Heroine of Pain

The Bird stepped over its nest, ready to fly, her auburn feathers shining like liquid gold mixed with swirls of rich red. A single sound had not escaped her from her birth to this moment, as she flew in search of something, her soul already knew the destination of.  To the world, the beating of her wings was the only giveaway of her existence. It was the first day of her flight. And she didn't stop till it was almost dusk. She hadn't stopped to eat nor drink, her throat parched but pulsating with the sound of her heartbeat, telling her to not rest till she reached where her being pulled her.

The sight of the naked, dark, thorn tree is what stopped her, mid-flight. She perched on a branch, uncaring of the short, sharp thorns, rising out of the branches like a possessive lover, confident of its ownership. She searched with eyes, rich with ebony and astoundingly deep. The attentive survey of her sight only ceased when she saw that one particular thorn- of intimidating length, a sharp edge and silvery as if ripened from age and the unrelenting sun. She recognized the temerity of its will to exist, as her own and walked to it as a lover meeting her own for the first time which yet, felt like the convinced knowledge of  an inevitable reunion. Whispering, "but of course. It's you. It had to be."

Her beak brushed against the pointed end of the thorn, like noses rubbing against one another in affection. She spread open her wings, as if to expand her chest for the greedy lungful of air she pulled in, for a bigger, braver, secretive purpose. The purpose exposed, the instant she drove the end of the thorn, into her breast, the plunging of the thorn leading to the emittance of a most profound soul-song. Outdoing the flair of the nightingale, the Thorn Bird's song evoked an immediate upturn of intensely keen and fierce eyes of the woman lying at the edge of the forest, beneath the tree. Her eyes fixated unblinkingly, as if hooked to the notes of the dying words of the bird, so carefully shielded over the years, for this moment of earned release. The Bird was almost at the end of the thorn, her chest ablaze with only the rich red of blood, glistening in the light of the rising moon, as her eyes fell upon the woman's watchful gaze.

As if to smile and say, "this was the inevitability of my existence. I have spent my life in the search of this one moment that makes me the Empress of sung songs, just as you search for your moment of reckoning. I promise it will be grander than mine. And so will the endurance be, of your fiercer pain. For I was driven to this one moment of unrelenting and freeing agony, my fate sealed at birth. Yours shall be a choice. Or will it?"