Legend of the Magibird

The Choice

I think I stayed here forever as the sun began to sink and the sky became red. Until piercing screams startled me. I stood, and the bird held my brother in the sky from the torso and the shoulders, only wearing a white chemise. He looked down at me.

"Brother, help me!"

I trembled in anger.

"What goes around comes around!" I yelled.

The bird threw my brother on the ground next to me, turned to me and grabbed me, lifting me out of the rock and up the ledge. It then dropped me, and we left the cliff face, leaving my brother there.

"Thank you for saving me, my brother had left me for dead. Where's all my stuff?" I asked her.

"It's back on the willow tree. I will lead you there. You did well, Bratko. But I had thought your brother was you. Perhaps because he wore your fur coat and red hat. But then I realized a trick had been played. I squeezed the truth from him and left him to the same fate he left you. Now let us go. I only want the water from you."

The bird led me back to the willow tree, where my stuff sat in its trunk. I put on my clothes, hat and pouch as the bird drank the water.

A fire began in the bird's head. My jaw dropped and I stepped back. The fire spread fast, consuming the whole bird and burning bright.

The fire burned the bird into a pile of ashes before extinguishing. From the ashes emerged a beautiful young woman. She had coffee-brown almond eyes, sharp yet innocent, smooth silky chocolate brown hair, large breasts, and wore a long cloth yellow dress with golden designs of flowers and vines. and a V-neck opening. Her sleeves were rolled back.

I lost my heart to the woman. But upon closer inspection I saw her wearing a necklace. It had an attached oval chestnut piece with a rune. The full picture suddenly came back to me...

My mother Mirella had given the necklace to my father before she had passed away. The rune  ᚼᛒ represented the unity of my father's physical strength and intelligence. My brother inherited his skills, making him my father's preferred sibling.

I saw myself lockpicking the chest in my father's bedroom, with my brother beside me. It stood at the foot of the red velvet bed where my father slept snoring loudly. The room was filled with bookshelves, tapestries, and a fireplace below the coat of arms of my family, a howling wolf in a green and blue triangular shield. I successfully picked the lock and took the necklace.

The image shifted to me and my brother standing close to a fast-flowing river, in an opening between reeds where I was holding the necklace to admire it. But I got distracted and the necklace fell from my hands down to the river and flowed out of my reach.

Next, I stood in my father's throne room, a long rectangular room with an elegant carved oak roof and stained glass rose windows. He screamed at us and then stomped as we lowered our heads.

"You lost my treasured chestnut necklace?!?! This is horrible! You are the wickedest sons ever! Neither of you will ever get your inheritance if it is not found! You will be thrown in the dungeons! And that isn't even punishment enough for what you both have done!"

...that image dissolved, and I returned to the present. Now, here was this woman wearing my father's treasured necklace.

"Uhm, what's your name?" I asked.

"I am Lada" she replied.

"Can I have the necklace please?" I explained everything to her.

She giggled and smiled, revealing clean white teeth.