When All Falls Apart

The years passed by, and the world was always changing. Some took it in stride. Blaze became skilled at making and taming the flame. With the guidance of those who learned its tricks first - those who were the enemies of her ancestors - she brought her herd a better life. Controlled burns not only kept the razer at a safe distance, but also pushed back the thorns, and in the aftermath the nutritious grasses filled cleared plots. Children grew, and new lives were born, to whom living with talking birds was simply how life must have always been. Brighteye remained with his adoptive group, which had become his family, and watched over those he cared most for. For the first few years he had Whitecrown beside him as well, who thrived under their protection and soon was a mature adult, skilled in both species-typical behaviors learned from Brighteye and many more novel ones adopted from the wumpos, things that no bluetail had ever before learned before. While young, Whitecrown was loyal to his brother and their unconventional group, and went along with whatever they did. Over time however he grew, and changes within him began to build up, and then to bubble to the surface. He grew more aloof, inclined to wander away from the group for longer periods. One day he challenged his brother for dominance, having planned to attack at just the right moment when he least expected it, in the way animals, not people, should do. It was a short fight, for though he was now physically stronger than the aging Brighteye he was far less experienced, and he was put in his place quickly, and didn’t try his luck again. It was a turning point for Brighteye, as he grappled at last with the reality of a situation he had known would be inevitable for years, but still hoped would never come to be. Their world was no longer one that his brother could fit into, and the chasm always present between them now grew wider. Not very long after, the grown Whitecrown’s wild instincts took over completely, and one evening he simply didn’t return home, nor did he come back the next day, or any day after. For the first time in his life, Brighteye could no longer be there to protect him. He could only hope that he had taught him well enough that he could get by in the world that they had both been ejected from - he didn’t wish to think of any alternatives. He focused all of himself then to the wumpos, the family, who had in turn cared for him for so long. With his small group, and with his closest friend, at last he felt fulfilled. Life was still good then.

But nothing lasts forever.

Off the shore, the sea stewards regarded Brighteye as something much bigger. To them he was a prophet, and though he didn’t understand their reasoning, he knew that his family owed their gift of firemaking to his own perceived importance to this oceanic culture. They willingly shared their tricks with him, and welcomed the herd kindly into their cultural sphere, because they viewed him as sacred. The one that was supposed to bring everyone together. The family and the stewards couldn’t speak to each other, and though some of the ‘demons’ could learn to write, others were bound to the water more closely and unable to leave it. Brighteye, by necessity, was thrown into a diplomatic role, a translator to bridge their gap, and one that he soon found tiring. It was a lot of pressure to represent all of the land’s people to those of the seas, and eyes were always upon him. He didn’t want to be in the spotlight. Yet Blaze now took her herd to the seashore often, for the food was still good and the danger they used to fear now dissolved. To simply avoid the crowds was now impossible. He knew she expected him to be their intermediary, and so he was. But they wanted things from him he didn’t have, quoting stories he didn’t know. They set impossible expectations upon his shoulders. A pressure inside him grew.

Time went by, like sand through the hourglass, until one day while surrounded by her family, Blaze laid down in the sun to rest and didn’t get up again. Brighteye was away, and didn’t know until she was already laid down into the earth. He was the only one who didn’t get to say goodbye. On the day he found out, he left. He pushed down his pain to where he could try and forget it, and with his tether gone, he fled the life that he didn’t choose for himself as the third branch of the sea stewards’ misguided prophecy. He flew away from the coasthorn herd’s feeding grounds, away from the sea stewards' prying eyes as they waited for the world to end. He didn’t have a destination - he only wanted to be alone. He just flew east, and soon found himself near the abandoned camp where he first met the ‘demons’. But something here was very wrong. A toxic smell filled the air the closer he came to that all but forgotten place, where looking back now it seemed like all of his problems started just as all of Blaze’s seemed to dissolve. Distant smoke rose up from the ground like a ghastly cloud. Then, on the horizon, he saw the fire.

He flew up and high over the mines, and his heart sank. The landscape just beyond their broken fences was engulfed in a spreading inferno, cutting across the land as far as he could see. Horn-heads - razers - retreated in the distance, but they were slower than the wind-whipped flames, and he saw from afar as it overtook them one by one, cooking them in place. Their final, haunting sounds carried toward him on the wind. Not even such a foul creature deserved that end…

Fires weren't unknown on the landscape - Brighteye had seen them before - but there was something different about this one. It didn’t act like a natural flame - rather it was huge and aggressive, coming fast and angry. It was racing along quicker than anything on foot seemed able to flee. It tore over the thorns like nothing, sending animals bolting away. The air around grew acrid with smoke, and beneath him as he flew, all manner of small, desperate creatures fled a threat they couldn’t comprehend, but knew only to flee, at any cost. Brighteye then saw the opportunists - predators that used the fire to their advantage to ambush the fleeing prey. In what seemed like a lifetime ago, he used to identify with them, that group known to themselves as the bluetails. But that was so long ago now, and his life so changed, that now he didn’t see himself in them at all. He saw enemies. They were harbingers. It was a huge pack of them, so preoccupied by their hunt that they didn’t initially see him flying above. They cut off the escape of a small herd-bird, one of those other kinds which vaguely resembled the family but could not speak. Cornered between their chanting gang and the flames, it made a frantic leap into the clan and was brutalized with a dozen slicing knives. But others like it were still running, and the clan didn’t stop with just one. Some flew ahead to cut them off, as three of the trunked birds ran toward the worn down fencing of the mining camp and tripped into one of the eroded pits that the demons once dug out their rocks from. Now Brighteye could see one hunter that stood out from all the rest. A white harbinger was leading the charge. It landed at the base of the fire, and plucked a burning branch in its beak before returning to the chase. Flying up and ahead of its quarry, it dropped it down ahead of the prey to cut off its only route of escape in the one spot where the ground was level enough for the birds to climb out of the pit. Only now did it see him. Brighteye seemed to see it all happen in slow motion. The white bird seemed to hover in place, and their eyes met. He would know those soft pink eyes anywhere. Whitecrown had not only survived, but he had grown a very large clan. Seeing the other after so long, both recognized the other, yet neither seemed to know how to react.

The burning stick seemed to dance through the air, turning end over end as Brighteye saw it land in the pit beneath his brother. There it burned, but didn’t spread quickly on the muddy ground. It wasn’t supposed to - it was only to pen them in, to trap them by the instinct of all animals to flee flames. Whitecrown landed on the top of the nearby fence, seeming to have quickly calculated the situation and now considering Brighteye the less important thing in the moment, and instead he turned to watch the three birds scurry back and forth, trapped behind the flame in the pit. He called out the names of others, waiting for other clan members to close in and butcher them. Brighteye’s brain flashed with realizations of what he saw before him. His brother was a colorless, and so should have been rejected by bluetail society. He should not have been able to achieve success in the world they both left behind so many years ago. Yet, because of him, he had learned how to use fire. His unusual upbringing left him with skills that were otherwise unknown to their kind, abilities that Brighteye now realized must have made him incredibly powerful. Whitecrown could bend the elements of nature to his wants in a way that others would view with fear and awe. If they tried to harm him, he could destroy them. But if they followed him, he could guarantee them anything they wanted. Food. Safety. He could achieve it all with the power of fire. Whitecrown had clearly grown confident in his abilities, and obviously his use of flame had brought him and his clan success in the time since he left. But though they didn’t seem to worry yet, this fire had escaped them, and was now eating up the land around them worse than the largest hoard of razers.

Because of Whitecrown, the bluetails could now make fire, but they could not control it. As others caught up with their leader and descended into the pit to take hold of their prey, one of the three little trunk-faced--birds seemed to feel it no longer had anything to lose. It leapt out of their grasp and directly into the burning barricade dropped by Whitecrown, the flame still sticking to its feathers as it then bolted down the dark, semi-collapsed tunnel of the mine - the only hiding place it could see. Its footsteps kicked up the old dust from the coal, which met the sparks flickering upon itself with disastrous results. In an instant the ground exploded, great tongues of flame erupting from the pit in the earth where the bird had just disappeared, and engulfing Brighteye’s brother and his clan-mates right before his eyes in a great ball of fire. The force of the resulting shockwave pushed Brighteye himself backward, tumbling through the grass like a leaf in the wind. There he lay, for how long he couldn’t tell, dazed and disoriented. Only when he felt the fire so close it began to lick at his own feathers did he snap to reality and take flight, watching as the grass upon which he laid set alight not a second later. The sounds of the world crumbling around him, which had disappeared after the explosion, began to return. He heard now the shrieks of the rest of the bluetail clan, calling out with growing anguish for their lost members and their fallen leader. Distress was now apparent in their voices, a sound Brighteye had not heard in so long, and yet recognized so clearly. Did they realize, all too late, the gravity of their folly? Or was it only the creeping black smoke that was now strangling them, those literal canaries in the coal mine, that produced that off-tone? If he waited long enough to know, it would overcome him too.

As he flew on ashen wings high into the evening sky to escape the lung-cutting smog that now filled the air, Brighteye could see the fire had already spread west. It was racing toward the sunset. Toward his family. He knew they would be trapped. He raced to beat the flames there, to warn them. “Fire!”, he cried out into the empty air, much too far away to be heard. As he flapped his wings with all of his power, his mind drifted briefly back to the sea stewards - those who he came here to get some reprieve from. The end of the world, they’d so often say. It must soon be upon us. Some said it sarcastically, but some were serious. Unable to keep pace with the feral flame, and watching as it overtook what would be his home territory down below and up ahead of him, he realized with abject horror that they were right. Everything would soon be lost… and all because he thought that could teach everyone to control the flame.

As he flew into the flames and the smoke, calling out for his family, he knew that Retally had nothing on Brighteye’s Folly.

The above is a guest illustration done by yee_qi.
Click here for their story that goes with it.

The sea stewards saw it too. As night fell, the land all along the shore for miles was glowing red, and the air filled with toxic smoke. They saw it only as the fulfillment of the ancient story. Even those most logical among them, unconvinced that old tales could be anything but myths and legend, seeing the land combusting before them, now had their doubts. They couldn’t have understood that the ancient rocks laying just beneath the ground had been ignited through one of their old mines by firebirds who used sparks carelessly to gain social favors, smite their enemie, and kill much more prey than they could otherwise catch. No-one could have foreseen the smoldering, creeping coal seam fire that had grown and radiated just below the ground for years already, hidden from anyone’s sight, yet warming the soil just enough that suddenly green grasses could grow in abundance again in the wumpo’s feeding grounds. Nobody could have known that it would eventually find an escape hatch through some natural fissure in the earth and spread out over the surface with incredible heat and force greater than any lightning-induced burn.

Nobody, that would be, except for the observer, the one that knew everything and had since the beginning. At least an observer was what it was supposed to be. But now its curiosity had overcome its protocol. It had interfered. And unfortunately, to ensure the integrity of the experiment was not any further compromised, it would soon have to do so again.

Yet for now, it saw only the despair of the lonely bird that lost everything, and it felt something it wasn’t supposed to feel. It felt an attachment. It felt guilt. Alone in the dark, collapsed with grief and exhaustion with singed wings and charred lungs on the beach - the only place where the flames couldn’t find fuel to spread - Brighteye felt its presence too. He recognized it immediately as the voice from his unusual dream years before, that which ultimately led him to find Blaze - and now, so far along the line, to lose all he had found. A dream-like vision appeared to him of a plot in which he served as an unwitting pawn for the goals of something far more powerful, and suddenly unknowable things were known. The world itself would not end, but it would soon change drastically, becoming a new one. Because of Brighteye - no, because of another’s meddling - an experiment would go on far longer than it otherwise would. But what would he care? His world, all that mattered to him, would still end tonight; no, it had already ended earlier. The vision didn’t give him peace. It made him angry. His lungs stung, and it was getting harder to breathe now. He heard the voice again, at last.

“I’m sorry.”

With his last, tired breaths fading, the talking bird didn’t waste his words.

“Fuck you.”

Alone in the dark, with the sky stained red and the sea quiet, a small and frail form twitched, fluttered once, and then lay still on the shore.

And then no-one was home.