Prompt: The Past, Even Hidden, Remains With Us

Thanks to Alexandra Semushina for permission to use her beautiful artwork, "Serene Reading"!

It was a hundred molts ago that the machines fell from the sky. Ancient Joelle was the only elder who remembered them. She squawked that fire blazed for days and nights on end above the clouds like lightning, and the machines fell whole or in pieces, burning the land and whatever lay under them. Nothing that came from the sky lived, and many below died in that fierce time. Joelle was a chick then, still in the nest. Her parents sheltered her with her two brothers when the machines and fires fell. After the storm ended, their elders forbade the young to explore the machines. Too dangerous, they said.

Badrya thought Joelle might have disobeyed. But now she was the eldest elder by a dozen molts or more, and she still said the machines should be left alone. If she had disobeyed her elders and explored in her youth, she was not squawking that tale.

But it was different, wasn’t it, if you found one of the old machines by accident. It wasn’t like you meant to go out and look for it, Badrya thought, perched above the wreckage. It looked like a tube with wings stuck to the side, though Badrya could not see how it once flew. The silver metal had long since rusted through in the acid rains of Perloth. Badrya rustled her thick green feathers at the thought of the cold winter rains. The memory of sleeping in the nest with her wings wrapped tight around her body renewed the restless energy that had brought her so far from the nest tree on this early spring day.

She looked from the leather-bound book in her hand to the twisted metal machine below her thick, long feet claws. She had found the book in the front of the tube, where the windows had shattered. There were panels of markings and knobs and levers that didn’t make any sense to Badrya. Then she found the book thrown in a sheltered bin that had protected it these long years. She traced the scratchings across the pages. It was like no language she knew from any of the feathered flocks or furred tribes. She longed to know, to understand, to read.

Her iridescent temple feathers ruffled in frustration. She couldn’t even take it to show anyone, because she wasn’t supposed to have it. It was a worthless secret. An unsolveable puzzle. Yet she could not leave it alone. She held the book loosely in her three-clawed grasp and stared up above the tree boughs. Up there, somewhere, beings who wrote the scratchings lived and fought and brought fire and death to Perloth. Badrya knew someone should be ready in case they ever returned.

TBC (perhaps)

Dogs in house:	Houdini
Music:	Canadian Brass in concert
Time writing:	25 minutes
May word count:	11,101