Those Birds Tumble Through the Sky on Broken Wings Amidst Crackling Thunder

The soldier had always hoped his last moments would be spent among friends and family, a full and honest life lived. No one wants to die alone, and no one wants to be forgotten. There is a catharsis in legacy, an unacknowledged pride which we can only pretend to ignore. Instead, far from home, he dragged himself through mud and rain, where red eddied into brown, and his bones began their return to the earth. Boys will kill, men will profit, and we have heard this story before. War is man’s folly, and unfathomable suffering is the price we pay. These things we know to be true, and truth is the only reminder of humanity when all else has been goose-stepped into the trenches, given a gun, and told to kill. It is not worth restating the obvious.

Early that morning he had fallen out of the sky on a mechanical bird, tongues of flame licking at its metal body. A bundle of cloth had slowed his fall, before fire from the ground tore him in two. Born of the air, he came to the earth with hours left to live.

Such violence, such death, and still there was peace. It was a pleasant day to die, as far as dying went. Red flowers stretched out over the fields, filling the fields with their pleasant fragrance and chasing away the metallic stink of blood. The sun had just risen over the horizon, the air was still cool, and the soldier could still feel his intestines dragging along behind him, stomach opened up like a zipper. A cypress tree would be his final resting place - silhouette outlined in the morning light, and as his strength failed him, it was all he could do to pull himself the last few meters, coming to rest against its warm bark. He shut his eyes, and let himself slip toward the end.

A plump raven alighted, torso running red with blood. A battlefield is a joy for such scavenging birds, and no doubt he had been indulging upon the dead flesh strewn across those open fields. The raven squawked eagerly, uncomfortably jolting the soldier from the final throes of death, and he opened my eyes, quite irritated at the disturbance.

“Would you mind?” the soldier asked, a frown upon his gore-streaked face. “I am trying to die here.”

The bird tilted his head, clearly perturbed by the liveliness of his next meal and blinked those beady black eyes. “Well, would you mind?” he retorted. “I am trying to eat. It isn’t every often that I get a nice big feed like this one, and I don’t care for the implication that your needs are greater than mine.”

The soldier was shocked. He had never known ravens to be quite so spiteful, and its temerity had caught him off-guard. “Grief!” he cried. “You’re an arrogant bastard, aren’t you? Not even dead and already you’ve decided to ignore my wishes. I’ll have you know I died for my country! I should receive the finest honours!”

You must understand, he was quite livid. Dying will bring out the emotion in all of us, especially one so patriotic as the soldier. The bird did not help matters by cackling, as though his distress was most amusing.

“You are not, are you though?” he pointed out. “You are lying against a tree in the mud, with all your tasty bits dribbling out of you. Your country doesn’t care about you. If it did, you’d be back home, hmm?”

The soldier gritted his teeth. Shock had begun to wear off, and he was struggling against the agonising pain that grew at his middle. If only this winged rat hadn’t come to spout snarky remarks, he could have drifted away by now.

“Listen, you wretched creature.” he began. “I will not have my guts picked at by a scavenging beast while this heart still pumps. I’m afraid you will simply have to wait.”

The raven hopped closer, perching himself just to the side, where he could peck away at the soldier’s guts undisturbed. “Why should I listen to you?” he reasoned. “What will you do to stop me, incapacitated as you are?”

“Have you no respect, bird? Will you not grant a dying man’s final wish!?” the soldier shouted in exasperation, and finally the raven gave pause in his advance. A moment passed, and then another, before he puffed out his feathers and shook his frame. Flecks of blood were sent every which way; more red to coat the drenched earth.

“I’m afraid us ravens don’t have this respect you speak of.” he finally said. “You people must hold it in quite high regard though, to let it get in the way of a delicious meal.”

The soldier nodded in confirmation. “Yes, quite highly. Respect is important to every good man.”

“What about your women?”

“Yes, our women too.”

The raven bobbed his head thoughtfully. “Then I would like to learn about it. I will sit here, and I will wait until you die before I eat your tasty bits, and perhaps I will start to understand this respect.”

The soldier smiled in relief. “Thank you, bird. Do you have a name?”

“Ravens don’t have names, either.” he explained matter-of-factly.

Peace secured, the soldier looked toward the sunrise, where golden light was beginning to crest the forest trees in the distance. The fields reached out across that expanse; a moment of silence. Beyond the thicket smoke rose from many fires, painting the clear blue sky. Hundreds of battles fought, millions of lives lost. All the children with no fathers, all the mothers with no sons. Out there were plenty like him, waiting to die. He had done his duty though, and that is all he had ever wanted.

“I don’t think I understand your respect yet, human.”

The soldier sighed, which pained his ruptured lungs terribly. “Well I am not dead, bird. Perhaps you shall need to wait a while longer.”

“What if I killed you?” the raven suggested excitedly, as though he had stumbled upon a grand revelation. “I could peck out your heart and then you would be dead. That would be the same as waiting, no?”

“It would not. That would be a very disrespectful thing to do.” the soldier asserted.

“Well I am going to become bored. I do not like being bored when there is flesh to be eaten.”

“Tell yourself a story, or amuse yourself counting clouds. Can’t you ravens kill time?”

He seemed puzzled again by this, and took another few moments to think about the suggestion.

“I don’t think we can kill time, no. We don’t kill many things. Mostly we wait for other things to kill things and then we eat the things they killed, you see. Whatever killed you must have been chased away though, you’ve hardly been eaten at all.”

For a moment the soldier was mortified, mouth agape and eyes wide. The raven clearly didn’t understand how wars worked. “We don’t eat each other!” he exclaimed. “Only savages and cannibals eat other humans!”

“Oh?” inquired the raven, unamused. “Then why were you killed?”

“I was killed defending my country from a threat overseas! They would have come to our land! They would have looted our homes, stolen our resources, and burned our cities!”

“They would have stolen your resources?” repeated the raven. “…and not even eaten you? That seems quite silly to me, and, in fact; possibly a little disrespectful, if I understand the term correctly.”

The soldier, quite well and truly fed up, made an angry swipe in the raven’s vague direction, but the little creature jauntily flapped out of the way, not to be caught off-guard.

“Swiping at me while I’m distracted? That seems quite disrespectful too.”

“Argh, you horrible little animal! Do you not have loved ones of your own? A family? How would they feel if they saw you being eaten alive?”

“Well, they would probably be waiting for their turn.” he decided. “Are families particularly important to humans? I cannot say that I think too much about it.”

“Yes, bird.” the soldier answered. “Families are very important to humans. Important enough to die for.”

Again, this information seemed to give the raven food for thought, and it was several moments before he spoke again.

“Tell me about your family then.” he said. “If they are so important to you, surely you will want to remember them with your last breath?”

The soldier relaxed once more. Finally the bird was beginning to make some sense. “Of course I would. I shall. You will see how I care for them, and you will understand my grief.”

The raven settled down, tucking his legs beneath him to roost “Well go on then. Perhaps I’ll be entertained enough to postpone my eating you.”

The soldier shut his eyes for a moment, as thoughts of home filled his head. He remembered the old homestead, his parents so lovingly, his sweetheart…

“Well, my parents are good people.” he began. “Honest and kind. My mother gave up her livelihood to raise me, a sacrifice that I can never begin to repay. Years spent caring for one that could not care for himself. How can you not understand love like that, bird?”

“Is love when somebody regurgitates into your mouth?” he asked, innocuous as ever. “I remember my mother for that quality.”

“No, of course not. Well, maybe. Love is in the little things, bird. It is when one says to another that I care for you unconditionally, even if they do not say it with their mouth.”

“The mouth is where the regurgitation comes from.” he added sagely. “What about your father though, human? Did he regurgitate into your mouth as well?”

The soldier shook his head. “Everyone loves in a different way.” he explained. “Regurgitation has nothing to do with it, anyway. My father taught me how to be a man. I wouldn’t have been the person I am today without him.”

The raven squawked again, in that way that resembled laughter. “You mean the person you are, lying against a tree in the mud, with all your tasty bits dribbling out of you?”

“Yes.” he retorted coldly. “He taught me to be strong and brave, rather than a sniveling scavenger. We would hunt together, you see. Other folk would go out and buy their food from a store, never knowing what it is like to take a life. We appreciated what we bought, because we knew how animals die.”

“Is there a difference in the knowing?” asked the raven.

“Of course there’s a difference! I wouldn’t expect a creature like you to understand. Years later, when my wife fell for me, it was out of the strength, maturity, and manly qualities that I fostered on those trips, rather than my ability to… to… draw pictures or some such nonsense.”

“What happened on the trips, that made you so strong?” the raven eagerly pressed.

“Well… we’d take rifles, and drive out to the woods for the weekend. On a good day the sun would shine and the ground would be soft, and we would be able to see just where our prey would be. Deer in the woods, squirrels in the trees, and ducks on the lake. We would walk, just talking and laughing…” he trailed off, because the memory had lent him a pang of longing for home. “It was perfect. We’d hide and set our snares… the ducks would rise from the lake and bang bang, they’d fall through the sky, and we’d have ourselves a nice set of trophies. I loved my father, you must understand. I still do… I… just hoped I’d see him once more.”

They were both quiet again, and there was a sense of severity about great black bird. He stood, stretched, hopped, and turned around, as though struggling with the knowledge he had been given. The soldier smiled, and blinked ever so slowly as he breathed his last few breaths.

Finally, the raven spoke again, contempt in his tone; “That seems rather unfair on the ducks. Why, they could hardly defend themselves at all.”

The soldier opened his mouth to retort, but the bird continued, seeming to revel in frustration. “That deer, the squirrels, and the ducks. Bang bang, they tumble through the sky with broken wings amidst crackling thunder. They will never know that they died from another’s hubris.”

“Not hubris… strength. It made me… a better man.” protested the soldier through collapsing lungs.

The raven did his little squawk-laugh again. “Well, do you still feel strong? In the mud there, with your guts dribbling out?”

The soldier did not answer, for he had died, and corpses are even less spiteful than ravens.

The bird mumbled something to himself, perhaps about respect or virtue, though more likely about something entirely unrelated, as he hopped over to the soldier’s face, looking to swallow a delicious eyeball. For the next few minutes he gorged himself; tearing at liver, snapping at lungs, and swallowing little chunks of flesh whole. His oily black feathers were bathed in blood, plumage turned a ruddy brown in the crimson flow. The soldier’s uniform, once so cleanly pressed and bearing the proud symbol of a foreign empire - was turned to tatters beneath the bird’s piercing beak and relentless claws, nothing but an obstacle to the reward underneath.

Once he had eaten his fill, he squawked again, beating his wings into the sky, where he cut across that expanse like a shadow on the blue. The wind filled his feathers, and gusts of morning current drove him ever higher. Ahead rose a murder, hundreds more shadows orbiting the corpse-stricken fields in search of their next meal. Higher still were those steel clad machines, making their way over the clouds on spluttering, grease-smeared engines while orange orchids of flame burst between them. Rattling splinters of metal tore through their bodies, and one by one, those birds too began to tumble through the sky.