Schattengeflüster

charlie (a short story)

There was a time, the exact time didn't really matter, but you should still imagine a warm, friendly summer day, when a little creature wasn't sure about who it was. That creature could be described as lightweight and small, but still strong enough to lift himself up. The colourful feathers the creature was wearing as a coat or cape like clothing for sure were the most obvious thing about his appearance. They shone bright yellow, even more yellow than the sun outside, and contained two different looking parts on each side of the body, forming so-called wings. You certainly know by now what exactly that creature is, so I can stop the description here, but he himself still didn't know. That was because he never lived with other birds. Since his birth, I would estimate it was four years ago, he had been alone, living inside an enclosure made of metal mesh somewhere within a house owned by three humans. There wasn't another bird at his side yet. He hadn't ever seen one since he wasn't able to see the sky from the spot his cage was standing. The only window inside the room was too far away for him to look outside, furthermore, he wasn't able to hear anything that was going on behind the thick glass.

However, on the opposite side of the cage there was a mirror leaning against one of the four walls and as you might have seen it with other animals, he was kind of fascinated by it and always looked in whenever his gaze wandered past. Every time he, let's call him Charlie for now since I don't want to say bird without him knowing that he is one, did so, Charlie wondered why he looked so different than the three humans. Wasn't he one too, he always asked himself... And for sure never found an answer. He only knew that he didn't look like a human. Until that one day, when the smallest of the three humans wasn't that small anymore, I would guess she was around the age of twelve by that time, and started to question why her family was holding a bird in such a tiny cage instead of letting him live like the other birds outside.

"Don't you want to be free?", she, I don't want to give her a name since Charlie should be the focus of this story, asked him on that day, when she was around to feed him. "All the birds outside are free too", she quietly added with guilt in her voice. And Charlie wanted to answer her. But he didn't want to say "yes, please let me out of here" or something like that, no, he had a question instead:

"Why should I be free like a bird? What is a bird?"

Of course the girl couldn't understood him. She only heard him chirp. But for some reason she had a similar thought. "You don't know what I am talking about, do you?" And suddenly, without the slightest sign that she wanted to move to a different spot...or maybe you could have guessed that she was up to something because she stared into space for a few minutes with her thoughts somewhere by her own question, she grabbed the handle of the cage, it really wasn't a big and heavy cage so she was able to carry it, and ran outside. With outside I don't mean that she was leaving the room the cage was standing in, I really mean outside the whole house. While running, her blonde, long hair swung back and forth, and in time with it the cage while Charlie rocked and wobbled and flung around. Right before Charlie started to feel sick, the girl abruptly stopped in front of a wooden door.

"You know what, little bird?", she screamed euphoricly, " I will show you the outside world!" And with that sentence, she tore the door open, and behind the door the first thing Charlie saw was a single, gigantic tree, bigger than every house around, filled with round, green leaves that whispered in the wind. Down at the tree trunk there was a dog trying to catch a red butterfly, but the butterfly flew out of range, higher up the trunk. When he passed half of the trunk, Charlies eyes got caught by a brownish squirrel running up the rest of the trunk and jumping from branch to branch. That squirrel was so fast that Charlie quickly lost sight of him behind a bunch of leaves. He searched for it but instead of finding it, his eyes finally reached the treetop, and suddenly Charlie's heart stopped beating for a few seconds, only to beat twice as fast afterwards. There, flying wildly around the treetop in a swarm of ten or twenty, were birds! Of course our little Charlie didn't knew that these were birds, or maybe he did realise, because the girl with the blonde hair pointed towards the spot were these birds were flying and asked Charlie: "You see the birds up there?". Charlie tipped to the edge of his cage, unable to chirp an answer. Something deep inside him started to whisper words. He couldn't understand these words at first, but the longer he looked at the birds in the sky the louder these words got. They look like you. They look exactly like you. They have feathers and wings and a beak, just like you. Can't it be..?

In the meantime, while Charlie was taken by so much surprise and excitement that he was unable to move a single feather, the girl walked towards the tree and placed the cage on a blue painted bench nearby. She herself sat down right next to it. A deep breath left her mouth while she sadly looked down to her bird. "You don't know that you are a bird, do you?" Charlie leaned his head to the left side. You could see the no on his face, the girl saw it too. She then opened the door of the cage and softly reached out to Charlie. Her fingers carefully stroked his yellow wings that were tight to his body. "Oh poor you", she whispered while thinking about what she could do now. But her hands moved by themselves. She took the tips of the wings and carefully stretched them out to their full wing span.

"Look at how I'm doing it. That's how you use your wings. Move them up and down, and down and up", she explained to Charlie while showing it by moving his wings up and down, "That's how the birds up there are able to fly. You are one of them, so you can fly too." Charlie tried it. Just like the girl had shown him. Like the birds over his head. But the cage was too small. He bumped into the bars, first he hit his right side, then his back bumped against the cage, then panic broke out. Quickly the girl grabbed her bird and got him out of that small cage, placing him on the blue bench. At first Charlie was afraid to leave his cage. He had lived there his whole life and now he should leave it so easily? What if the girl had made a mistake and he wasn't a bird at all? What if the small, cold, uncomfortable cage was the only right place to live in?

Charlie hadn't been moving for a few minutes and the girl felt his hesitant thoughts and only said:" Go and fly to your comrades." But this sentence was enough to make Charlie use his wings again and then the girl started to scream excitedly "faster, do it faster!", and Charlie did as told. In the next moment, Charlie wasn't touching the bench anymore. His feet weren't touching anything anymore! And Charlie was so happy that he twittered loudly and proudly and happily: I am a bird! I really am a bird!

And this is the end of the story. Nearly. After Charlie realised that he was a bird, he flew towards the sky where the other birds were. They taught him everything he hadn't learned inside his cage in the house like finding food on his own, hiding for enemies and stuff like that. And the girl, she wasn't sad about Charlie leaving her. I mean, it was her own idea to let her bird free. Later that day, when she finished observing the birds and how happy Charlie looked up there, she returned home and told her parents that she had forgotten to close the cage after feeding Charlie, that's why the bird flew away.

You may ask yourself now what this story should tell you. It's not that hard to find out. The moral of this story is that you have to leave your familiar habits to find out who you are. In this case, Charlie had to leave his cage to find out that he was a bird.

The end.