When Dreams and Reality Collide

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"Aye, are you happy? I'm happy yeah.

Every morning when I open my eyes, it feels like a dream.

It feels like the dazzling sun is shining for me.

Again today, without fail, my day starts with you."

Jinki's beady, dark eyes shined as he swayed with the wind, watching the blazing, translucent light rise from behind the twisted branches wrapped in vegetation. "It's day again!" Jinki silently beamed to himself, while the sky's rich indigo clouds dispersed and made way for the velvety warmth to seep through the buzzing, awake jungle.

To his side, his companion, Taemin, groggily snapped open his eyes, squawking irately at the blinding, in his opinion, luminescence that bugged him every morning.

Jinki nudged Taemin with his beak, nudging him out of the dreamy, floaty land of sleep.

"Get up!" Jinki nudged Taemin again, this time hard enough to make Taemin's lithe figure slip from the thin branch and if it wasn't for Taemin's fast reflexes and instinct to snap his wings open and glide away from the muddy ground, he'd break his tiny neck.

"Sorry..." Jinki apologetically scrunched his body together, as if bowing, but Taemin's eyes didn't widen angrily nor did his wings come down to slap Jinki. Instead, he cawed loudly, like boisterous laughter that spread around near-by trees. Jinki couldn't be more confused, wasn't Taemin angry? Or maybe he didn't mind that minor accident? Jinki was proved right, that Taemin in fact wasn't mad, but amused at Jinki's wide open beak and rapidly blinking eyes and it only made him feel better about his small fault when Taemin lightly patted him with his wide wings, coloured wildly with bright yellows, deep greens, eye-catching reds and flaring pale blues.

Taemin was the most kaleidoscopic being Jinki had ever seen. Jinki clearly remembered when a fledgling Taemin burst out of nowhere one day, and had ungracefully tumbled next to him. Jinki would've looked at him horrified, if it wasn't for Taemin's ruffled, messy, prismatic coat screaming "innocent" and his crescent-creased eyes, looking so gleeful at the world he'd begun to discover. Jinki's glad that Taemin still has this look, that he's wowed by the surroundings he encounters and that he's eager to see everything. And Jinki would gladly show him everything, if he could.

"Do you sleep well at night?

Sometimes, I can't believe my reality so I wake up.

You know what I mean? Sometimes I was afraid.

It was such a crazy journey but now I'm back in your arms."

Jinki ignored Taemin's curious and slightly worried eyes. Too many times this morning, he'd squeaked,

"Did you sleep well? Why were you awake so early?"

Instead, he focused on hunting and swooping near the ground to catch their small, crispy prey, while Taemin focused a little too much on asking him again and again, and even hit a stray branch on his path when watching Jinki's wings slightly curl in annoyance.

To tell the truth, Jinki couldn't close his eyes unless total darkness enveloped him and muted illumination didn't rain down all around, a bit too bright for it to be the dead quiet time of nocturnal beings to roam. The washed out, giant orb that hung in the liquorice sky appeared in off-white blotches behind his eyelids and bugged him non-stop until the warmth cleared the contrasting sky of night. However, he couldn't let Taemin know. The younger, newer full-fledged bird wouldn't catch a wink of rest, preferring to keep Jinki unnecessary company, as a good companion would, but that would burden Taemin and refrain him from being energetic enough to last long into the day without slumping over a soft bush and napping.