Ensemble of Shards

{17} You Can't Perch Here

Day 17: Write a scene from the point of view of an animal.

The main character here is an oriental magpie robin. I tried to apply my scriptwriting techniques professor's concepts of "turning a scene" and the "dramatic dilemma". Not my best attempt, but hey, I finally wrote this difficult prompt! The motivation to do this was thanks to "Watership Down" by Richard Adams. Enjoy!

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Hazel looked down from his perch on the electric pole. He could hear his friends Emory and Liél fussing around and making their nest inside the electrical box below him. He chuckled in a slight twitter. The sun shone down on the mud on the street down below, and the reflection stung his beady eyes. He ruffled his feathers, dipping his tail in and out. Soon he began to feel hungry. 

Beating his wings, he flew upwards and sighted his familiar haunt, the garden trees just a few meters away. The towering trees were fan-shaped with leaves half his size, and he spotted a clear branch that he was used to landing on. Seeing that everything was alright, he dove to the bottom among its leaves to forage for food. Hopping about and nosing around with his beak, he spotted a line of ants, which he promptly snapped up. 

Circling the trunks of the closest trees, he slowly satiated his hunger. Suddenly, he heard the song of an unfamiliar bird of his kind from above. It was a warning call. 

"You idiot, don't you see what's coming?!" it said.

At that exact second, he noticed a large, skulking, grey figure to his right. As it pounced, Hazel had already taken to the air, far above the reach of the cat. With his heart racing, he realised how foolish he was not to have heard, seen, or smelled it. And, although he huffed at the brusque manner of the unknown bird's words, he couldn't help but sigh in relief and feel grateful for what it did for him.

He tried to remember the spot where he had heard the warning that saved his life. He flew towards what he thought was the correct branch, but he could see no flash of iridescent black that would betray his saviour. He flew farther to search the trees, and looked up and down the branches of the tree he had browsed under, but there was no sign of the bird. Perplexed, he flew back to his electrical pole.

Liél was hanging onto the wire, sitting upright.

"How do you do?" she sang. 

"I almost died," Hazel replied, with a harsh hiss. "I was looking for bugs, when this fellow I heard warned me before Two Ears could jump on me."

"Yes, I heard the warning too," Liél noted. "It was a new bird, was it not?"

"Yeah, and when I flew up to it - it was gone," Hazel said, a little dejectedly. 

"Well, I hope you find it," Liél whistled softly. "It's worth thanking. Now I'm off to look for more little soft grasses for my nest."

"Good luck," Hazel said, and shifted his legs over the top of the electrical pole.

As Liél flew away, he listened to the myriad conversations slowly gathering around him. The annoying myna was performing a solo over the yellow wall with white holes in the house near the trees he fed himself by. Her song was shrill and loud, with many sentences in it. An unseen parakeet from behind the group of big white houses on his side shrieked. He put his head under his wing, thinking, "No one's out to kill you, buddy! Stop crying." 

The short, deeper, business-like call of his red-vented bulbul friend could be heard from the last white house on his side. It repeated over and over until he flew away. He also heard the sharp barks of the larger Two Ears that didn't usually bother his kind. The loud, unnatural rumble from one of the large, coloured beasts with four shiny circles on its sides also rolled swiftly under him. As it disappeared in the distance, Hazel started his song.