Crackle

Cloud

~ ☁️ ~

Clouds stretched across the sky, much darker than the usual friendly-looking clouds that decorated the bright blue sky. The clouds looked darker, angrier like a tall wolf that crept across the sky and ate the friendly little sheep clouds.

Meanwhile, on the ground far from the wolf-clouds was a young bird. A robin, to be exact. He had a bright orange chest and brownish-grey feathers along his body. He hopped across the ground - suddenly stopping in place.

He reached down with his bright orange beak into the soil and lifted his head again, now holding a small pinkish wriggling creature—an earthworm.

The bird bit down harder with its beak, and soon the worm went still, like an opossum might when afraid. The robin quickly ate the worm. Happy to have caught a meal.

The bird glanced at the sky, watching as the wolf-clouds crept across it.

The bird spread its wings and flew for shelter underneath a nearby rock. He knew the wolf-clouds might attack him while trying to fly home.

Home. His home was on the branch of a lovely tall oak tree that nested and protected several birds and squirrels. That branch was his branch. No other animal was allowed on that branch, and he would scuttle them away, especially smaller birds or enemy robins. For larger ones, he let them be, but often these intruders knew that it wasn't their house and would leave soon after.

The robin waited underneath the rock - hoping the wolf-clouds would decide what they wanted wasn't here and he could fly back to the branch.

Nothing was that easy.

The wolf-clouds suddenly growled, scaring the robin into letting out a chirp; he peeked out from around the rock and watched as the wolf-clouds struck the ground - faster than a lunging snake, with a flash.

The robin closed his eyes. More growls and flashes - they went on and on. It felt like they'd never end.

The wolf-clouds struck and attacked and burned, drooling as they ate the things they attacked. The robin waited for a while, and eventually, the wolf-clouds had stopped growling.

The robin hopped out from underneath the rock and looked around. The charcoaled landscape the wolf-clouds ate, other parts of the landscape covered in wolf-cloud drool; they were messy eaters. The robin guessed that even snakes - whom the robin dreaded to think about were probably less messy eaters than the wolf-clouds. Probably even less than ground-wolves.

The robin wasn't disgusted by this, as a bird, he couldn't feel disgusted, but there would be plenty of reasons if he could.

He spread his wings and took to the sky. He was going to return home. As he flew, he looked down and watched as a young rabbit - clearly looking frightened looked around, presumably for its family.

The robin almost felt bad; unlike disgust, birds could feel empathy. He pictured himself lost but shook away the thought. He knew where he was. He was going home.

He knew where home was. Why wouldn't he? He never went too far. He rarely left his tree, only to forage and drink from the nearby stream where bears sometimes tried to eat him. He never liked that stream.

He feared the stream. He'd rather drink the wolf-cloud-drool than go to the stream.

Snapping back into focus, reaching the familiar clearing of trees. Usually, the place was decorated with several coloured flowers; of course, they looked different to the robin. Since birds' colour spectrum was different from humans'. He never really noticed the flowers or paid attention to them. They didn't matter to him; he didn't eat nectar.

The flowers did have significance to him since his branch had a beehive beneath him. They had a pact with the bees where if he didn't steal or take any honey or flowers, they wouldn't sting him. And as long as they didn't take his space, he wouldn't eat them.

There was a blackberry bush not far from the tree that the robin occasionally ate from.

The robin swooped down towards the ground where the tree was supposed to be. But it was nowhere in sight. The robin looked around... where did the tree go? He was sure it was here, he saw a similar shape, but that couldn't be his tree.. could it?

A squirrel which the robin had seen before was sitting down a few centimeters away from him, or as the robins call, twig-sizes away from the robin, wanting answers, the robin asked the squirrel
"Where. Home?"

The squirrel looked over - not saying anything for a few moments.
"Brightone tookit"

The robin then remembered that all forest animals had very different ways of speaking; he struggled to understand the squirrel.

He knew a bit of squirrel; he could tell that 'Tookit' was Took it, or as robins would say 'Take' but he failed to understand what 'Brightone' was. He knew basic squirrel words and assumed that either this was a more complex word or a squirrel-term. He remembered his home again and asked
"Bright-one? What?"
The squirrel tilted its head
"Bright-One." The squirrel then said in robin.

The robin was impressed the squirrel knew robin. He paused for a moment - trying to think what "Bright-One" might mean, soon it dawned on him, the Orange-Raven was the robin term for this word.
"Orange-Raven? Wolf-Cloud. Bring?"
The squirrel seemed to not understand this, and he decided to hop closer to the tree to get a closer look at it.

Soon enough, he realized the squirrel said. The Orange-Raven perched atop the tree and had destroyed the tree. He paused for a long time.

It was destroyed. He couldn't go back to it.
His home was gone,
Gone!
Where would he live now?

~ ☁️ ~