Firstborn

Chapter 9

A warning
It really sucked... First her Dad and now Avi had abandoned her. Nearly two weeks had passed without contact or explanation from Avi.

He couldn't still be sulking over the wretched pebble incident - could he?

Squatting on the water tank on the roof, Una hopelessly stared out onto Major's property. Over the last two weeks she had noticed several tall crew cut men enter and leave his house.  Avi, on the other hand, did not appear once.

Not unless he had cut his hair...Una rejected the thought. Avi's shoulder length mop was his trademark.  Aggh! She was frustrated. If only she had her mum's binoculars.

Mum's binoculars...

Her face broke into little smiles. She could picture her Mum, propped up with cushions sitting in her armchair, near her bedroom window, while Una sat close by holding Mum's binoculars in place. Leaving Mum to focus on her winged friends without worrying about holding the weight of the binoculars.

Impatiently Una swiped at her uninvited tears.

Days before Mum died, when the pain became too much, she passed on the dreadful task of identifying the garden birds to Una.  She wrongly identified all the birds except for the pesky magpies. Memories of Mum's fragmented laughter still rang in her ears. 

Khamosh Valley, her new home, was indifferent and void of merriment. It was always so quiet during the day. Human speech was sparse and muted human activity amplified the rustling and twitching movements of leaves, grass and bushes surrounding them. Often, giving small mammals positions away.  Just a day or so ago, for nine long minutes, she monitored something slither up and down in the lower branches of a lychee tree. In the tenth moment her patience broke.  She picked up a fallen branch. Parted the leaves and thorns on the lower branches of the tree and revealed a cobra skin - mostly intact.

Back in the present, Una looked over to the orchards gleaming in the winter sun and sighed, "This is all wasted on me Mum. You would have loved it. Me? I prefer Piccadilly Gardens, bus station and the noise of buses pulling out of their bays.  I would do anything to be messin' around with Luke and Charlie on the top deck of a number 86."

Una missed her old life. She moved off the tank and slumbered in the space between it and the corner of the roof walls where she found her phone.  Perhaps this time if she pressed hard on her iPhone's top button it would miraculously switch on. She pressed several times. It was hopeless. The phone stayed dead.

Disgusted, she flung it onto her blanket she kept nearby.

"HUMM MMA. MA"

What was that?

Una grabbed her iPhone again and placed it to her ear.

It was still dead. 

Thud!

Dark wings and claws landed on her head. Her body stilled. Whatever they belonged to paused for a second. Then, beating its wings, it lifted its claws and left. Una cranked her head upwards. A crow hovered above her before it flew over the path and in the direction from which the lone wolf howled.

Still with her eyes raised to the skies, Una identified a speck ominously growing and moving from the opposite end of the jungle canopy. It was making its way to her.

In a blink of an eye, the sky turned bright green. Holding her iPhone tight Una ran towards the stairwell. Before she safely locked the door and continued down the stairs, she glimpsed a feathery fringe of bright green long tailed parakeets soundlessly land on the walls of the roof. Their red beaks and circular eyes, eerily trained on her.