The Strange Bird: A Borne Story

I doubt you will enjoy it. But that is the price of change. Someone always pays.

That if they could not have a fierce joy in their struggle, then they were not truly free but governed by fear and doubt.

But by then, whenever this was, the Strange Bird did not want to live, or did not know she could live, and that was the same thing in the end.

For what could happen to her but that she should die, and she had already died so many times.

In the lab, so many of the scientists had said “forgive me” or “I am so sorry” before doing something irrevocable to the animals in their cages. Because they felt they had the right. Because the situation was extreme and the world was dying. So they had gone on doing the same things that had destroyed the world, to save it. Even a Strange Bird [...] could understand the problem with that logic.

And the beautiful bird broke into song, and although it was not a song any bird would recognize, the Strange Bird could understand it and whatever remained of Sanji inside of her recognized it and responded, and the two birds sang one to the other, the dead communicating to the dead in that intimate language.

Everything added to her and everything taken away had led to that moment and from her perch she had radiated love for every animal she could not help, with nothing left over for any human being.

She liked the feeling of being winnowed down, as if there had been too much of her before, that anything unnecessary had been taken away and what was left was pure.

So she sang back silently to them, as a comfort, there in the cell, and when the moonlight lay thick and bright against the gritty cheek of the sand dune, the foxes would gambol and prance for the sheer delight of it and beckon her to join them, would let her into their minds that she might know what it was to gambol and to prance on those four legs, then these four legs, to see the world from a fox’s level. It was almost like flying. Almost.

A falcon screamed down from above and speared one of the two, and peeled off to rise again before the survivor had time to evade or mourn the loss, as if there had always been one and not two. As if there had always only ever been one Strange Bird. But from above, even dying, the companion defiant, urging the last on, and blessing the bird that had caught her, for it was only acting as to its nature and there was no cruelty in that.

What is the price of change? Someone always pays," -- The Magician

She sang for joy. Not because she had not suffered or been reduced. But because she was finally free and the world could not be saved, but nor would it be destroyed.