Fly Over

My life has been simple: be given a message, tied to my leg, and I fly to my destination to deliver it. Ever since I can remember, I've always been doing this. I've seen the world more than anyone else probably. The way I just fly over the land, observing what goes down below, and how things change over time, amazes me. Like my fellow birds, I get to see from above. I get a perspective and viewpoint that very few get to see. It is something that I thoroughly enjoy.

Unlike most of my friends, I have a connection to humans. They give me food, shelter, and affection. That is something that I also realize, many don't get to have. So I'm thankful. The messages that I usually send via my trips are usually communications between two groups of people. I don't know exactly what they do, but I know the ones I stay with always seem to be exercising and training for something. Things began to change over the last few months though. Before, when they send messages, they would usually have a happy or normal looking expression on their face. But recently, that happy face that I got accustomed to became one of fear and anxiety. I saw something in the human that I never saw before.

Of course, we don't speak the same language nor can understand each other. Only very humans can talk bird, and usually the other humans think they’re crazy when doing so. But I know emotions. In fact, all animals do. We sense things, whether it be told outright, or felt from within. There was something bothering them. But I knew, that whenever I would return from sending a message, and deliver the response message from the other group, that fear would dissipate just a little bit from their face. That's all I wanted to see, so I continue to do my duty. Today, the human rushed me to send a message. It was earlier than usual, and I knew something was up. They tied the message on my leg and threw me up to help me launch into the sky. I flew towards the destination. I wonder why they were in a hurry.

As I flew towards the destination, I could hear rumblings from afar. Over the past few days, I've been hearing these rumblings all too often. It didn't matter if it were day or night, it seemed to be more of common place. I asked my friends what the noise could be. No one really knew. Some of them hypothesized, saying it might be the clouds talking, or the ground shaking, but no one knew for sure. I flapped my wings harder, in hopes to get to the destination a lot more faster than usual. As I got closer, I saw where the rumblings were originating from. On the ground below, I saw something that I never saw before. Huge clouds of black and orange smoke billowed up to the sky. I saw people hunched down in holes in the ground, with a fire shooting from them to the other side. I saw the rivers of water, once fully blue, turning a brownish red. There was fires all around. I looked around me in the sky, to see others like myself, flying with messages. They looked all but frightened. I've never seen anything like it. Most of us birds are brave, so to see them in a frightened state made me scared.

And then they came. Behind me and in front, there were these massive vehicles with wings on them. Almost like me and my friends, massive birds in the sky. They zoomed at speeds that made me shocked to the core. Was this even possible? Was this even real? As I fly, I saw two of them fly by me, with those massive birds shooting fire from them as well. What was going on? I was totally confused, as well as my fellow birds that were flying in what can only be described as chaos. As I kept flying, I saw one of the massive birds combusting into flames. The heat wave knocked me off my course, sending me and the other birds flying waywardly, trying to come back into form. My thoughts were not thinking about the destination anymore. All I thought about was one thing: safety. I needed to get to safety.

I saw a tall building in the distance, that seemed to be away from all of this massacre and chaos. I flapped hard and shouted at the other birds to follow me. We needed to get away from all of this. We arrived at the building, and landed on the edge, looking back at everything we just passed by. It looked worse from here than it was from the middle of it. Me and the other birds just looked at it, silently. No one made a sound, and how could you? This was something we were not accustomed to, and never had seen before. You hear about the capabilities of these humans, but you never think of what they might do in conflict. It made me scared, but most of all, saddened. "Why is this all happening?" asked one of the birds out loud. We all turned to each other and looked back at the carnage in front of us. Loud booms of sound billowed out loud. We heard screams of pain, anger, and fear. Eventually, it all went silent. All that was left was the scenes of destruction, with not another sound outside of the gusts of wind, and the crashing of the ocean waves. Why is this all happening indeed, I thought. I guess I will never understand.