1/25 - Crow Flock

Crows were curious creatures, ones that had always drawn my attention.

When I was still very small I can remember hearing matters and whispers and bits of songs being sung outside my window, all in the trees.

I didn’t understand it at the time but I was hearing the birds. And I wouldn’t understand it for quite some time after that, but hearing and understanding what the birds were saying i wasn’t normal.

My mother had always told me I was cursed by a creature that called itself the king of the flock.

He had mangled twisted wings that seemed to leak ash and soot and trailed blood everywhere, he was a shriveled and hunched figure, who spoke in creaks and groans that grated the ears.

I was cursed by him, to be like him. To hear the birds and to one day become a monster in their image.

The crows and ravens were the ones I liked the most. They would teach me things. The older ones taught me how to read, how to tell what plants were safe and which ones could be used to harm, and how to know which creatures I could trust. The middle-aged ones told me the stories of their people, tried to teach me how to fly, and taught me how to always be clean and presentable. The youngest ones grew up alongside me, teaching me the best tricks to pull, where to find the best shiny things and the best way to trade for even more shiny things!

They were my family, unlike the humans around me in my home.

When I was ten a new bird came to my window, and my usual flock stayed in the tree outside my room watching in an unusual silence.

‘Hello, little one.’

I cocked my head in reply, staring into the new raven's black eyes.

‘Awww look at you, just like your own kind now… would you like to meet your father?’

“He’s downstairs”

‘No child, that’s not your father. Your real father, the king of our flock.’

The crows and ravens I had grown up with began to frenzy, flying up and around the house like a tornado of black feathers and piercing screams. None of them were telling me to stay, to not go.

All of it was encouragement. So I went.

I slipped out of my house and into the forests, following my flock and this new bird deeper and deeper Into it, until we came to a walk of thorns.

They all flew over it, but I had no wings.

“Hello there little one… what are you doing out here? Where did you come from?”

A man was perched on a low-hanging branch above me, lazing open it like a cat in a sun patch. He flitted down to my level, his eyes golden and black like a crow, a beak-like Mask hanging off of his hip, and a cape of inky black feathers falling from his shoulders to the forest floor.

“My flock was taking me to my daddy, but I can’t fly over the wall.”

“Your flock?”

One of the oldest crows in my flock landed above us, yelling at the man in a way I couldn’t understand.

“Uncle, why can’t I hear you?”

‘Oh! Don’t you worry little child! We were just speaking in the adult caws, not for children!’

“Is that one of your flock?” The man lifted his hand and my uncle stepped onto it

I nodded watching as the two of them seemed to speak.

“Well then, it’s no wonder you’re here. Of course, you can’t fly yet, but you’ll get your wings when you’re old enough. For now, let’s get you inside a little hatchling.”

I was brought beyond the wall into a world where everyone could hear the birds. My full flock. I was put into a nest, amongst other children my age and many adults would come in to care for us.

We were fed, snuggled, read to, taught, and lived beyond anything.

When we grew older we hatched, and then fledglings, and then fledges, and then flocklings, and when we were fully grown we too became part of the flock.

If being loved is a curse, then I wish to be cursed forever.