The Bluebirds Were Her Friends 4/5
CHAPTER NINE
From its high perch, the Tash Snake laid eyes on a new opportunity. A bear had emerged from the trees, lumbering toward the garden where Zareen hummed to herself, gathering vegetables. With her head bowed and her mind filled with hopeful daydreams, she was oblivious to the massive predator’s approach. The snake watched with cold anticipation.
Tash waited for the proper moment to strike. It arrived just as the bluebirds—stirred by the bear’s presence—prepared to dive from their nest to warn the human. Before they could take flight, the Tash’s shadow stretched long and dark across their nest, petrifying them.
The bear was closing in on Zareen, but the bluebirds were trapped. They could not leave their newborns with death looming above. Bonny and Tawny erupted into a frenzy, a chaotic chorus of squeaks, tweets, and squawks to catch Zareen’s attention. Even the hatchlings joined in, their lollipop heads wobbling as they screamed into the air.
The warning reached Zareen just in time. As she scrambled to evade the bear’s reach, the Tash Snake dropped from the overhanging branches, letting gravity pull its heavy body toward their nest. Mr. Bluebird was ready. He leapt to the edge, stomping his tiny yellow feet and puffing his chest. He spread his wings wide, prepared to drive the snake back or force it to choke on his very body.
The bluebird sidestepped, keeping himself between his family and the snake. His sheer bravado made the Tash hesitate, and with that moment of indecision, it lost its chance for vengeance.
In the garden, the one-eyed bear roared, smashing Zareen’s overturned wagon into splinters. Zareen rolled to her feet and bolted for the jungle just as a voice shouted from the trees.
“Get down!”
Zareen ducked. A rock the size of a hen’s egg whistled through the space where her head had been a second before. It struck the bear squarely on the snout, stunning the beast. Shay sprinted from the brush, twirling a leather sling and launching stone after stone. The first one hit the bear; the second one did, too. The third projectile soared past and struck the Tash Snake in the middle of its back, shattering its spine.
The Tash hissed and tried to spring away but its body failed. Slithering painfully to the far side of the roof, the snake tumbled to the ground and vanished into the undergrowth, vowing revenge. It left behind a trail of warm blood that was greedily absorbed by the thirsty Triarion soil.
Shay and Zareen turned their full attention to the bear, grappling and dodging it. In the commotion, there was a sudden explosion of green light. When it faded, the creature lay dead, gray wisps of smoke rising from its fallen body. The bluebirds did not understand the force behind the flash, but they were relieved to see their friends emerge from the fray.
Shay carried Zareen toward the cottage, but she asked him to stop as they passed the nest. She thanked her feathered friends for their warning, explaining to Shay that they had saved her life. The bluebirds puffed their feathers with well-earned pride. Zareen still in his arms, Shay knelt in front of the birds and bowed his head to them.
“My dear friends,” he said. “I owe you so very much.”
Tawny and Bonny saw Shay once more in the days that followed, but after that he vanished and they never saw him again.
CHAPTER TEN
The bluebirds did, however, meet Shay’s family—specifically a traveler named Zak who reached a skeletal hand into their nest and sprinkled twenty-five pieces of glittering golden birdseed before them. Zak explained that the seeds were enchanted; eating them would sharpen their minds and grant them unnaturrally long lives. Furthermore, the gift was hereditary; their future children, and those children’s children, would inherit the change.
Zak noticed the birds’ hesitation. “Shayfar told me to give you this. I suppose he would have preferred you to call him Shay, right? The gift is from him. He said he owed you.”
Zak scoffed, but the Bluebirds were encouraged. Bonny was not sure how much smarter she needed to be, but she was intrigued by the prospect of a longer life with her husband by her side. Tawny felt the same way. Noticing that he had thirteen seeds to her twelve, he discreetly nudged one golden grain from his pile to Bonny’s when she was not looking.
As the birds ate, they slipped into a mind-expanding daze. Their heartbeats slowed and their frantic, instinctive reactions dimmed. Thoughts that had once existed only as vague shapes crystallized into clear, understandable words. The world around them followed suit; they could suddenly comprehend the hectic babble of ants marching beside them, the low hum of the trees, and the wind’s steady whisper. The bluebirds could even understand Zareen and the two people she was talking to.
When the daze lifted, Zak and the other visitors were gone. Their children were hungry, but before they could attend to them, Zareen ran by their nest. She stood in the garden, searching for the strangers who had so abruptly vanished.
Tawny turned to his wife, “I suspect the travelers altered our collective perception with a spell, before departing through a combination of superhuman physical ability and arcane means.”
Bonny chirped in agreement. “I concur with your astute observation, dear.” She felt a surge of pride; her husband was truly brilliant.
Zareen returned to the nest and held up a dark green sewing needle for the birds to see. “What do you make of this?” she asked, mostly to herself.
Bonny tilted her head, her gaze now catching details hidden to the human’s less refined ocular apparatus. “It’s an enchanted artifact,” she explained through a series of rhythmic chirps. “The design integrates structural symbolism to fortify the enchantment with metaphorical reinforcement. If I had to speculate, it is intended to ‘stitch together that which has been torn apart.’”
Zareen sighed, shaking her head in exasperation. “Yeah. I have no idea, either.”
The bluebirds glanced at each other, realizing the limit of Zak’s gift: it had granted them the ability to understand the world, but it had not given the world the ability to understand them. The couple huddled close around their children. Their world had grown infinitely larger, yet they remained the same small creatures within it.
