Mother Bird

Fallen From The Nest

It took the whole of the fifty four steps for Annie to just begin to describe her day, and then another fifteen minutes of listening to her childish blubbering all the while he prepared her something for lunch. The school didn't offer full day classes to the first years, and so she spent half of the day coloring and learning names and not getting any food other than a bag of baby carrots and a juice box.
"Sounds like you had a fun day, then?" Sherlock presumed, setting a half a ham and cheese sandwich decorated with slices of salted cucumbers before the little girl, who picked it up excitedly and nodded.
"It was amazing! I love school." She said at last.
"Those are words you won't find yourself saying in twelve years' time." Sherlock promised with a little chuckle.
"What happens in twelve years?" Annie wondered, her eyes narrowing nervously.
"You graduate. And you look back...you look back to this very moment. And you realize you wasted the whole of your time, from here to now, with worthless government education." Sherlock whispered.
"Daddy, maybe it was like that when you went to school, but it's fun now! We color!" Annie defended; stuffing her little cheeks with ham sandwich all the while Sherlock crunched upon an apple he had sliced for himself. He wasn't very hungry at the moment, as he was now recovering from the nerves of putting his daughter onto the school bus. He didn't like her going places, especially without him. They were home bodies, the two of them; partially because the more she was exposed to the world the more people there were to ask questions. And sometimes, well sometimes Sherlock didn't have a script to answer them.
"You know I colored when I was your age too? Coloring was invented a long, long time ago. It's when you get to calculus when you really realize what you've signed up for." Sherlock warned.
"Well you went to school one hundred years ago." Annie defended at last, nodding as if that was a sound argument all the while Sherlock merely giggled. He didn't open his mouth to correct her, partially because he wasn't really in the mood to explain math once more. Annie had no grasp of numbers yet, and especially no grasp of time. If Sherlock really had gone to school one hundred years ago, well then there was no way he could be this beautiful. The two of them spent the rest of the afternoon together in the backyard, as Annie's favorite game to play with her Barbies was pool party. Pool party really was an effortless game, at least from Sherlock's perspective, as all he was expected to do was fill up a plastic bucket with water from the hose outside. Annie had an incredible imagination, and that bucket could be the scene of a shark attack, or a teenaged swim party, or even a tsunami decimating the coast (Sherlock had offered that last one as a joke, though it had risen up the ranks as one of her favorite scenarios). Sherlock spent the afternoon watching her play, dunking her dolls inside the water and commenting on how beautiful their hair looked before proceeding to have another doll jump into rescue them, like some sort of lifeguard scenario. She didn't quite grasp the idea of romance yet, though from the princess movies she watched she at least knew what a kiss was, and what it should ultimately mean. Sherlock had trained her well, making sure that her dolls knew each other's names and had at least gone on one date before they kissed, though in the end she ended up smashing their rubber faces together until they both deflated with the constriction of her thumbs. Sherlock usually winced at that part, for it was an incredibly heinous to depict commitment. When questioned, however, Annie usually ensured him that they were just expressing their love as a passionate way and went back to her playing. Today Sherlock had dedicated his free time to pulling weeds in the back garden, as he had been quite bothered by the state of things. The garden wasn't entirely his own, he shared it with the tenant downstairs. The man who lived below them was an awful man, crotchety and old and always trying to flirt with their landlady whenever she came around for the month's rent. Ever since Sherlock had been living here that old Mr. Turner had been trying to plant tomatoes, and in these five years since he'd settled in this tiny town there had not been a single tomato growing on any of those withered vines. Mr. Turner was the world's worst gardener, and his failure must have ultimately due to the fact that he let weeds overtake the exhausted soil he used to grow them in. They were nearly up to Sherlock's knees when he started at them, and by the time he had gotten about half way through he was left with a pile of dandelions and grass that was much too big for the bucket he had recruited for the job. Sherlock was just about to get to his feet when he heard a sharp chirping from the base of one of the little shrubs, an anxious little cry that sounded like an animal in terrible distress. He hesitated, at last throwing the bucket to the grass and crouching down towards the source, listening to the chirps in a better attempt to locate the creature. At last he parted the branches of the little tree to find what looked like a pathetic little lump of fuzz writhing in the dirt, chirping through a tiny little beak in an attempt to relocate its family.
"Annie, come look!" Sherlock exclaimed excitedly, scooping the baby bird immediately into his hands and cupping the little thing safely while it squirmed within his grasp. The little girl came running just as soon as he called, crouching down to examine the bird's head where it stuck out of the gaps between his fingers.
"It's a bird!" Annie exclaimed happily, looking upon the crying thing with a great grin.
"It must have fallen out of its nest." Sherlock decided, looking about the branches of the bush to see if there was a nest it might have belonged in.
"Is it hurt?" Annie wondered nervously, stroking the bird's head with one of her little fingers all the while the poor thing struggled and chirped.
"I don't think so." Sherlock admitted, as he felt most all limbs moving within his cupped hands as they should have been.
"There's its nest, up there!" Annie cried, standing up and pointing to a little mess of twigs and sticks in the top most branches of the bush. Sherlock nodded, looking towards the nest but keeping the bird within his grasp for a little while longer.
"You know, they say that once a bird is touched by human hands the mother will never feed it again." he pointed out, looking down upon his struggling little bird with the utmost pity.
"It won't?" Annie clarified nervously, walking up towards the nest as if still with the hope it was occupied.
"No, if we return it the mother won't care for it. It'll die, surely." Sherlock promised. Annie's face fell into something of despair, looking towards her father in some sort of disbelief.
"But we can't keep it, can we Daddy? We don't know how to raise a bird." She pointed out sadly.
"Well there's only one way to learn! Besides, I didn't know how to raise a child, and you're doing alright." Sherlock said with a chuckle.
"Will you send the bird to school, too?" Annie wondered with a giggle.
"Oh surely, surely. When he's old enough that is. He can go to little birdy school, and learn how to dig worms, and build a nest." Sherlock teased, starting his way towards the house as if to clarify to his daughter that this was not a matter worth debating. He wasn't entirely sure about the mother's detachment from human hands; in fact as he pondered it for a while it didn't make much sense at all. Perhaps that was merely an urban legend, designed to keep little children's hands out of birds' nests. Either way, Sherlock was determined to keep the little thing for himself. He was truly the hero of the unwanted, and with this bird to his collection he will have saved another creature from abandonment. Their entire family, created on the things that had been left behind.
"Come along then, Annie. We'll find him a nice box for the night!" Sherlock called back, to where the girl was still looking up towards the nest, as if expecting the mother bird to fly down towards her chick and rescue it from Sherlock's hands. When that never happened she seemed to understand that they were the little bird's only hope, and so she turned around and followed her father back into the house, anxious to start a new life for the creature they had saved.