A small bird, no bigger than his palm, flitted to and fro in a small cage on the Indian's desk.
It had been a few weeks since the small creature was found by the side of the road, dusty and injured, cowering from passersby and avoiding the steady army of feet that threatened to crush it. It was a miracle he had spotted it at all in all the chaos.
At first it had tried to flutter away, flapping uselessly with its disabled wing and peeping incessantly as he'd sheltered it with his hand, but after a few minutes it quieted—instead resting tensely in the safety of his hands.
Over the years, he'd taken in many injured and sick creatures to try and nurse them back to health. He hated the thought of an innocent creature dying cold and alone on the side of a road. Maybe some people would tell him that it was just the way of things. That it was just how nature was. But for all he knew, this bird had been injured by a human or some human contraption—and that was an injustice to him.
Now, after a few weeks of care and rest and recuperation, the tiny bird's wing had healed. Its vitality had returned. It was actually its recently rediscovered singing voice that had woken him that morning.
"You must be feeling better!" the Indian remarked, observing the little creature as it flitted about. At the sound of his voice, it paused for a moment, cocked its head at him briefly, and then went back to its singing. India hm'd amusedly.
"I'm quite going to miss your wonderful singing!" he chuckled, gently taking the cage by the handle at the top and carrying it to the window. "But it is no longer my place to keep you. Today, you will fly again!"
The bird's singing stopped as its cage was jostled. Seeming to sense something was up, it flitted to the bottom of the cage and waited quietly on the floor—its dark eyes watching as India opened the window to the vast sky beyond.
"Are you ready, little one?" he asked, pausing for a moment, his fingers resting at the latch on the cage door. The bird cocked its head at him once more, seemingly impatient.
"Very well, then! I wish you luck on future flights! May your endeavors be realized!" He flicked the latch open, holding the cage up to the sky.
The little bird hopped to the edge of the cage's floor, paused for a moment at the door, and fluttered its wings as if to confirm that they had mended properly. After a moment of hesitation, it flitted away, gone almost as soon as it lifted off. Now left with an empty cage, India sighed.
It was not his place to keep wild creatures, but he still could not help but feel a bit empty when they'd gone.