Contentment unto Freedom

In a time more gentle, when she was smaller, when her feathers were shorter, when her talons were duller, she was content with her four walled world. Content to dwell among the sleepers as her kind did, to find comfort among the slumbering forms of porcine and equine and bovine, to feed on the vermin which nipped at their feet in the night. To flutter and dance between perches of wood and straw and rope as moonlight cast its celestial spotlight over her nighttime ballet.

She was content in the mornings to retreat to the solemn corner of her tiny universe, far from the scalding light of the day. Here the sun became a dull twinkle refracting tenderly over gossamer strands of spider silk, crafting the daytime constellations. Here she was invisible to the watchful eyes of the men puttering about below. She heard their covered paws thud across the floor, heard the clanking and grinding of metal and stone, heard the sounds of her compatriots drawn out unto the field for the day's labor. She plucked out the rhythms from the tumult of the world below her, learning how to hear the music in the din and allow it to lull her to blissful sleep.

But time is strange thing, unstoppable, unknowable, and uncaring, and the forces of transformation and entropy can never truly be outrun, even by those who sail the skies. Paint began to peel, hinges cried ever louder, and the men came by less and less. The squealing of hogs quieted to subdued grunts, the whinnying of horses petered in the subtle smacking of lips, and the sound of milk cascading into buckets fell to a trickle. The quiet crept in, overtaking her world in a storm of nothingness, until she at last awoke alone for the very first time. She did not dance that night, did not hunt, did not fly, did not tend to her nest, did not sing her throaty tunes, or groom her feathers. She sat there in the great vast dark and listened to the sound of nothing and heard everything. The sound of nothing was a vicious cacophony, creaking wood screamed at her, the sound of wind assailed her ears, and she was kept constantly awake by the sound of her own heartbeat. Night after night she sat there, listening to the terrible hymns of emptiness, helpless as they soothed her into bouts of fitful sleep at the dawn's first light. Then came the storm.

The wind howled that night, whipping at her feathers, ice water chilling her blood and riming her plumage with frost. Still though, she did not move, for her world had grown too small, there was no longer anywhere to go. She stayed there, perfectly still, until at last the sky opened up and illuminated the world with horrible, blinding starburst. The scarlet tide rose up before her, blanketing the world, enveloping her home in whirling smoke and undulating flame. With no other recourse, she spread her wings, and fled at last through the open window. And then she was free.

Her home was ash now, the only world she had ever known, but with it her chains had at last melted away. She soared the infinite skies, untethered, unbound, nowhere to go but everywhere. She was free to roam, to sing and to dance for an audience of glittering stars, to quench her thirst in quicksilver streams, to feast on fatted voles, and find respite in trees which kissed the clouds. And as the morning sun began to crest the horizon, she filled her lungs, opened her beak, and added her voice to the symphony of the night.