A Mother's Love

Chicks are happy little bundles of fun. Bright as the Sun, they are curious about everything around them. They go into every little hole, up onto any high place. They chase each other all day long and eat anything they please.

That's why mother hens the world over have trouble chasing after their chicks. They don't always listen to their mothers when they tell them that something is dangerous for them.

One hot summer day, Nanay Manok paused in the shade of a tree, tired from running after her two remaining chicks. She bent to take a drink from a little patch of stagnant water that had thankfully caught in the undergrowth. As she brought her head back up to swallow her drink, she saw something from the corner of her eyes that would have made her spit if she could have.

Her two remaining chicks had just passed through the gaps in the White Metal Fence. That was where the Common Soil ended and the Strange Cold Stone began. More importantly, that was where the Big Dog was. It was a dozen times larger than her. It was larger than the Humans if it stood up, and she had seen it fighting with the Wild Rats, the Small Dogs and even the Humans countless times. This was the beast that had killed Tandang Senior, the largest, strongest and most handsome rooster she had ever known.

And now, she could barely see their yellow fluff beyond the White Fence. Her two remaining chicks were there, there in that foul beast's hellish domain.

The growling and the bounding came, a terrible rush of fur and fury. Two little dots of yellow fluff ran for the bars of the Fence and the safety beyond. They couldn't make it in time.

The world seemed to slow down for Nanay Manok. She leapt over in one swoop and, just as the jaws of certain death closed in upon her squeaking, chittering chicks, she hurled herself right into the Big Dog's maw.

It was the only way.

Huge fangs closed upon her breast. A terrible pressure wracked her back. Blood welled from countless cuts. Her insides felt like they were on fire. And inside that terrible, stinking pink mouth was just a gasping, gurgling darkness, an insatiable hunger trying to choke her down its gullet.

This wasn't just for Nanay Manok. This wasn't just for her fellow stupid chickens that had suffered. This was for her children and darkness take any who stand between her and her children.

She beat her wings fiercely. Pecked right into that vile tongue and viler maw. Scrabbled her claws for all she was worth, writhing for all her failing body could wriggle her, flailing for any vein or vital or eyeball.

Still she felt the jaws clamping tighter, the fangs digging deeper. Slowly she felt her vision swimming, her breathing drowning in her own blood, her bones cracking with every bite and ragdolling thrash.

Still she struggled. She didn't know. Couldn't see or hear or smell or feel if her children were safe by now.

Still she fought. Even if she died here, they would know. And carry it for the rest of their lives: Chickens are not cowards.

There was a sudden storm... a flood... water battering both her and her tormentor...? And... distant... thunder...? No...

And then the Humans came.

She was pried free of the jaws of death. Suddenly surging with renewed strength and a mad rush of relief, she rushed to sweep her chicks up in the shadow of her battered wings and ran, ran, ran across the Untamed Land until she collapsed from her injuries.

When the Humans came to chase them down--- doubtless to put them in some dreadful cage--- she tried to stand and fight them off. Her legs failed. Still she could peck, for what it's worth, and give her children a chance to flee.

Once more she felt a fierce pressure on her back and side...

...but it was far from any blow struck by Dog or Human. It was claws and fluff. Tiny, shrill, she heard her chicks' voices, raised in defiance. She felt her children standing on top of their practically nerveless mother. One of them even hopped off and made little darting charges at a foe far beyond their might, and far beyond their comprehension.

Yet still they fought...

...But Human hands, though soft and bloody, were tougher than can be believed. Despite this, the hands that cradled Nanay Manok's broken body were gentle. They took her to a place with soil, with plants, with bugs, yet ringed about with lifeless and unnatural rock and metal and glass. Food and water came and went with regularity, and strange balms used to treat her injuries.

But beyond the pain of her having been ripped from the jaws of death was the pain of being separated from her chicks. For four days and three nights, Nanay Manok was kept in that windless sanctuary, fretting over their safety, yet proud that they had fled properly when she was seized by the Humans.

On the fourth night, she saw them again. Again, by Human hands. They told her tales of their travails in dark places in the Untamed Lands. They fled properly when the White-Tailed Bandit Birds came, those fowl that derive their pleasure from the pain of those trapped on the ground as they swooped and raided. They fled properly when their fellow chickens chased them away, looking at them as foul upstarts, or as prey. They fled properly when they but heard the coming of Dogs or Humans across the Rocky Plain. They fled properly when the Wild Rats came from out of their dark holes, that grey-black chittering horde of rage and hunger. They fled properly when the Serpents came from their nameless abodes in the darkest shadows. They fled properly when even the sky itself poured out a roaring storm, threatening to deafen them with thunder and drown them with flood.

Hiding and running, hiding and running. Always together. But flight was still fight, for to fight means to never give up, no matter what. And Manokita and Manokito swore revenge against all the world that had wronged them.

But in that little space, once again in the warmth of their mother's wings, the two little puffs of yellow fluff knew a measure of the peace that the world had stolen from them.