The moon, dazed, drops bitterly into its grave. A golden globe emerges behind the horizon like a dying comrade suddenly springing back to life. Shadows beg at the roots of trees and crawl together beneath the canopy of evergreen leaves. It feels good on Robin. There is chill but it sparkles; and the water droplets slip down the trunks like little children on slides. A colony of birds fleck past his branch and he raises his wings in defence, but they drift along, unwanting of war.
He flaps into motion as the wind retreats. Snow blankets the ground, the grass, the sparkling crystals affraying into the distance, but the blanket is cold, and the only warmth is from the secluded dab of light now smote in clouds. And his chest grows orange.
Ice comes sprouting from his wings as he bursts from the branches. The boughs behind him are long and skeletal with fingers groping for friends. Lonely beasts. Robin looks upon them with guilt. So protective and kind and welcoming. Damned to isolation. Naked and brown in the field of white.
Hunger chokes his throat. It’s muling. It wants to get at its drug, but Robin knows. Robin knows he can’t do that. Robin can hear the worms mocking when they pass by. But can never see them. Just the glimpse of their tempting bodies as they crawl away, earthbound, suddenly trapped beneath the grass and the roots and the ants.
Robin will not survive another winter.
He skates the ground and the holes where the worms were and they are empty. The grass is thick and wiry and a few blades probe into the air as little guards with spikes and trenches. The snow starts to fall again. The worms are safe. Birds die. Robin stays in his nest. In the solitude Robin strokes his wings and nestles into a ball and stares out at the world below. Breathing the old, stale air. A tiny pocket left locked in his container, shrinking, drawing in the walls. The sticks move in like spears. Even the walls are hungry. A desperate, starving desire. He’s waiting on change. Waiting on the soft spring hymns to enchant the kingdom in green and sunshine.
The sparkle is suddenly cast from winter. And the snow falls. It’s falling again. And the snow droplets fall like little white bits of cotton. Censoring Robin’s sight. He can no longer understand what is happening below. The food will soon be gone. The worms will not again reveal themselves. The fruit will be sharp and violent and sting his tongue and the harvest of nuts and petty insects will no longer harbour life.
They’re duping death. The worms need to die.
The silence continues to drift by. The lyrics to the songs are empty as this is it, the snow; it’s all they know. The birds dance only in their minds because they fear the Bigger Birds. He wonders why they see life so feebly, these Bigger Birds. These nightmare apparitions. The creatures with branches for wings are mad. They see some as food and others as friends. Robin cannot do that. Robin sits as a hermit and watches the animals pass by and he wonders what they want. The twigs beneath him crunch. Ice pokes from them and the sparkling light dances at his feet. He freezes.
They might see him. He’s small, but alone. As soon as light peaks into his cell and he leaves the orange and the brown they will see and they will chase. And then soon, he will die. The snow will come to his legs, it will tremble some fear into them. He will be the black stain on a new, white dress. They will get him.
He’s just a stain.
Time passes as snowflakes. The sky is dry; the dreamy cushions floating among the skies are empty and with grace, the wind carries them away. But behind, old air lingers in abandoned contempt. Whispering across the crusty white fields and praying. An unrelenting, gutless shadow. Robin watches it spread. So many creatures to find.
He can’t stand it any longer. The walls, they come, stolen by their dream of eradicated famine.
Robin bounds out into the winter winds once again. His wings flail and slap the air, a brown and white and orange bird upon a field of crystal. But the sun is faint. Black silhouettes begin to circle the sky as the Bigger Birds lurk out upon the skies to feast. But he can’t turn back. The sunlight wanes amid the falling rains—the day has grown warmer, if only by the slightest, and the ice is melted, betrayed, each droplet a victim falling to extinguish the snow.
The clouds pour in front of the sun as shadowy fingers stretching across a globe. The day ends. Birds have died wastefully, eggs cracked and dead. For no purpose. Life withers.
Hunger strikes. Itching fingers grasping around his stomach, spidery. Tight ropes that bind down his grumbling starvation.
Another day, another night. Another dream, the cream of his life. The picture of a face. It’s clear and it’s real, a mental image that guides him because it wants to. Eyes, cracked beak – the bare stubble thrusting ahead – orange face paint. He’s Redbreast. Imaginary Redbreast. Brought as if from a fire. Redbreast does not want land, does not want territory. Just friends. Great friends. Robin’s friend. Redbreast. King Redbreast. King Redbreast of the Animal Kingdom.
Robin has crawled together in the brickwork. Fresh and yet rotten claustrophobia spins him around and grabs his wings and tells them to fly away. But he’s safe here. Safe. No Bigger Birds. A black abyss. The eye of a storm. He’s safe here. Safe with Redbreast. Best friends.
He sleeps.
As his eyes frown against the new sun, agony ruptures his tongue and he cries out. His heart nibbles at his chest. Light streaks past his shell of darkness and his lungs explode with fear again. The dawn does not respond. Nature ignores him, the little bird in the infinite masterpiece of green and brown and sunflower skies—
there are no clouds. The sun is still dribbling frost and his eyes quickly skim over the tiny droplets like skipping stones. The sky is not natural—it is painted with blue diamonds. It doesn’t make sense; the trees are dressed in pink, and in blue. Cross-dressers, fakes. But Robin’s glad. Grinning, cheeky lips stretch out on the horizon, a sweet glow of citric sunlight. The leaves rattle about again. Quicker, quicker, they hatch their designs for spring in the trembling frost.
The green shoots sprout.
****
I know. Nothing much really happens here. I was trying to induce a sort of lonely and empty scene, where his only friend is his imagination, but let me know whether you think it just dragged pointlessly. The next part develops into the story some more.
Thank you again! Let me know what you think, please. =]
Thanks for the great advice!
