Mother Robin

The fledgling's minute heads and beaks peeked hopefully out from under their mother's body. The twigs and intertwined straw beneath them, along with their mother's dark mass above them, created a muggy, dark, but very warm environment. On this frozen day they were grateful. Their nest sat securely in the corner of a small third story windowsill. The young hatchlings would never understand why the mysterious, but harmless, pale giant kept looking, staring, at them their entire life, through the invisible hardness by which the nest was partially supported.

She knew they would leave. They always leave. You would work and slave to keep them fed and happy, and then they would get up and leave. No thanks, no words of gentle, considerate kindness, nothing. And yet she missed them. Oh lord did she miss them.

And in sitting here, by the window, trying to forget for a moment of her life, she was still reminded of their leaving by this mother robin and her crying young who sat outside her lone window, overlooking the placid half alga covered pond of her home. She adored and pitied the mother and she despised and cursed her in the same thought. The mother robin was ordered by fate to build her nest in her only window.

She had been out into the garden once and had observed that, of the entire house that only one window had a nest built on its sill. Her windowsill. She often cursed and swore at fate's haughty doings.

But she knew something the new mother did not. She knew they would leave. They always leave. And in this knowledge she drew upon her only reason for going on in life. She had to see them leave her. She had to see the mother robin's eyes when she returned with food for an empty nest. She would wait for that day.

The mother robin steadily fed her rapidly growing checks, and extraordinary five, and gave them the best she could. Mother robin was the ideal mother.

Just as she was for her own five children. In almost every aspect besides the species variant, they were twins, duplicates, motherly clones. She knew what mother robin knew, but she knew more, for her chicks were already gone.

All of her's had been born at the same time as mother robin's had. She and her children were famous world-wide. She was known as the first single mother of quints. The children lived well as societies and charities gave them food, clothes, and money. The children became accustomed to the media attention they constantly received.

All of them had grown up and lived well. All of lives' joys were bestowed, homecoming queen, prom king and queen, writer, and top musicians all evolved. But as the spotlight of media attention dwindled then ceased completely, A periodic war began and her children, at the mature age of 18, grabbed center stage again, as they all volunteered for the armed services together.

Again the flash of reporter's camera lit the house of the quints. And then...they left. No thanks, no words of kindness. They packed on night and left after breakfast the next morning. The last breakfast she fixed for them all together. She knew what mother robin's heart would look like after they left.

After a few short months the birds were trying their thin wings. They would sit up on the edge of the nest and flap until it hurt. She knew the time was close. She had not heard from her won chicks for the eternity of those few short months.

A man with a gun came into the garden and instructed the other guests to please go back inside for it was time for their medication. They begrudgingly, some fearfully, went into the large home in single file. He loaded the gun. She watches from the window.

The chicks were alone in the nest when the first gun shot came. They were frightened into flight for the first time. All five swept semi-gracefully out from the windowsill in a close, haphazard formation. The man reloaded and followed the disarray of robins across the garden with his barrel. Another gunshot tolled across the home's gardens and traversed the once placid pond which now rippled slightly as five young robins skidded on its surface and slipped quietly under the concealing alga.

Her joy of knowledge shattered as a mirror with the second gunshot and the breaking of the surface of the water. As she looked out the window all that could be seen of the massacre was a handful of red feathers on an overturned lily pad. Fate has sent mother robin as a prophet.

The man, upon seeing her ashen hair and pale face in the window knelt and picked up the corpse of mother robin, the victim of his first shot. He smiled hopefully, nearly triumphantly at her. She closed the shade and turned slowly away with a horrific scream in her eyes. Fate is truly evil she surmised.

She lay down slowly on her white linen bed and help the pictures of her five dead children on her chest. She waited.