The Orchid

A Mothers Wish

The winter came and ended peacefully. She gracefully departed in record fashion. For only a month did the souls cover the flora's view of the sun. The stream continued in full strength and the fish returned. The frogs sit on their rocks and everything is right in the world.

    The frogs croak because their rock seems warmer than the day before. The flowers open their petals ready to mate. The birds tweet in excitement because motherhood is taunting them. The vines start a new crawl up the trees hugging tighter than the year before. And the ant colony investigates their surroundings after a winter spent underground. The land is force feeding its inhabitants.

    The murderous owl is getting ready to lay eggs. She conforms to nature's basic hopes. Her only wish is to support the life of a newborn. She has practiced her hunting skills for many summers and winters now, and it would bring her no greater joy than to share knowledge. She pushes with all her might and the egg is born.

    Nature loves to tell inspiring tales of mothers who care for their young. But this tale will have no such beginning. The mother bird flew from the nest early spring and never returned. The eggs were cold and most went lifeless. However a few are resilient and decide to hatch anyways. Science and media tells us the first thing a bird sees it identifies as its parent, except in this situation the other parent is its deformed sibling. Over the next few days, endless shrieks of despair echoed throughout the forest with no response. Nobody was coming for them. And so the deformed brother mother died. Only one chick remained, determined to survive and so it did.

    It ate what the world had given him and because of it he grew stronger. He practiced flapping his wings everyday. He could walk and eventually run. His down grew and he was no longer cold.

    He found himself standing on the edge of his nest, ready to leap. Ready to take his first flight. He must because no food remains in the nest. And so he jumped. He extended his wings but instead of gliding he spiralled head first into the ground.

    The world has never been and will never be equal. This bird did everything right, yet in the end the world will not take any mercy.