Transmissions - Strange Short Stories

Indigo Joy

Indigo Joy was a hummingbird. A proper little flutter-flurry. All day long she danced in hazy wing beats; an almost invisible shimmer captured in the glisten of lazy sunrays.

The other birds in the garden loved Indigo Joy. They laughed as she flit this way and that and cheered whenever she paused midflight, hovering just in front of a flower and extending her long slender bill to suckle nectar from deep within its petals.

The younger birds especially liked to see her fly backwards as this was something none of them could do. Indigo Joy loved to show off just for them, suddenly darting sideways behind a bush, only to appear moments later from behind a flower somewhere else in the garden.

"Do it again Indigo!" they would shout, and before they could even finish the sentence she was gone, emerging from behind a different flower to rapturous applause.

At the bottom of the garden, next to a shed where an old man spent most of his days writing, was a large tree. Some of the older birds would huddle in its upper branches, chatter-chirping amongst themselves, shaking their heads disapprovingly as the younger birds played excitedly with Indigo Joy.

Midnight, the old crow, was the worst.

"Quiet!" he would squawk whenever the young birds became too excited. 'Do you want that awful cat to know you are down there? One pounce and you'll be nothing but a feather. Where will that leave you?'

"Sorry Midnight," they would reply as he hobbled back to his nest at the top of the tree. Indigo Joy would just silently flit around a flower as soon as his back was turned whilst the other birds giggled quietly.

Every evening, as the sun began to set, Indigo Joy gathered the other birds together at the bottom of the garden and told them stories. In tiny little bursts and flurries, she told them of her adventures beyond the garden. She told them of the time she flew to the moon and met a man who crafted new craters. Every night he would select the best ones, dust them with silver and tack them to the moon's surface. She spoke of a secret forest that she had discovered where the trees would sing to each other and the flowers were made of edible light. Their favourite story was about a ship that sailed across a giant eye, carefully avoiding the iris lest it was pulled into the dream realm from which there was no escape.

Listening from the shadows, Midnight silently watched Indigo Joy in disgust, before skulking back to his nest harbouring a beak full of scornful mutters.

As time passed, Midnight grew ever more resentful of Indigo Joy. He longed for the old days when the birds he knew ate worms and berries, and dwelt in the safety of the trees. The days before the fanciful tales and dreams beyond the garden had ever entered anyone's head. A bird is a bird is a bird, he would mutter.

One evening, in the failing light of the setting sun, Indigo Joy was tweeting a tale about the time she had to save a woman who'd accidentally drank a whole bottle of pure starlight. She shone so brightly that she had to sit in the centre of a darkened room for days, watching her own furniture slowly orbit her. Her husband was in the other room, eyes aglow like twin moons. He'd overdosed on a bottle of pure darkness; his entire body consuming every ounce of light Indigo Joy could illuminate him with.

Suddenly, in a flurry of dark wing beat, Midnight leapt into the midst of the attentive crowd.

"Enough!" he cried.

The other birds recoiled in fear as Midnight spat malice at Indigo Joy.

"What do you think you are doing?" he continued. 'Filling the heads of young, impressionable birds with lies and gobbledegook.'

"They're just stories, Midnight," said Indigo Joy in a frightened little voice.

"Exactly. That's all they are. You've never done any of it. Why, you've never even left the garden!"