(Hi, y'all! Hope you enjoy this next chapter.)
Chuck sat fireside, the starry sky forming the silhouette of a lone acacia tree. The crisp, yet wavering flames were blurred by tears in his eyes. He stared at the moon, and whispered to the heavens above.
"I have messed up again. My power is like a lightning bolt, powerful yet only striking at the most highest, most prominent point. I have gained much knowledge in this life, but what has it all been for? I am alone, first without wife, then without friends." He then realized: who was he speaking to? The crickets chirping their melodies in the dark? The nocturnal animals prowling through the night for food? Then he realized, and he bowed his head in reverence to his converser.
One thing I have learned from these journeys, he thought, is the tranquility of the night, free from the obstreperous clamor of me and my peers. I value the night: silent, yet watching with its millions of eyes, showing light only when one adjusts themselves to it. The night only observes, it listens to the cricket in the grass chirping a mating call, it watches as a monkey sips nectar off a juicy baobab flower. As empty as the night is, it is still respected and treasured, it has form and shape, and can be described in an infinite number of ways. The fire extinguished itself as the time reached nearly midnight.
The only reason why I have felt sadness in banishment was the longing to return to what I was supposed to be, one who drank blood and ate sawdust for victory, powered by a slingshot. But this escape has not deprived me of what I hear and see, but opened my eyes to what I didn't hear and see. Now I understand. Now I do not know, but I do understand. He closed his eyes and went to sleep.
Shortly after drifting off, he was rudely awaked by a loud scream.
"Hey, Chuck!" The three blues belted in his face, the red bags underneath their eyes strangely reminiscent of a nightmare with three psychopathic clowns.
Chuck loud scream first stemmed from utter shock, then from utter fear (Imagine what a scary nightmare that would be!), then from utter anger. "In case you don't know, I'm sleeping, you little…you little…" The blues giggled.
The peace of the night, Chuck, remember the night. "Ahem." Chuck corrected himself. After a long pause, he began, "So, where are you three headed to? And so late at night?"
"We're off to see the Mighty Eagle!" The blues declared, appearing to be very jovial and peppy (and wide awake, considering the time of day).
Chuck couldn't help but scoff. "Hate to break it to you, kids, but this Mighty Eagle is just a sham." He remembered when he was a kid, and his parents told stories of the Mighty Eagle: able to kill off all the pigs, no matter the circumstances. As the story went, if you threw a can of sardines into the pigs' fort, the Eagle would charge, decimating their forces. But finding sardines is near impossible in the grasslands, and so this fable faded into legend. When he and Red were kids, he remembered trying to find the lair of the Mighty Eagle: according to legend, he was under the lip of a cave, marked by an eternally burning oil lamp, and would only appear at night. But the search was always in vain, so eventually their parents warned them not to venture at night for their own safety, and told them that the legend of the Mighty Eagle was "a way for the Pigs to kill gullible young Birds".
"But he is real! I'm sure of it!" Jake's affirmations resounded among his two brothers, who nodded in agreement.
"The story says if you find him, he will give you life-changing advice, or even grant you your wish!" Jake continued.
"But you always have to tell the truth, or he won't do anything. The Mighty Eagle knows if you're telling the truth or not." Jim added.
Chuck was getting tired of their childish fairy tales. The Flock should have never told them the legend of the Mighty Eagle; maybe when they were older. But wait a second, Chuck thought. No one in the Flock has told them that legend. I even asked Matilda if she ever told them that story; she said she'd never tell them something so harmful to them (many young birds have fallen into danger for pursing the truth of the legend). So how did they know all this? Chuck asked them.
"Because he told us he was real." They said in unison.
"You've met the Mighty Eagle!?" Chuck was in disbelief.
"Not in real life, silly!" Jim laughed. "He appeared in our dream!"
Chuck's face sank. Not another unprovable children's tale! Before he could rebuke the blues, Jay started talking.
"We're not bluffing! See, when we normally go to bed, we have that scary dream where we're all in…terrible pain…right?" Talking about it made all the blues cringe.
"But a few nights ago it was different. In our dream, we were just about to die a painful death when a big shadow loomed over us. Suddenly, all our painful scars healed, and all three of us were nursed back to life. Right, guys?" All three of the blues agreed to having the same dream.
"And this shadow dropped us off at the lip of a cave, and he told us he was the Mighty Eagle, and as long as we told the truth, he would give us advice and grant our wishes. And after that we never had the bad dream again."
Chuck was silent and pensive. He had just come to the realization of the beauty and the wisdom of the silence and the blank of the night. Wasn't the tale of Mighty Eagle the same thing? A legendary figure, not seen, not heard, but somehow known? He chose to trust in this philosophy, so it was only natural that he decided to come along with the blues to seek the Mighty Eagle.
"Let's go, blues. Let's seek the Mighty Eagle." And so they went.