Bird's Story

He was one of a hardy genus of primitive sparrowgulls called chatterers that managed to adapt and eke out a living on the cold coastal steppe of south Serinarcta in the ice age, even after the forests they came from died off. But to his best friend, he was affectionately called 'Bird'. Crow-like with sharp beaks and even sharper wit, his kind naturally nested on rocky cliffs near the sea, and fed upon most anything they could find, but in particular refuse tossed ashore by the tides. And it was there, years ago, that Bird was found by Ember, the woodcrafters' last representative, their endling, and thus the final fading ember of their civilization.

When Ember stumbled across the bird on the beach one morning in the aftermath of a fierce gale, she took pity upon his condition. His wings hung low and many of his feathers were missing; he had caught in the storm and been badly beaten. Waterlogged and worse for wear, he didn't fight as she gently caressed him in her hands and lifted him up to her neck. He thought death was imminent, held in the grip of a predator, and accepted his fate as he was too tired to go on. Every muscle in his body clenched, waiting for the moment it all would end, the lost and bruised bird remained frozen in fear. Yet this predator acted strangely, and its killing bite was delayed an impossibly long time. When death didn't come in half an hour, he unclenched just a little. After an hour, he looked around and shook his feathers, and tentatively tried to preen his wings though just for a second before remembering where he was. But the jaws never closed around him, and the adrenaline drained away, and the bird fell into a deep sleep.

When he awoke, it was dark, and he was disoriented. He was trapped beneath a dark, coarse bush and shrieked in alarm. It was then that the old woodcrafter lifted herself from the floor of her home where she rested on a bed of dried grass, and so uncovered the bird that she still cradled against the fur of her mane. The bird was now angrier than it was afraid, and it chattered and bit at her fingers, though the skin there was hard and calloused from a lifetime of picking up thorny sticks, and she felt little of the tiny creature's rage. When he was calmed down again, she reached over with her other hand - resembling the talon of a deadly predator bird - and so this bird screamed and flared its tail feathers in defense... but that talon, too, was too shy to bite, and instead pressed a scrap of meat against his bill. It was all very strange, and yet he was suddenly aware of a very strong hunger, and so if he really was not going to die today, he considered his options and decided maybe he would like to eat something. So from then on, each time the strange giant handed him a scrap in her talons he responded as he would have to his parent offering him a morsel in the early days before he left his first flock. He ate the tidbit. And another, and more still until he was satiated. The creature had still yet to kill him, and so by now probably would not do so, and so he didn't mind being held so much anymore.

Weeks passed, and then months, and then years, as Ember and 'Bird' grew fond of one another and bird's injuries healed. In helping him recover, Ember found in him a new appreciation of what small joys could still be found in her life and something to live for. Bird, for his part, found safety and companionship. He woke her each morning preening her eyelashes, and at night roosted perched on the tines of her antlers. He spent most of his time upon her, riding along as she went down to the beach to graze and climbed up the grassy hills to watch the sun set. Though his wings were strong again now, and sometimes he circled around her from above, he didn't stray from Ember, and the two cared for one another. With her, he found a partner, and with the gravediggers that helped care for Ember, he found a flock. He played chasing games with the young gravediggers, always staying just out of their reach, and stole scraps and trinkets and caused mischief with the adults. Sometimes - on rare occasions - he spent a night away from home, in one of the gravedigger's mound houses, if he got caught out too late and darkness fell. His vision was poor in the dark. But he always returned home to Ember at first light, as she was his person and he like her adopted son. They were never apart for long, and would always be together. It was a promise that it seemed both made to the other... friends to the end.

But now, everything was suddenly very wrong.

They laid her to rest the morning after she died, on the hill overlooking the sunsets she so enjoyed.

The act closed a story that had spanned thousands of years. It would be the very last time an antlear would lay in a gravedigger's pit. Throughout the day the gravediggers from all around visited briefly, each paying respects to a beloved member of their community, special in a way that herself - humble to the end - would never admit. But the very first to arrive that morning, and the last to depart in the eve, was her closest companion of all. Their bond was strong... and on that day the gravediggers learned it's not only people who grieve.

He didn't understand where she went. Why her body was now cold, the spark gone like a torch knocked into the sea. And for a full day he waited with it, as if expecting her to come home and turn the lights back on and tell him she loved him again. As all the gravediggers stopped by, looked for a moment, and left. As the sun set, and darkness fell. Why weren't they going home? When the gravedigger pressed its neck up to his breast in the dim light and he climbed on as he had become accustomed, and he was taken away from her, he called out a plaintive song and sang it through the longest night of his life. At first light he flew up the hill to find her again, but where she had lay was now nothing but loose earth.

She was gone.

He stayed in the village for a couple of days. It was, after all, basically the only home he had known. It was familiar and safe. But it was empty now. The gravediggers continued to bring him food, though he had little appetite. The gravediggers knew of his importance to their friend, and so demonstrated care even in her absence. But they weren't her. He started to feel a longing, deep inside himself. A drive he didn't quite understand, but had to follow. He looked one last time at the gravedigger which had come down to check on him, a sort of silent show of appreciation. Both minds met for a moment, and both understood what was to happen next. And he flew away.

He flew down the beach, rising higher with each stroke and feeling the wind under his beating wings in a way he had nearly forgotten in his years with Ember, whom could not keep up if he flew at his full potential and so for whom he always waited. Now he was on his own and had no such reservations. He went faster and faster, racing the tribbfishers and the skimmers and watching the boats shrink away to tiny specks below him as he soared higher and higher. He flew for what felt like a lifetime, until the tiny village was but a distant memory. The wide world was his home now - the open blue sky, the crashing waves, and the blowing grass on the hills. He was already forgetting the life he had lived for so long, for that is what animals do. They cannot focus for long on what's gone. The present is now. There was still life to live. And Bird was going to live it.

Bird flew through the day, until the sun almost touched the sea, and only stopped when he heard something he had, until then, all but forgotten. A crooning song coming from the cliffs, carrying on the wind to his waiting ears. He turned, banked and landed on a large boulder. The song rose louder, not a territorial declaration or the aggressive challenge of a male, but soft and welcoming. The warble of a female, newly immigrated from her natal clan, and seeking a partner. In the fading light, they approached one another. He reached out to preen her, and she accepted. And they roosted for the night together.

The rest of his life began quickly, and it was not long before the bird - just the bird now, for a name unspoken soon loses all importance - had very important new priorities as he and his wild mate bore offspring. The birds' life from then on was in some ways a parallel to that of another who lived an unfathomable number of lifetimes before him, the last sapient babbling jay who also lived effectively two lives: one with its own kind, and one with another species. But the babbling jay's life story played in reverse, losing its own kind and then finding comfort in another unlike itself. Both this bird and the babbling jay would go on to have young at the ends of their lives. And though the babbling jay would never again meet meet another sapient being, through the infinitely long chain of descent that its hybridization with its close relative started, in a way it would eventually do so. For the chatterers are the descendants of the last babbling jays. Through the bird Ember rescued and formed a connection with, a link was briefly forged between two cultures separated by the vast span of deep time... and a thread woven between two people that could never have known one another directly. Through Ember's bird, an essence of the last babbling jay had at last found someone to talk to.

~~~~

For weeks the bird brought food to his chicks, and he was exceptionally good at finding it. He brought small fish from the shore, bugs from the grass, but most often food scraps from the nearby gravedigger camps unfamiliar with him and so unsuspecting of his bold thievery. He didn't stop to ponder the gravediggers for long, though in the back of his mind he had fond feelings and somewhere, happy memories of time spent with similar creatures. But that was a life that was ended, and this was the life to live now. And their role now was limited to providing some of the food his very hungry young ones needed to survive.

But the bird didn't forget everything he had learned with Ember. For at night, when he brooded his young in the nest, side by side with his mate, he talked to them. He had only faint memories of where he had learned these sounds, but he remembered the association, and when they were meant to be used, and what they were for.

"I love you, Bird.", he whispered to his chicks in the quiet of the night. And as they grew older and stronger, they too learned to speak these words that called back to a past life they had never even known. And so for generations his lineage went on, the wild chatterers along the shore spoke affectionately to each other in the gravedigger language, in the falsetto voice of a second sapient long since extinct. Like Bird, they didn't understand the words themselves. But they understood the context in which to use them.

And as long as they were passed on through the generations, an echo of Ember and Bird's bond carried on long after either of their individual stories were over. A memory of a rare and valuable connection between different species... and across and through the depths of time.