There was no point anymore. Even if I could, become the clawed bird that could swim, I was too sodden and too new to flight to go anywhere.
The foul ashes and incense I was bathed in, weighed me down like a stone in my stomach.
I was just a poor little dove hatchling, just learning to fly. Plucked from my nest and dumped into a basin of water after I was rolled and dirtied in another shallower bowl of sticky ash and scented oil.
They had clipped my wings and plucked my most important feathers, burned them. I watched in sorrow under the surface as the ashes joined me. Floating atop like my future.
I closed my eyes and put off my racing heart. I loose all sense of reality and instinct kicks in. I cannot control the violent thrashing of my tattered wings and the last of my precious air leaves me in the effort. I still once more, and know that I will be no more within moments. Blood whirled around me in a sickening dance.
I do not disappear however , I feel as if I am floating in air.
Poor child.
Yes indeed, hadn't you a future of prosperity for the little one?
Yes, I wish she had not been sacrificed so cruelly.
To think it was in my name they drowned a poor little fledgling.
Those village shamans foresaw your love for my children.
Indeed, so from which you, dearest child, were killed is where you will be reborn.
My body shudders and a cool, silky type of of feeling encloses me.
I no longer have feathers, nor claws, or a beak. My flesh is bare and I've what humans call fingers. I stay like that in an almost coma-like state for what I guess is ages.
A hand, I think, wraps around my wrist and I'm pulled somewhere.
Arms enclose around my waist and soon after that I am thrust to the top of water. Then dragged ashore by an unseen savior.
I open my eyes and am greeted with the image of a man, I try to move but soon find out. . . this isn't my body. Or at least my original one.
"Are you alright?" he asks helping me up. I stare wide-eyed at this soaking wet human male, drops of water clinging to his eyelashes and hair tips.
"Can you speak?" he asks after I do not answer. I shake my head no and glance down I am bare save for the covering of my hair. The man strips his shirt and pulls it over my head.
"Can't let you have hypothermia." he mutters and I tilt my head.
"Come on we need to get you to the hospital. I have no idea how long you've been down there, honestly I thought you were dead."
He helps me to my feet but I've no clue how to move and my legs wobble. I am picked up and swiftly taken away from that place.
My birth place to this new life was a riverbed, not far from my old nest.
YOU ARE READING
The Drowned Bird
Short StoryI was a bird once, I had just learned to fly; practically a hatchling. I was sacrificed, but for what I do not know. The gods took pity on this cruelly killed little bird and was reborn as a girl. Well not quite a girl, but close enough. I was ne...
