AUGUST 26th, 2017 | 10:09AM
You are too good for this world. Too pure.
RE: PROTESTING IN FAIRMOUNT PARK (UPDATE)
Posted by LeRandelle
AUGUST 27th, 2016 | 10:17AM
What kind of mouse, specifically? I might know someone at one of the local museums who is obsessed with small mammals. It’s weird. But I guess that’s her job.
RE: PROTESTING IN FAIRMOUNT PARK (UPDATE)
Posted by WithouttheY
AUGUST 27th, 2016 | 10:39AM
Southeastern Pennsylvania common field mouse, I believe. The common in the title is pretty unfortunate, considering they really aren’t common anymore.
RE: PROTESTING IN FAIRMOUNT PARK (UPDATE)
Posted by LeRandelle
AUGUST 27th, 2016 | 11:09AM
Got it, I’ll have her look into it and send you a DM.
XX
“Hello?” Leila poked around one of the massive bird habitats inside the Raptor Trust, looking for anyone working at the place. “Sarika, you see anything?”
“No!” Sarika shouted from somewhere unseen. “It’s creepy, can we get outta here? Look at all the trees.”
“Yeah, sure, in a minute,” Leila said. Sarika was right. It was creepy. All around the Trust the trees had shed their leaves unnaturally fast, and leaves that had turned brown and crunchy far too quickly covered the ground.
What the dryads had said was happening. Whatever was in that spray paint had hurt them, and they needed to find Landon, fast.
Leila walked around the edge of the large cage in the Trust. Just a little over a week ago, a large golden-tailed eagle had sat inside the enclosure, its proud face looking about quickly and curiously, taking in everything with its sharp, wide eyes. And now? Empty, as though nothing had ever been inside in the first place. Even the water and feeders were gone. Just that large branch remained, wrapped with the same bright-yellow tape she’d spotted outside the grove and around the building.
The yellow tape was everywhere, marking the large, central building and circling the smaller enclosures. Bright red Xs marked some of the trees that surrounded the buildings, but only a handful of them. Who selected what trees were to be torn down, and what could remain?
“Landon!” Leila yelled, walking past the large enclosure toward the open fields nearby where she knew he sometimes flew Milford. “Landon, come on, if you’re here we need you. I, uh, I need you.”
“I heard that!” Sarika shouted, laughing.
Leila shook her head and kept walking toward the trees that bordered the field a little beyond the Trust. A handful of these, too, were marked with Xs, and yellow tape surrounded the small shed near the path that led towards the field where Landon had fished out her jacket. The trees were shedding their leaves, and the field was pocketed with brown patches of dead grass. Leila walked towards the shed. The door was slightly ajar, and a padlock hung from an open latch.
She opened it up.
Inside, a pile of leather-working tools sat scattered all over a small table, and scraps of fabric hung all over the floor and coated the walls. Scissors, needles, thread, pieces of metal and odd baubles and hinges sat everywhere: in baskets, in jars, on the ground. It looked like the lab of some kind of steampunk mad scientist from one of those fantasy novels full of brass and clocks that Sarika devoured back in the group home, with titles like Updraft or Timekeeper.
She picked up an object made of black leather and metal spokes, with little hinges connecting them and long pieces of thread dangling from it. She opened and closed it. The device flexed and moved.
It was a wing.
Landon didn’t just store warm jackets in here. This was where he worked on his odd creations for Milford. She put the wing down and hurried out the door, shutting it behind her and looping the open padlock through the handle. She left it unlocked, but the latch would stop the door from swinging.
She kept walking towards the field Landon had used to help Milford fly, pushing her way down the narrow trail that led to the open expanse of grass. Here, too, more trees had been marked. Shrubs and brush had already been cut away to widen the path leading from the field to the Trust, no doubt to make room for whatever vehicles or tools would need to come through. Long patches of grass were marked with blasts of white paint, and Leila wondered what was going to go there. Roads? A parking lot? The building?
Leila stopped. She heard . . . something.
She listened.
A voice, whispering on the wind. She closed her eyes, giving it her full attention.
Hello daughter.
“Karayea,” Leila said softly, her eyes shut, the breeze rustling about her and tickling her ears and neck. “We’re trying to find a way to help—”
You may be too late, my sapling.
Leila’s heart raced.
“Is someone there? Who is there?”
Someone was. They have rained their waters upon on our soil. It hurts. The land suffers with us.
“Rain? I don’t understand—”
The boy and the bird. He will know.
“Karayea,” Leila shook her head, and opened her eyes, trying not to feel silly as she spoke to nothing in front of her. “Are there mice in the grove near you?”
All creatures are welcome in our branches, the shelled and the furred—
“Right, but specifically, small, brown mice?”
Yes.
“Are they endangered? At risk or anything?”
I’m afraid I do not understand.
Leila growled with frustration. Concepts like animals being endangered, at risk or under conservation and protection, of course those were foreign to Karayea and the other dryads. Why wouldn’t they be? But she was right about the boy with the bird. If anyone would know, Landon certainly would. He did know. He’d said as much.
“Hang in there,” Leila said, speaking into the wind. “We’re coming. I’ve got a plan.”
Do try, and do hurry. But if you don’t make it—
“Karayea, don’t—”
If you don’t make it, know that I am proud of how you’ve grown and what you’ve become. How you have bloomed. My sapling.
Tears started to well in Leila’s eyes.
I love you, my daughter.
With a cold gust of wind, Karayea’s voice and the presence that Leila felt around her whooshed away, leaving Leila feeling chilled, her eyes wet with tears. Those were the words she’d wanted to hear her entire life.
She shook her head and pushed into the fields just ahead. As they came into view through the clearing at the end of the path, the green muddled with bits of brown, she spotted a backpack sitting near the entrance and a figure kneeling down in the grass, fussing over something. She squinted as the figure looked up from whatever it was doing.
It was Landon.
“Hey!” Leila shouted, walking quickly towards him. “Hey! Way to not answer my text messages, you—”
But before she could finish giving him the chewing out she felt he so rightly deserved, she saw the tears streaming down his eyes. His stubbly beard was slick with them.
And there, cradled in his arms, was Milford, his darling owl.
Leila ran and dropped down to her knees next to him, looking at the owl. Milford breathed in and out slowly. His eyes were closed and his single wing twitched.
“What’s happening?” Leila asked.
“I don’t know,” Landon said, choking back a sob. He looked up and towards the path leading back to the Trust. “They came in and closed the Trust this morning. They marked trees and brush for removal, taped up the grounds. I had Milford in the shed while things wrapped up. I . . . I thought maybe I’d try to keep him.”
“Keep him? Oh. Oh, Landon.”