new world.  Like a ball, she bounced back, but since birth thoughts remained in her mind.  The bad thoughts, the “what if’s.”  

    She loved the sun, always waiting for it to rise each day so she could go play.  But it soon turned repetitive, and she grew restless. She began to wish to see the moon and its glowing face.  She was an owl, living as a songbird.  She figured: “I must soar.”  

    One day, she found her nest, but it lay far away, made up of sticks and mud.  She loved it from the pit of her heart.  They all told her to find love, but it wasn’t a mate.  It was her nest.  

She took flight.

    Even though it is only a story I hope you may understand.  I shall not be gone; I am not an angst-filled creature wishing to never speak again.  I love you both, so much.

But, before my wings are truly clipped: I have to see the tops of the trees. 

I’m sorry,

 

Kaia

 

 

 

To Rahtol

Spoiler

     When I was twelve you gave me a bouquet.  It was meant to symbolize that we would always stick shoulder to shoulder, side by side.  We’d be friends forever.  I hope, and I pray that this does not change that.

     When I was fourteen we went to the Grove together and you loved it.  I will only spare the real truth with you, as you did me with your Pa.  I long for it.  I have since I was ten years old.  It is my escape, my story, my love.  You are still my friend.  

     I will write,  and I hope you may visit. I hope we may not ever break that promise.  I wear your gloves loosely on my palms, traveling through the snow that belts a girl over the head with the blizzard’s winds.  In the future, it will clear.  We will see again, and I could return.  I would run through the grass without care, and maybe you would follow.  

     The skies are ever cloudy, but before I go to seven of them I must see the world a bit for its virtue. Where it’s hot and temperate, for I’ve seen the cold.  I’ve seen the water, and I’ve seen the land.

Today, I’ll fly.  Today, you’ll find your mother and father. Today, nothing changes.  I am not leaving you, and however bittersweet: recall me by a note.  

Love,

“Pepper”

 

   

And as she could dearly hope: time went on and the overcast day elapsed.  Perhaps different as to how it had begun, but all the same, majorly.  When spring sprung up, migration would begin, but this fowl had already evanesced.
 

 

Edited January 2, 2021 by RaindropsKeepFalling

[DahStalker 2846]

Emerentia furrowed her brows as days gone by and soon the sudden vanishing of Casja became more evident. Sorrowfully the young woman would inhale sharply and sit before a desk, ink staining her cheeks and the pad of her fingers, smeared into flesh. After a delayed moment the flaxen-haired youth would adjust her palm and begin to write a production based off of the missing girl.

[MotherLay 815]

Adryana Baelius sits in her bedroom, reading over the missive for what seemed to be the thirtieth time that day. With tears rolling down her face, the mother grieves over her daughter's sudden disappearance. There is no doubt in her mind that she knows where her daughter has gone. The name signed said it all. She knew it was the one place she hoped her little Pepper would not be. Despite this, despite her tears and grievances, she did not worry for Cajsa's safety, she knew that she was alive, and that she would be taken care of where she had run off to. Adryana could not help but blame herself. Perhaps if she had done something different, her daughter wouldn't have left her. After a while of moping about in sorrow, she reaches for a blank paper, beginning to write a letter to the one person she had not spoken to in years...

[MCVDK 1570]

“Idiot.” Basil Baelius, the father, commented while reading the note presented to him. “If one cannot see the value within maintaining the family - if one cannot see the value of the safe walls - if one cannot see the values of our kindness, then those people do not deserve to live within them.” He added with a soft scoff as his hand moved over the codex of the ORC, ”I’ll have to look into official disownment laws.” He concluded as his thoughts drifted back to work with a final comment, “That witch of a Grandmother cursing the children of mine.”

[JEEGK 1263]

Within the icy confines of the south, a letter arrived to a castle hidden within the frozen tundra, given by a visiting relative. A boy sat upon one of the many balconies that were blanketed with snow, reading over the letter again and again. In a slow moment of realization he muttered the words, "Beat me to it, Pepper." following was his tiny laugh, "We each have our own lives to live, live yours to the fullest, Cajsa." The tears which he wished to hold back stung in the cold. "We will see each other soon." 

 

The aforementioned father figure sat within the darkness of an open doorway nearby, "Come, boy." he hissed and Rahtol began his exit, vanishing into the darkness, only to be shadowed by the haunting figure.

[latte 1310]

"I didn't know that that one went outside of Oren" comments an adult Dannika Angelika towards her sister.

 

@AndrewTech