Bird Set Free || Harry Styles AU

↜1↝

Unedited

Third Person

The looming, low sultry sound erupting from the darkening deep blue sky. Mama looks up as she rubs her full belly expectedly. Her eyes trace over the silver lining of clouds drifting over head. She feels it, in her soul, in her mind, and in her heart, it is time.

"How you feelin' mama?" She turns around to the sudden intrusion. She looks at her son, he is tall, lean, and darkened by the hard labor he just faced in the fields.

She takes a slow, heavy blink instead of responding to her curious little son.

"I reckon a storms a'comin mama, we should head inside" he urges her with his hands.

She shakes her head dismissedly and rests her dry overworked fingers into her son's matching ones. Slowly, she bends her warn out knees. Her knees now imbedded into the mushy soil as she continues to look up at the sky.

"Do you feel that Colis?" She whispers ever so lightly, the phrase nearly passed by his ear. He cocks his head to the side as he mimics his mama's actions. He dares not say anything, through his seven years of trying to grasp an understanding of the mother who named him Colis left him baffled every day.

'Please be a boy Lord. A brother I can play around with and wrestle with in the fields. A brother I can show him the ropes to how to grow up with the time. A brother I can scheme with to mess with the little kids in the big house over there across the field. Please Lord, please.'

Colis prays in his head as his eyes remain shut. A small smile threatens to show when he imagines mama coming out the room with a new baby brother. That's what they both wanted and surely if they prayed long and hard, God will hear them and surely he will give them what they want. Right?

Mama didn't pray this time, her face didn't display any emotions. She knelt in that position immobile, like a withering statue.

"Colis, my boy, a storms on its way. This will be a long hard storm baby. I need you to be the stronger one. Only one of us will make it to the end and one of us will get trapped within its eye. Don't let that one be you because I sure as hell will not lose anotha one of my loves." She croaks as she feels a sharp pain jolting for her womb.

I love you too my baby boy. She says in her head. Almost believing that the baby heard her, like their connection was much deeper, much stronger than ever before.

"Super time!" A distant man yells and with a flash many sweaty slaves gathered around one another and jog there way over the voice.

Colis quickly jumps back to his feet as he feels his stomach gargle at the mere thought of food. This would be his first time eating for the day. His breakfast was sacrificed to his mama. After all she was eating for two.

Soon, mama promised that his meals will be doubled, tripled, as long as they keep on praying. Instead of leaping over shrubs and racing with the others to get the first hot meal, he reaches a hand out for his mama. Her mood was different, off, maybe it's the pregnancy. Maybe it's because she fears the loss of another baby to the white man.

Little did Colis know there was much more involved.

He shrugs all assumptions off his shoulders to carry his mama's weight on them instead. They wobble over, trailing behind another man, his name was Zari. Many of his physical features resembled Colis' yet mama said that wasn't papa. Colis never met his real father, and unfortunately his baby brother will not know who his is either.