This is me

Chapter 2: New stinky world

"It's your fault. You inept parrot," sobbed a red-crowned.

"Shut up and stop crying."

"Since you have calmed down a bit, I would like you to help me open this hole," I asked them.

I had started gnawing at the wood around us and had managed to make a small hole. I could still see the jungle, so we could go back to our homes if we escaped.

"Sure," they answered together.

"By the way, I'm Parrot Beak."

"I Parrot Wing."

"Well, my parents called me Parrot Chick," I replied.

We started gnawing on the hole until Parrot Beak could stick his head out. Parrot Wing got excited and pushed him aside to get out first. He slipped through the hole. I had already seen that we were on the river, on some floating log with humans.

"Yay!" the parrot shouted excitedly.

Sadly, the humans noticed and caught him. Parrot Beak sped off and escaped under my envious sight. I tried to do it too, but the human slammed Parrot Wing inside, bumping him into me, and immediately covered the hole.

Panic again.

"Mother! Father!" I called them.

"Son!" at last, he replied.

"Dad, get me out of here!"

"Sorry, little one, I can't. Promise me you won't trust humans."

"But Dad..."

"Promise it!"

I could tell that his voice had sounded more distant. Indeed, he was locked in the other floating trunk of humans.

I didn't listen to him again.

***

A noise awakened me. The human had opened the wooden box where they had us and caught me without me reacting. We were no longer in the jungle; it was one of their colonies of humans.

Horror.

He took a sharp object, much to my horror.

"No... mercy... mercy!" I begged.

They didn't understand me. He stretched out one of my wings while I kept pleading. Greater was my despair when I realized that he would cut my feathers, my precious wings.

"My wings, no!" He positioned the object and started cutting my feathers. "No, please, don't!"

***

"Parrots! I sell parrots!" he shouted.

We were in a kind of market, in cages, as they called them, crowded together. My wings were horrible, short. I will die without them. That place sucked. I could hear them talking.

"Lower the price for the one that looks sick."

"No, no, they are all healthy. There is no discount."

"Does it speak?"

"With time, they can."

"Well, I'll go to the other man. He has macaws. They do speak."

As we were medium-sized, they hardly saw us, but some younger ones complained next to me.

"As we are small and green, they sell us wholesale. We are not very sought after," he said. He was a parakeet, he said, not too attractive to humans.