Legend of the OmeletWings - Chapter 10: Birds
#10 of Legend of the OmeletWings
Embryo awoke the next morning to find Summit sitting in the mouth of the cave, silent, just watching the birds flittering through the trees, chirping all the while.
"Hello..." Embryo said, coming up next to him, "Doing anything important?"
Summit glanced at her, then went back to watching the birds. "No, not really. I was just thinking about the way you'll often just stand there and take in the environment, and I decided to try it myself. I've always been fascinated with birds, so when I heard them singing this morning, I decided to come out here."
"Really?" Asked Embryo, "I never knew myself to be that inspirational."
Summit just looked at her again, then back away. "You know," he continued, "birds aren't that different than us. I mean our wings are different and they have features and we have wings, but we are also similar. We both fly over the mountains and hunt for pray, swooping down and capturing it and feed it to our young, and stuff..."
"And stuff." Embryo echoed.
"And we... and we... I can't think of it right now, but I'm sure there's much more to it than that." Summit paused, "I just look at the birds, and I don't know, sometimes I feel I can relate, you know. We both fly, we both find freedom in it..."
"We both lay eggs." Embryo murmured, looking at her talons.
Summit looked at her. "I guess. If that's what you want to focus on."
Embryo looked back up at Summit. "I never knew you liked birds so much," she replied, "I mean I knew you hunted them, but birdwatching?"
Summit shrugged, "Faded hobby I guess, sometimes you get distracted by life and forget how much you like something. But I'd know the names of every type of bird in the mountains around our village. I think I can recognize some of the birds down here as well. I used to watch them purely for their beauty, but when my father taught me how to start hunting them, I sort of forgot how much I'd enjoyed it."
"Okay," Embryo replied, "tell me what type of birds these are."
Summit inspected the birds for a moment, considering, then he started pointing them out. "That one is a robin, that one feeding her young over there, I think, is a goldfinch... and I'm pretty sure that one is a... a kinglet?"
"And that one?" Embryo asked, pointing with her talons.
Summit squinted, "I've never seen that one before in my life."
The bird let out an annoying two-note call.
"It's kind of obnoxious," Embryo observed.
"Yeah, that's the one that woke me up." Summit admitted. "I think we are going to start seeing less of the large birds of prey as we begin getting out of the mountains, and more of these small birds as we begin to get out of the mountains."
"We're leaving the mountains?" Embryo asked. She didn't know how to feel. On the one part, she felt excited about the chance to see new types of scenery, but she'd lived in the mountains her whole life, would she feel comfortable being out in the open and not having their comforting cliffs surrounding her?
"I mean, we could go down further South toward Jade Mountain, but sadly, there's not much south of that, and the nearby Rainforest is difficult to navigate without a guide. I was thinking of traveling through the Mud Kingdom, and perhaps eventually reaching the coast. I hear the SeaWing Kingdom can be paradise." Summit paused, "Going West, there's nothing but desert, horrid, sticky desert. Only thing north of that is a freezing tundra which we have no resources to survive."
Embryo thought about it for a moment. "The MudWings don't seem too bad. We should check them out."
Summit nodded.
They sat there and watched the birds a moment longer, listing to the sounds their wing beats as they fluttered from branch to branch, listened to their joyous songs, like all was perfect with the world. Did they never have anxiety about egg laying?
Finally, Summit got to his talons, "We should get going." He said, "Thank you for teaching me how to do that."
"You're welcome. I guess," Embryo answered.
Summit started beating his wings for takeoff. Embryo quickly followed suit.
"Just... don't insist on taking the lead this time," Embryo said, suppressing a snicker.