249 Free Bird

Lucy would offer her forearm; I would step onto it. She'd reach under each wing to stroke my down. It was affection, intimacy, and love.

My life was life with Lucy. I knew what her smile meant; why her eyes sparkled. I'd comb her hair with my beak, always ready to pluck any vermin there, but there never were. Lucy was spotless—my preening as easy as it was irrelevant. Nevertheless, I remained vigilant. More things vex than vermin.

We were a package deal, Lucy and I; one wouldn't have life without the other.

That is why my world as a cockatoo died the day she did not come home. It was in one of those big rolling machines she would cage herself in, only to escape later when that machine rolled her back home.

The world outside turned black. The black engulfed the home. Lucy's parents lived the blackness—inhaled deeply to breathe it in. I could feel it down to my carina, so I could no longer fly.

My Lucy was gone.

There are those who would simply sigh and say, "That's life." Persons and loves and shared lives there one day, but gone the next.

No! That's death!

A great, rolling machine, like the one who always brought my Lucy home, had miscalculated and taken her to Heaven.

As the world's greens and browns and whites cycled through each trip around the fiery hole in the sky, something new began to evolve. It was a maturity of a life without Lucy—not a glaring hole in life, but a fact of life. That's life. This maturity was acceptance.

Lucy's mom spent the better part of one beautiful green day with me. She stepped outside of our home, me on her shoulder. Something momentous was about to happen.

"Thank you, Lucy," she said to me. I did have a name, but she didn't call me that. "I'm letting you go...you're free."

She invited me to step onto her hand. I accepted, for I sensed a rite of passage. A timely rite. A right rite. She jerked her hand upward and I took flight.

Lucy and I. Free. A final flight—a glide through the only Heaven I need.

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AUTHOR'S NOTES:

For Thursday, September 5, Day 249 of the 2024 Story-a-Day Challenge

366 WORDS (without A/N)

Accompaniment photos were AI-generated but the birthday (birdth-day) boy is not.

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THIS CHALLENGE FLIES ON, 366 FLAPS AT A TIME.

There are currently three surviving, air-loft, soaring Vocal free-birds still flying in the 2024 Story-a-Day Challenge:

• L.C. Schäfer, (Cockatoo)

• Rachel Deeming (Cockatiel)

• Gerard DiLeo (Cocka'three and Birdthday Boy)