Avem

Krik! Krik! Krik!

Avem and a dozen other mothers called out to their chicks. Her two chicks have been missing for four nights now. Their chicks have not been found just yet.

By maternal guild, they hovered in the air; with nowhere to perch, occasionally looking down for that familiar plume and life. Only a gang of scavenging Sciurus lumbered around on the ground, mocking their call-outs with squeaks so horrible they hurt their ears. This called for punishment.

KRIK! No answer. KRIK! Nothing was said.

It was one of the saddest days of their lives. Trees get cut down in Mearowi daily, making food scarce for all. Trees have been disappearing for a longtime now, turning the land bare but not their brood. KRIK! Vir has been setting forests and grasslands on fire, pushing away other realities and life forms. But who cuts down the sacred Baobab that houses Avem’s clan? KRIK! The last of its kind on Mearowi. Who is this prick? KRIK! They cried out to Mearowi gods, made peace to the setting sun and the attendant moon throughout the night. KRIK!

Avem was upset, partly, on her own account that she lost her chicks; and upset on their account that they had a mother who could not protect them from getting crushed under the weight of the falling mighty Baobab, and from the lumberjacks.

She was also sad that her whole clan was sad, truthfully they still are.

She cannot sing again atop her house. The gigantic Baobab that straddled half the Mearowi land has been felled by Vir, crazy homines! Her favourite boughs where she plucks her feathers and sentimentally entangles with her new suitors during the high moon seasons have been made boat oars and doorknobs. The trunk where she hides her beaky brood now floats Vir on the waters of Mearowi. The lesser boughs and leaves that house many a wingy, crawly and slithery visitor from distant lands had all been stolen.

Only the oozing gummy stumps and roots strong and buried remind them of their once safe haven.

Avem conducted her clan through a dirge for the generation of fallen trees and family. Their rage burning to their stomachs, a taunting member of Sciurius gang was taloned and devoured; they soused their grieving beaks into tree stump tears and flew away.

*

Besides staring into the sea abyss, what else did Roughskin the randy pufferfish say to Toadie when he realised violent oncoming sea undercurrents?

He cried.

He cried out because the currents would flatten their sand nest on the ocean floor.

And Toadie?

Unsurprisingly, she too cried at the thought of rebuilding a new nest and at the sight of both of them crying.

Avem, do fish ever cry?

How the shoal should I know?

*

Far and below, Avem and her fellow riders spotted a flotilla of merchant vessels carrying away timber from Mearowi - dancing in the violent waves. The sea and Mearowi gods had heard them and were stirring up the sea.

High sea waters slapped at rocks, licked and crumbled foundations of houses on Mearowi Island. Flooded and drove homines off the streets. Cete, Balaena and other big sea mammals leapt into the air and back into water rocking the boats. Avir and his team squalled, reefing their sails. To save life and limb, they tossed away some of their possessions into the ocean.

The revenge was on.

KRIK! The band rained volleys of fire at the escaping boats. Dragon fire! The fire consumed half the boats, sinking, as the stormy sea swallowed them. The angry birds in their hundreds rioted and attacked the merchants.

They relished in gorging out their eyes and incinerating the boat parts. When a dragon gets a whiff of your blood, be very worried. Seventeen sailors were left blind, bleeding and half burnt. So they stumbled and fell off the deck into the deep of the ocean. Would you deny a dying man a drink of water?

Krik! Krik! Krik! Till the sea cleared.

The squadron knew it did not have much time left; it had given off too much. Wearied to the bone in a disappearing melancholy, it rose high up in the sky paying homage to Solis krik, krik, krik until the kriking killed it. Each dragon bird burst into a ball of fire and rained down flaming into the sea; burnt to cinders.

Avem when you find our chicks, tell them we perished in good cause.

When the land regenerates; does everything always have to come back to krik, krik, krik?

***

Avem was submitted as part of a collection of September stories for the Brain Storm, which is ‘a cave of five young writers bringing you the world’.