by Johinsa
Author's Note: This story was written in about two hours, while I was on the train from Odawara City to Tokyo, and so it might be a bit uneven. I didn't have a Bible with me then, I don't have one with me now (having recently moved to Montreal, all my stuff's still in boxes), and any errors thus arising are entirely my fault.
A long time ago, when the world was very different from the way it is today, there was a bluebird who lived in a nest in a tall pine forest. She was a young bluebird, and rather silly, but she had a good heart.
One day, she heard someone land in her tree. She looked out of her nest, and there was her neighbour the raven. "Good morning!" she trilled. "Fine weather we're having, isn't it!"
"Funny you should mention that," said the raven. "That's actually why I'm here."
"Because it's such a beautiful day?" the bluebird asked with a confused little tilt of her head.
"Well, not exactly," said the raven, "but I did come to talk about the weather. You see, my friend the eagle's told me something disturbing. He's been in the south, and apparently it's going to rain."
"So?" the bluebird said. "That's not so unusual this time of year."
"But not like this. They say the whole world's going to flood."
"They say? Who says? The eagle's a silly bird, he always has been. No more sense than a chicken."
"Not this time," the raven insisted. "This is on the highest authority. Beyond any doubt."
"Well, all right," the bluebird said dubiously, fluffing her feathers. "Suppose you're right. What do you expect to do about it?"
"That's what I came to tell you. There's a man in the south who's building a boat. He's going to take a few of each kind of animal on board with him and try to ride out the storm."
The bluebird stared. "I know what you're thinking," she said. "You're thinking we should head south and try to get on this boat of yours."
"It's not mine. But, yes, that's what I am thinking. There aren't any ravens that far south, or bluebirds either, probably, so our places on board are almost guaranteed.
"You're crazy," the bluebird said flatly. "I can't leave now. I've just laid my eggs. I can't possibly go anywhere until my chicks hatch."
"By then it'll be too late!" the raven squawked, flapping his wings in agitation and nearly falling off the branch. "Please. Please come with me. You're an idiot, but you are my friend, and I don't want you to get drowned."
"You're crazy," the bluebird repeated. "Go away."
With a deep sigh, the raven took off, looking back sorrowfully over his shoulder from time to time as he winged his way south. He knew he wasn't going to see the bluebird again.
The bluebird bent over to tug at a piece of loose straw on the wall of her nest with her beak. She thought about fixing it up. The babies would be hatched soon, and chicks always tore the nest to bits trying to get out. It was impossible to keep it tidy. She looked up at the sky. It was starting to cloud over. For a moment, the bluebird felt a chill; then she laughed.
"Of course that silly raven can't be right," she said to herself. "Besides, I have more important things to think about."
The rain began to fall. At first it was no more than a few wet days, such as were common that time of year, but they didn't stop. The water turned all the streets in the towns into rivers, running downhill toward the valleys, which became dirty, bubbling lakes. Great rushes of water swept through the forest, gouging huge trenches out of the dirt so that the trees' roots stuck up bare, and the rain kept falling.
The little bluebird was a bit worried, but not very much. "After all," she said to herself, "I'm up in a nice snug tree! All this water can't possibly come up this far."
But she looked down from her nest and she saw that the rushing water wasn't quite so far away as it used to be, and she worried just a little bit.
This went on for three days or so, and then one grey morning she had a visitor. She felt someone alight on her branch and wondered if it was the raven come to say I-told-you-so. "Yes?" she called, feeling very wet and miserable.
"Oh!" the visitor exclaimed. "I didn't know anyone lived here. I'm sorry."
"Don't go," the bluebird said quickly, for she was lonely. She couldn't fly in the rain, so there was no-one to keep her company while she waited for the chicks to hatch. "Come up closer to the trunk. It's a little drier here."
"Thank you." The visitor pushed her way through the leaves, and the bluebird saw that it was a small spotted duck. "Ah, that's a bit better. What miserable weather."
"I heard someone down south has actually built a boat to get through this," the bluebird said, meaning to be funny. The duck looked as though she needed a laugh. The bluebird had always thought ducks liked water, but then, she hadn't known ducks ever roosted in trees, either, and this duck just looked cold. "A boat! And he's taken a few of every kind of animal with him."
To her surprise, the duck nodded soberly. "That fits with what they say in the islands to the north," she said. "The word there is that this flood is--you know--His work. They say it's going to scour the earth clean."
"Why?" the bluebird asked. The duck shrugged, which is really an amusing gesture from a duck.
"Because we're all wicked. That's what they say."
"Oh, that's silly," the bluebird scoffed. "I'm not wicked."
"Well, the humans are anyway. I think they're the main reason for all this. The rest of us are just sort of incidental."
The bluebird tilted her head. "That doesn't seem fair."
"It doesn't, does it? But that's how it is."
"I don't want to drown," the bluebird said quietly.
"Then fly away," the duck said. "That's what I intend to do. There has to be somewhere--some mountain, maybe--that the water won't reach."
"But I can't fly in the rain!" the bluebird protested. "And I can't leave my eggs!"
"Suit yourself," said the duck. "But I think you could fly even in this weather if you really tried to. And as for your eggs, once the water gets up this far they'll be doomed anyway, unless they can fly. How long does it take your kind to learn?" She looked at the bluebird sadly. "I'd better go. Thanks for letting me rest here." With that she flew away, flapping her waterlogged wings. In a few moments she was out of sight.
The rain fell day and night, never stopping, never slackening. The bluebird started to become very afraid. Her tree was on the side of a steep hill, so she wasn't in immediate danger of drowning; but she had already seen several other trees torn from their roots by the sliding water and swept away downhill. The bluebird clutched her branch with her claws and shivered.
One morning she awoke in the now-familiar dim grey light to a very strange sound. It was a rumbling, groaning, slurping, splashing sound, and it filled her with fear. Despite the rain, she leapt off her branch, wildly floundering in the pouring air. The rain dragged at her wings, weighing her down.
From here she could see what was happening, though, and it almost made her forget her discomfort. Like a dead snakeskin being sloughed off, the entire hillside was breaking away. Stones, mud, boulders, trees and all, the forest was falling into the sea.
A slap of water from a falling trunk caught the bluebird's outstretched wing and casually flipped her over. She tumbled helplessly toward the water, touched the suface, flailed wildly and managed to get herself airborne again. Shivering and gasping, she shot upwards as fast as she could fly, until she was well above the water and safe. Only then did she look back.
The forest was gone. The hill was an island of broken and tumbled rock, surrounded by trees and fragments of trees washing back and forth in the waves. The bluebird let out a high shrill cry of despair. Her home--her tree--her nest--everything was gone.
After a few minutes, though, she regained control of herself. "I can't stay here," she decided. "I'll go south. It's warmer and drier in the south, so I've heard. And maybe I'll find that boat the raven told me about."
So she flew. She was a small bird and couldn't fly for any great length of time, but there were always pieces of floating wreckage to perch on, though she had to compete for space with others. The sky was full of birds. She supposed that, if anyone could survive this, the birds would. Once or twice she saw squirrels or chipmunks clinging to floating trees, but otherwise there was no-one living but the birds.
She flew south, trusting her own innate sense of direction, since the stars were hidden. It grew warmer day by day, but the rain never stopped. There was no dry land anywhere now, except on the top of what had once been mountains, and even those were swiftly sinking.
There was one day when she flew over a human village, perched near the crown of a hill the way her forest had been. Except that this hill had no doubt once been a mountain peak; it had no trees, only low tough bushes with shiny leaves. Or maybe that was the rain. The village was right down by the waterline, and a mass of floating beams and thatch suggested that it might once have extended further. The bluebird perched on the grass, grateful for solid ground under her feet after so many days of exhausted flying and uneasy rest.
The village was full of human people, tall ones and short ones, dark-haired ones and white-haired ones. She knew human people didn't usually hunt her kind of birds, so she felt safe to sleep, but the noise the humans were making kept her awake well past sundown.
When she awoke, the water had risen several feet and was lapping at the lowest row of houses. The bluebird couldn't understand what the humans were shouting about, but they were very loud. The bluebird, feeling rested, decided to be on her way again.
She rose on an updraft and circled above the mountain. As she watched, a large wave broke over one of the lower houses. The human people were running out into the open, shouting the way they always seemed to shout. They were running up the slope of the mountain, but the bluebird could see from above that there really wasn't a lot of mountain left. She knew human people couldn't fly; she wondered if they could swim.
From the mountain island she went south, keeping the rising sun on her left wing, the setting sun on her right. Day was evening under the clouds, but the sun was still diffusely visible even if it failed to warm the chill rain. The bluebird was always cold now. She was growing weaker and could no longer fly as far, often having to stop for the night long before it grew dark. Places to rest were becoming fewer; she had seen no more islands since leaving the mountain, and the floating wreckage that had been so prevalent before had dwindled to the occasional chunk of waterlogged wood. Sometimes the entire visible surface of the great unnatural sea was nothing but shades of blue, broken by millions of raindrops every moment into ripples that reflected no sunlight. The bluebird flew on.
It was on the ninth day after she had left the mountain that she spotted something on the horizon, a little bit west of south. Wearily she angled toward it, hoping that it might be some pinnacle that the waters had not yet reached, though she knew that this really was hopeless now. As she drew closer, she saw that it was actually something floating on the water, and as she was still some distance off, it was something of considerable size.
"It'a boat," she realised, remembering. She had almost no knowledge of boats, but she knew they floated, and she knew they protected human people, like houses. The thing she was approaching now looked like a floating house; therefore it was a boat.
It was a boat, and it stank. The bluebird was flying into a headwind, and the smell of the boat nearly choked her. She wondered how the human people could stand to live in that stink. Breathing as shallowly as she could, the bluebird angled toward the boat.
The next thing she noticed as she approached was the noise. She heard the crying and grunting and bellowing of animals, most of whose voices she didn't recognise, and she heard birdsong. This was a shock. She hadn't realised until now how silent the sky had been lately, aside from the ever-present hissing of the rain. It hadn't occurred to her to wonder where all the birds had gone, but now she did. Surely some of them, the gulls and geese and ducks and swans, were better suited for flying in the rain than she. Some of them should have survived, but she had seen none. Now, though, she swooped toward the boat, crying out gratefully.
The voice that answered hers was one she knew. Startled, she landed and came face to face with her old neighbour the raven. "Well!" he said, ruffling his feathers. "This is certainly a surprise."
"I hoped I'd find you," the bluebird said. "I--" She stopped, for the raven was shaking his head.
"No," he said. "No, no, this isn't good. You can't stay here. I'm sure it isn't allowed. He wouldn't like it."
"Why not?" the bluebird asked. "I don't eat much. You know that."
"It isn't that," the raven muttered. He looked embarrassed.
"Well, what, then?"
"I told you, He wouldn't approve, that's all. The human person who built this ark--this boat," he amended, "he says He sees everything." The emphasis made it obvious that the raven was talking about two different people. "What he says is, the world's going to be destroyed--is being destroyed, really--because we're all wicked. Except those of us on the ark--the boat--of course." He preened.
"Can't you hide me or something?" the bluebird asked. "You know I'm not bad."
"I can't!" the raven protested. "Not for forty days!"
The bluebird stared at him. "Forty days?"
"Well, about that. They said forty days, and it's been--maybe twenty or thirty--" He frowned. "I'm not sure. It's been awhile. But it was forty to start with."
"Forty days?" the bluebird repeated. "I can't keep going for another--that many days. This is ridiculous. You know it's ridiculous. What's wrong with you?"
"I just can't help you," the raven said. "I don't know what He'd do to me. Tell the human people to send me off the boat, maybe. I couldn't survive, I'd die. You don't know the sorts of awful things we've seen--"
"I've seen enough," the bluebird said, thinking of the village on the mountain, of the forest sliding into the sea. "You're asking me to die. You know that."
"I'm afraid," the raven said in a whisper. "I'm sorry."
She knew it would be useless to argue with that, and there was no-one else on the boat with whom to speak. "Can you at least let me have a little food before I go?" she asked.
"We barely have enough for ourselves," the raven told her. He didn't look at all hungry to the bluebird, who felt as though she were light enough to float away without wings. But she heard the unspoken message behind the words: You're going to die anyway, so why should we waste food on you? Maybe she only imagined the words, but she was sure the thought had crossed his mind.
"I'll stay nearby," she said. "Just in case." She was not going to beg. She was not. With all the control she could muster, she hopped up to the railing and took off, heading westward into the sun.
There were no landing places now. When the sun set, she was still flying, hopelessly searching the unbroken water. She tried to set down on the surface, paddling her feet as she'd seen ducks do, and it worked after a fashion, but it was incredibly awkward and she certainly couldn't sleep that way.
She looked up at the black sky and listened to the rain on the water. It had gotten so she barely noticed how wet she was. Flying kept her warm during the day, but she was used to shivering until she fell asleep. Now she had stopped shivering, and she felt almost warm. It was really very dark. She missed the stars.
A piercing whistle screamed in her ear. She flailed, lost her equilibrium and barely managed to keep her head above water. "What are you trying to do, drown me?" she shrieked at the raven, or tried to; her voice was almost gone. "What are you doing here?"
"Rescuing you, actually," the raven said ruefully. "And not doing a very good job of it. If it was any darker I'd have missed you."
"It's dark enough." The bluebird squinted at him. "Why did you come back for me? I thought you said they would kill you for helping me."
"I should have helped you anyway," the raven said. "If I'm not kind enough to help an old friend of mine, I'm too wicked to be allowed on the ark anyway." He added with a wry tilt of his head, "Besides, I had nothing better to do."
"Thank you," the bluebird said quietly. The raven ruffled his feathers, embarrassed.
"Come on," he said, "let's go. We won't be back before midnight even if we start now; I've been hours looking for you. Can you fly?"
"I think so," the bluebird said. "It's cold, but--"
"You'll warm right up once we get in the air," the raven assured her. "Let's go."
It was not his fault, and no-one could say it was. He had never tried to fly in such thick rain before, or in such unfamiliar territory. He had never had to locate a floating object, or to extrapolate a course, and so it was that when they reached the place where he thought the boat had been, it was, of course, no longer there. The bluebird, who had been too exhausted to do more than follow, set down on the surface of the water and bowed her head.
"I don't understand it," the raven said. "I'm sure this is where it was."
"We're not going to get there tonight, are we?" the bluebird asked. There was no accusation there: exhaustion had drained all colour from her voice.
"I don't know if we're going to get there at all," the raven admitted. "I'm not sure where we go from here, to be honest."
"It can't be that hard to find," the bluebird said. She launched herself from the surface of the water, which was too cold, and flapped around in a circle. "It's a big boat."
The raven refrained from explaining how small the boat was, in comparison to an ocean the size of the world. "We can try," he said. "Do you want to start now?"
They flew, and in awhile--how many hours, there was no way to tell--there was a break in the black horizon. "There it is," the raven whispered. The bluebird didn't answer, merely continued to fly, her head down, with no sign that she had heard. "It's the boat," the raven said.
It was not the boat. It was a tiny pinnacle of rock, the peak of what must have been one of the highest mountains in the world. They angled toward it anyway; it was something, at least.
The rock on which they found themselves was wet and slick, and nothing grew there. "It must have just come up," the raven said, then realised what that had to mean. He nudged the bluebird. "Hey! The water's going down!"
The bluebird didn't answer. The raven poked her with a tentative claw. "Are you listening to me? It's almost over!"
He looked closer at the bluebird, and realised with a peculiar suddenness that she was dead. It didn't upset him as much as it might have, but it did strike him abruptly that he was now alone, and lost, and with nothing to eat, his own death would probably follow in short order.
"Well," he said to himself, "I tried, anyway."
Three days later, the sun rose over the little island in a clear sky. The two birds lay side by side on the narrow shore. The sun shone on them, the wind blew over them, the sand covered them, and where they had lain, there grew a tree.
It sprouted from the sandy soil as though trying all by itself to make up for the millions of trees that had been drowned. Its growth was so quick that one could almost have seen it, if there had been anyone around to watch. The sun shone on it, the rain (which was very seldom now) watered it, and inch by inch the sea receded.
And out of the southwest one bright morning, there came a shining white arrow: a dove, flying toward the sunrise. From far away she spied the green of the tree's new leaves, and she turned her flight toward it. She alighted on a branch and sat a few moments, clucking to herself, then, taking a sprig of leaves in her beak, she flew back westward to bring the news that the flood was over.
The End.