Story: Dean and the Bird (Week 4)

The boy before heading to the kitchen, converse with the bird.

"So you see," the bird said, "we have a common myth. Your mind contains many familiar myth symbols. Odysseus to me is by far the most interesting to me…"

The boy took a seat on a barrel, postponing heading to the kitchen and sat silently, staring at the bird on his shoulder.

"Go on," he said. "Please go on."

"I find in your Odysseus a figure common to the mythology of most self-conscious races on this earthly plain. As I interpret it, Odysseus wanders as an individual, aware of himself as such. This is the idea of separation, of separation from family and country. The process of individuation is it not?"

"But Odysseus returns to his home." The boy said looking at a hole at the bottom of the gangplank into the blue wide ocean. "He finally he goes home."

"As must all creatures. The moment of separation is a temporary period, a brief journey of the soul. It begins, it ends. The wanderer returns to his land and race…"

The captain came walking in and passed them by with few men behind him. The bird stopped talking and the boy frightened.

"I thought I ordered you to take the bird to the cook, boy?" Dean said.

"There is no point in killing the bird, captain?" the boy said. "We could use it for something else."

Dean grabbed the bird and took a knife out, pointing at the bird.

"Fly, why don’t you just fly away from here" the boy begged to the bird. "Get up fly away for your life."

There was silence.

"Go ahead," the bird said laughing feverishly. "It doesn't matter at this point, right captain, there is no point right? RIGHT?!"

The boy stood up. "You can still fly away from here?"

"Tie and shut the boy up will you men?" The captain ordered the men.

The men pulled down the boy and wrapped him up with ropes.

"It is interesting," the bird said with its eyes opened staring at the captain being under the grasped of the captain’s strong hand, "that you are so obsessed with the idea of eating me. I wonder why. Don’t you even wonder why? Only you captain, are hungry for my flesh. Why is that?"

"I don’t care, little birdy, I know you’re gonna die," Dean said.

"If you wish." The bird stopped trying to flap its wings and submit, amused.

"I’m gonna gut you up," Dean said, with maddening crazed eyes.

"For God's sake!" the boy exclaimed. One of the men who tied the boy up turned to the boy and said, "You didn't see him in there boy, the captain was like a statue, standing there, his mouth open in his cabin like a ghost possessed him. If we hadn't come knocking, he'd still be there standing."

"But he's all right now," the boy said.

They all turned looked at the bird, who was still grasped by the captain, making that Godly awful croaked with a mixture of a menacing laugh.

"Come on, let me do it," the cook came to the scene said.

But the men pulled aside the cook, wanting to see the next move the captain is going to make.

"You are quite afraid, aren't you?" the bird whispered to the captain who was crying. "You know what is going to happen don’t you? But you can’t resist it. This must be painful to you. Have I done anything to you? I am against the idea of hurting. All I have done is try to survive. Can you expect me to rush eagerly to my death? But you see, my kind, we must greet death in order to live. I am a sensible being like yourselves and this is very sensible captain, so I hope you would forgive me. I was curious about you captain I wanted to see your ship, learn about you, I wanted to be you. I was the one who instructed the Native Chief to make contact with you and inculcated an attack on that village, I wanted to see your capabilities, to see if I have made the right choice.”

The knife pulled in and thrust into the neck of the bird not before the bird whispered again to the captain, "It is very warmI understand that we are close to the end here. You have done many wonderful things in your lifetime. But this is the end for you."

"Finally," the cook said. "It is done."

Captain Dean turned to the men, crowding behind him, wide-eyed, silent.

"I have done it. All of you seen it, I killed it."

The cook nodded. "It’s a good thing you didn’t stab the chest. If the rib cage shatters, I'll have to pick bones out."