Once, long ago, my father told me legends of creatures known as animals. They flew the sky, prowled the earth, and swam the rivers, with eyes inhuman and wild. They didn’t look like us, with fur instead of skin, and had other defining features that belonged to some of the different species of animals. Like having gleaming silver scales, and feathers, so light and soft they could float on the wind, or talons as sharp as daggers. They were dangerous and free. They were real, or so he would tell me, and once existed in mass numbers before they all went extinct, due to humans, who pushed them out of their natural habitat, and clogged up the waters with garbage. We killed them, and now there are none left. Or so I thought. So for many years they remained magical beings of my imagination. Until one fateful day.

When I was little I used to play in the river, which was choked with garbage and a steady stream of plastic that floated on its surface. I taught myself to swim in the icy current, and one day I saw something, something I didn’t quite recognize on the bank of the river. I swam to shore and ran to what I had seen on the banks. A tiny cradle of green grass was woven around a pure white sphere that rested at its center. I leaned down, looking closely at the object, then picked it up in my hands as carefully as I could, feeling how fragile the little grass cradle was. Then I ran through the slums that cover earth’s surface, lean-to shacks, made from pieces of sheet metal, people begging or asleep in the street since there has been no work since the environmental breakdown of 2020, feet beating out a rhythm on the dirt and muck of the streets. I dodged between the jostling bodies, my precious cargo held in my hands. The ground underfoot was muddy and sooty, but I refused to slip as I ran, my leather boots, somehow finding traction with their old soles, worn down to the quick.

My family, my mother and two twin brothers, since my father’s death of some unknown illness, probably from the piles of trash that surround us, lived under a torn canvas sheet strung between two lean-to shacks. We owned a rug which we slept on and a large copper pot which my mother cooked in. I ran to her shouting at what I had found. Her face was streaked with dirt and ash as she took it from me and held it up to her eyes. “Where did you find this, May?” she asked. Reluctantly I told her that it was by the river since I had been told to go collect stinging nettles, a chore that I hated, that could be boiled down and eaten near the old dilapidated building that used to be a library. I had expected her to be angry that I hadn’t done what she had told me but instead she told me to guard the little white circle closely while she left to make something.

When I asked where she was going, she just winked and walked off, leaving me alone, holding the strange object in my hands. Very gently I ran a finger across the while oval. It was cold and smooth, and unmistakably delicate. I held it in silence, waiting for my mother to return. It was my brothers that came back first, excited because they had found a growth of wild parsley in an abandoned lot. They were both curious about the entity, but I wouldn’t let them hold it, since Mother had told me to take care of it. It was near nightfall when she finally came back, and we had already eaten all the parsley. I hadn’t let the object out of sight, or stopped holding it for a second. I knew that there was something special and extraordinary about it, and I wasn’t about to let any harm befall it.

In my mother’s hands was a small woven basket made from sticks when she returned. We put the little green cradle and white orb inside of it and carefully closed the lid. For a stunned second I just stared at the basket, then whispered, “what is it Mama?”

She smiled and shook her head, “I can’t be sure but I think that it’s a nest and egg.”

“For a bird?” I asked, remembering my father’s stories. She just nodded, eyes shining with excitement. I furrowed my brown, “but all the animals are dead.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure May,” she said with a tiny laugh. For the first time in a long while she looked, happy, beautiful even, as though she had finally found something to live for beyond the sole purpose of surviving to see another day.

Suddenly the nest that I had found seemed like the most precious thing in the world. Like a rare antique or relic from the past. “Mama,” I said, “is it alive?”

Again she shook her head, “it’s hard to tell May, but I think so. I hope so.”

“Is it worth money Mama?” I asked.

She was silent as she reached out and took my hand and stared me hard in the face, green eyes glinting, “I know you’re young, but you have to try to understand that although this could be worth a lot of money we’ve found something beyond value, and we have to protect it.”

I remember wondering what she meant by that. Now I understand that she knew just how important the promise of new life, life that had been thought to be dead for years and years, was. We spent days on end guarding the egg. I began to think that it would never hatch. But late at night when the moon was high in the sky and my family was asleep under the sheet of canvas that we called our home that I heard a noise, so small and insignificant that no one would have paid any attention to it, unless they were listening with trained ears for the sound of an egg cracking. I sat up from where I slept next to the basket that my mother had woven, and carefully lifted the lid and stared down at the nest. A tiny crack had formed in the egg. I watched in awe as another crack formed. It split the shell completely in two and from the center I saw a tiny greyish figure moving. Its hair stood up in scruffy tufts and its eyes blinked blindly into the night. Was this the kind of majestic creature that my father had spoken of? But even as I looked at it I felt excitement swelling inside of my chest. I took in a shuttering breath of exhilaration and happiness. It was alive; and it wasn’t human!

I shook my mother awake and pointed at the little creature. She cupped her hands around her mouth in shock, but I could see that in her eyes she was smiling. Quickly we woke my brothers and we stared down at the little animal. It was so very small, and fragile just like the egg. It had a tiny black beak, and little fluffy tail. My heart was hammering in my chest as I glanced at my mother, she pulled me and my brother into a hug, and quietly whispered in my ear, “we have to protect it, May.”

The next morning we got some seeds and ground them down to a fine paste and fed them to the little animal. It had started moving around a little. We fed it every hour or so and watched it closely. Slowly, slowly it began to grow and the soft down on its body was soon replaced with feathers. Feathers, so light that they could float on the breeze, proving that my father’s tales were true. The feathers it was clad in were a soft yellow color. Gently I would stroke the tiny bird with one finger and stare down at it with eyes glassy, with wonder and awe.

It was getting bigger and its eyes began to look less polished and reflective, and more focused. Eventually it opened its wings. We began feeding it whole seeds. After caring for it for about a week my brothers proposed that we name it. Eventually we settled on Wings, which seemed like a fitting name for a bird. It would move around the basket that my mother had made for it by hopping on its little black feet. Everything about Wings was new and beautiful to me. She was the only living, breathing thing I had ever encountered.
She wasn’t a human, and her newfound life both excited me and frightened me at the same time.

The days I spent looking after Wings were some of the best of my life. The idea of caring for something that was supposed to be extinct made me feel important, as though for the first time ever I was more than just a poor girl from the slums.

We kept Wing’s existence a secret from everyone. I think my mother was afraid that if someone found out they would try to steal Wings. No one ever did. But slowly day by day we were getting more anxious. People were asking what was in the basket that Wings lived in, and the little bird still hadn’t learned how to fly. It ate at a rapid pace, devouring seeds and plants that we would have otherwise eaten ourselves. To make matters worse either me my mother or one of my brothers always had to stay with the basket to make sure that no one found out about Wings, which meant one less family member scavenging for food.

We needed to act fast. So one day my brothers and I took wings to the abandoned lot where they had found the parsley the day I had brought Wing’s nest home. We took Wings out of the basket and gently placed her on the soft grass. She hopped across the ground, and fluttered her wings lightly in the breeze. She tilted her head towards me and stared at me with her inky black eyes, as she hopped around, pecking at the earth. We stayed with her all day long. Hoping, praying that by some magic she would learn to fly. We knew we couldn’t take care of her any longer. We could barely feed ourselves let alone a bird something we had no idea how to care for, something that was only supposed to be legend. My brothers cried as we walked away from the meadow at the end of the day, with the sunset silhouetting the scene a rosy pink and gold.

We left Wings amidst the soft blades of grass as night fell. As we walked away, leaving her behind, her little yellow feathers stood out against the vegetation like a flower waving in the breeze as I guided my brothers away.

The next day we went back to vacant lot. And the next day, and the next, and so on for an entire year. We never saw Wings again…

Some part of me wants to believe that she flew away, into the night. Or that someone else took her in. I wish that my father would have been able to see Wings just once, to prove to him that animals were more than just legend, but it wasn’t meant to be. After we let Wings go life went back to its dull normality, collecting stinging nettles, and herbs. That bird was a bright spot of excitement in a grey world, but ultimately we were forced to give her up.

Maybe Wings is still out there somewhere, fluttering amidst the slums on yellow wings, one of an extinct kind. I think I will die wondering.