He read it once in a book, or maybe somebody told this to him, or maybe he dreamt it - a boy asked his father what would happen to those birds which are flying if they suddenly forgot they can fly. Instead of waiting for his father’s reply he anticipated the following possibility: Would they just fall from the sky, deadweight, as stones on to the ground? Would they emit mute sounds when their hollow bodies reached the ground?
To kill time he enters sometimes into the largest park of the city and wanders around, ending usually at the birds cage at the far end of the entrance gate. He sits in a bench to contemplate the manouvres of the colourful parrots and parekeets, as they move within the boundaries of the cage back and forth and back again. The commotion is notorious, the hubbub intense, with dozens of birds within a hundred and twenty-five cubic meter volume. A continuous frenzy of activity, all birds flying, eating the seeds and the bread and the vegetables, and drinking the tap water from the fountain at the center of the cage, descending from the top in their distinctive claw-and-beak style, so full of grace. A messy cacophony of sounds reach his ears as the birds chirp, clatter, roar, shriek, babble, squawk. You name it. But once, among the dozens of colourful birds there was that one which could not fly. The parrot had a broken wing, the left one, and it swept the dirty ground as the bird moved slowly searching for food, mere leftovers which fell from the little bird cages hanging near the ceiling, food which the birds spilled on the ground as they ate. The lame bird was condemned to live a miserable life for the days to come, as if being inside a cage was not bad enough. Surprisingly it was not alone. Another parrot, this one healthy and able to fly, with the same brightly coloured plumage (bluish, greenish, yellowish) and of the same size, kept its company side by side, in amazing solidarity.
Beautiful narration!
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