Redeem: 18

Can I tell you a story?

~~~

There was once a baby bird, tucked under the wing of a biggish bird.

The biggish bird was feeding the baby bird, and the baby bird ate hungrily, greedily even, seeking out this care.

An on-looker, a girl, a delighter in birds, looked, and thought:
How sweet! But then she looked closer. She saw that the biggish bird had eyes of evil, deepest coalest black, and that the food offered the baby bird was nothing but sugar. Unsubstantial. Deceptive, even. 

The girl sat down, afraid, and watched.

Eventually, after many many days of this embrace, the girl saw a bigger bird, just laying nearby. Wings close to the biggish bird, but not touching. Just laying. Nearby. 

The baby bird gulped down more and the evil bird winked at the girl.

The girl laid her head on the floor, and she cried.

But then, one day, as the girl looked on, the baby bird just lifted easily away the wing of the biggish bird, and walked directly around to the front of that big bird, and stopped. He looked up at the big bird. Then he stepped up on the big bird's beak, and looked into his eyes, deeply. Neither one of them said a word. They just looked at each other, as if they had known each other well before, as if this meeting up was no surprise.

And in them both, the girl saw: Trust. She saw: Regard.

The girl saw that the biggish bird had deflated to the ground, 

with Xs marked where those terrible eyes had been.

The girl stayed where she was. She kept watching.

She saw the baby bird grow, she saw his falcon eye,
his powerful wing.

She saw him flying, free, sweeping through the sky.

She saw him land on places given to him.

She watched him dip down into tankards of refreshing water,

and wing powerfully away with joy, renewal. Revived.

The growing bird didn't know the girl was in the room,

but she was. She was watching all of it, sitting to the side.

~~~

It's a good story, yes? 

Except for the ending...that ending needs some work.

[redeem, verb: to free from what distresses or harms; to release from blame or debt; to regain possession or recover ownership; 

to convert, restore, atone; to save]