The Misplaced

C h a p t e r ° 1

Dedicated to @wonderstruckagain

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1 | YOU MISBEGOTTEN FOOL!

18th July, 1905. Castle Combe, Wiltshire

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IT WAS A DAINTY LITTLE thing, a similar size of a blue tit. Yellowish-green breast, a paler underparts, brownish small head, a pale yellow-green stripe above dark pearl eyes, and two tiny fresh-coloured legs.

It was a magnificent bird, Emma thought, cradling the frail creature in her nimble sixteen year old hands. But, she knew that the creature, a willow warbler, was painfully wounded.

As it emitted a soft 'hoo-eet' sound, a melancholy descending sound of falling notes, that you could think of  water cascading over a tall waterfall, or perhaps, a penny dropping between the pins of penny arcade machine, that's if such a thing existed yet. Regardless of how lilting the creature's notch ought had been, Emma precipitously understood it's dilemma.

my wing

It told her, and alas, t'was true, for Emma winced as she scrutinized the painfully twisted bone on one of the creature's brown wings.

" Ow,' she grimaced, a small crease between her eyebrows, ' That must've hurt a lot, doesn't it?". And she received her answer when the wise bird 'hoo-eet'-ed once more.

Swiping a bead of perspiration off her forehead with the coarse sleeve of her drabbest print dress, a mild punishment issued by the scorching summer sun that glared down at the surface of the earth, she cocooned herself in mollycoddling the warbler as she reeled on a less excruciating way in assisting the wounded creature.

"Very well, I know this might be quite painful. I supposed you understand what I mean,' Emma rambled drearily, as she ripped off a piece at the hem of her dress, ' but, I ought to do what I must so that you could be on your jolly way to reunite with your flock, mustn't I?".

The willow hoo-eet-ed again, burying it's small head between her thumb and index finger. The trepidation of the poor creature caused a gnawing sensation at her chest, and still, Emma knew she was foolish to have frighten the little thing. She ran her thumb across the smoothness of it's head in an unvoiced assurance and quickly got to work, wrapping the cotton fabric around the injured wing.

Albeit the sulfuric sun burning at her skin, Emma was grateful for the soft breeze that swayed around her.  No sooner was she done, with the cooperative little thing's wing successfully in her makeshift fabric cast, did a wide smile blighted across her face.

"There, there, little thing. It's all done, I told you it wouldn't hurt that much,' the bird shooted at her, ' or, did I not. I can assure you I'd,' she responded staunchly, ' now, I'll have to take you home with me, so that you can rest awhile whilst you recover, and then, once you're properly healed, which my friend you'll, you shall be rejoining your flock."

And with that much said, Emma earthed the willow into the havens of her tired looking woolen haversack, which beheld an Old, wretched, borrowed copy of Wuthering Heights from her elder sister's shelf, a piece of stale bread, and a merely rotten apple, and quickly roused from amidst the wilting shrubs, weeds, towering bur oaks and birches that were hushed by the onslaught of wind, where she had been sitting, shepherding a quartet of she-goats that were still feeding on the foliage of the woodland.