Margalo's POV.

It's another day in paradise, and I wake up to the seventh of rain.

The color that backdrops our nesting site is an ugly gray, maybe two shades lighter than black. This, combined with a constant thunder in the distance generates about as much enthusiasm as sobs heard down a hallway. Might as well have been sobbing at this rate, anyway. The auditory manifestation of a dozen little birds stuck in this tree for a week.

Another storm. Another day trapped under this canopy, cold, wet and hungry. There's no fruit here, or at least none that can be eaten. The tree and the trail of ones directly behind are picked clean, either by us or, as the last two were, by the birds who'd been here before us. Pits are all over the ground, around the trunk. The berries of the nearby bushes are sour and mushy, some even moldy. Their unwanted halves were thrown away with the pits, buried now under a foot of standing water. Before we made an emergency landing here, I wouldn't even entertain the thought of picking through the rot. At no time in New York, even on my worst days, was I that desperate. I was sure there would be something better to eat once we were finally able to go on our way. Now I'm so hungry that I'm actually tempted to dig through the mud for the rotten berries.

No matter how you look at it, we can't stay here.

But we're alive.

Don't get me wrong! There are days on the migration that I almost wish never end. The beautiful, colorful days when skies are clear for flight, and landing at any time day or night is just a suggestion. And then there are these days that make it hard not to think of the comforts of home. If you were a bird like me who was lucky enough to have one of those, anyway.

Makes you wonder why anybody goes through with all this. Industrialization has brought into question the point of North American migration entirely for a lot of birds. It may not be paradise, but if you know your way around the city, you could find sufficient shelter and enough food to tie you over until spring. It's not like the birds gain anything from it either. Nothing monetary. Maybe some experience. Respect. Memories and adventure. Becoming a real woman. Maybe that's enough for most girls to send them back on this sojourn every year.

I know what sends me back here every year. There's not a day that goes by when he doesn't cross my mind. People have this perception that he's mild. Pure. Innocent. But there's something solid and mature under that awkwardness. It widens the chasm between us, the enormous gap that includes all that makes us different from each other, bird and mouse. Now that we're a couple, that gap only seems more real.

I only hope the skills I've learned, the responsibility I've gained on the way have led me to grow as a person. Undue the years that have made me as bitter I was when he found me. To reach him the way I feel like I need to. Shit. If I just could learn how to react to things without sarcasm, that'd be nice.

I would never have gotten here without him. Certainly not this far. He's there when I open my eyes. The memory of his gentle voice in my ear, even though the floor next to me is empty, inspires me on the best of days, and his simple words of encouragement pushes me through the worst. I lean back against the tree trunk and pull my head from under the crook of my wing. There's a kink in my neck that needs working out, probably from sleeping tensed up, trying to stay warm. I shake out my feathers, flex my upper wings, and step out of the mess that is my nest.

To call it amateur would be putting it nicely. A weak twig snaps from under the crudely weaved barrier running around the perimeter of the floor. Something scrapes at my leg as I get up, making me grit my teeth. Instinct has helped me in a number of ways since I left New York for the first time, but I can't rely on it for everything. It sure hasn't helped me make a semi-decent nest so far. I never do. And I'm too embarrassed about it to accept help with them.

It sounds weird, but the one reason I want to get better at this is because of Stuart. Maybe he wouldn't appreciate it in the same way another bird might, but I want to show him what I've learned. How I've changed. Even though I've decided that being a homemaker will forever and always, not be, my thing.

Dolly emerges from her nest on the branch to my left. As if our minds are connected, the first thing she does, after taking in the look of the weather, is look my way. She is so fit, so pretty, it's hard to believe she's a grandmother. But today, the skin around her eyes is lined. The kind of marks that don't come without a bag of experience and a few tufts of wisdom.

Those eyes are looking at me. At the end of my third year, Dolly convinced our original chief, Cleo, to train me, so that I could lead my own flock someday. I thought she was crazy. And now that I'm getting a real taste of the responsibility, I know she's crazy.

After years of serving under different flock leaders, this is the first time ever that Dolly is playing the role of chief. It seems like such a natural promotion, but whenever she was asked, Dolly always opted for the advisor rank—to be the guide, rather than the final say. This year she didn't have that choice. Cleo, her current chief, and the only one I've ever known, got into a major accident earlier this year. With her injuries still on the mend and nobody else eligible for the job readily available, Dolly had to take the ropes for our flock. 'Life's a circus, sweetie pie,' she told me the day she explained the situation. 'And the show's gotta go on.'

But a job of that importance still requires a second in command. And as my friend, one of the only real friends I've ever had, I wasn't about to leave her in the lurch. I agreed.

For her, it seems like such a natural promotion, so earned, and yet this is the first time I've seen Dolly falter over anything. I don't think she's ever been in a single tree longer than two days, and we're going on our seventh. Nothing but branch hopping for an entire week, climbing tree over tree in search of scraps of food. The decision to either fly through the rain or stay put would be a calculated move for the entire party. I can't imagine the stress that's on her shoulders. I can't picture what it feels like to have the safety and success of so many birds on her shoulders.

I hope I never, ever have to.

But I know for a fact that our time is running out. If we had enough food, we might be okay. It's not like we'll die of dehydration, anyway… Sure, we'd still be wet and cold and at each other's throats, but at least we wouldn't starve. These birds can only go another day without some sort of nourishment before the weakest of our flock become too weak to move. I'm already past the point of drinking water from the leaves to fill my stomach. It worked for a little while, but once my stomach figured out it wasn't food, the nausea was unbearable.

I nod at Dolly. She nods back. Huddle time.

We fly to the middle most branch between us to talk it over. It takes less than a single second to move from one branch to the other, but I feel the difference in the air immediately. It's one thing to be pelted and potentially blinded by the rain. But the real problem is the air pressure. It makes the short flight feel like a workout on my unexercised wings. If we leave now, we'll be fighting the right to stay airborne itself. And the longer the distance, the harder it will be on everyone. Another factor that makes this decision difficult.

But we need food. And our chief might need it more than anyone else. She needs the energy.

"I'm really worried," I tell Dolly. I don't say who I'm worried about.

"That's the mood, sugar." But a reassuring smile finds its way to her face. The kind only a mother could muster in such dire straits. "I don't think tree-hoping is viable anymore… You thinkin' what I'm thinkin'?"

I respond with a question, just as quietly. "Does that mean…?"

"Well, if all the trees in this area are as picked over as this one, we'll have to push on through to Prairie Crossing," Dolly says. "It's the nearest benchmark."

"How far is that?"

"Five or six miles. But it's a farmers' town. Guaranteed food stop. We'd be mighty dumb not to head straight there."

Haha . In this weather, five or six miles will feel like thirty. Especially for Jasmine, who's wingspan is a fraction of ours. The same bird who had already fainted during flight a few years back because she'd flown too long without food. She needs our backdrafts to keep her aloft, to keep in formation, but when the air pressure drops, she'd feel it the hardest. That day she fell, I pulled her out of the water by the ankles. I know I could carry someone her size a short distance on a clear day if I had to. Today, it wouldn't even be an option. I'm weak with hunger and anxiety, and it's packing my head with doubt. I don't trust myself to do anything right.

"You think they're up for it?"

"I'm not sure." I sit up straighter in my perch and look at the others. Between bits of light coming through the patched leaf roof, I see them yelling and jabbing and squabbling over on the other branches. They're restless. Good. Even if they're hungry, most of them seem to still have plenty of energy to make it through a lighter shower. It won't be easy. It won't be pleasant. But it can be done.

We have two options. Either we take our chances and leave today, at the peak of light, or we stay at the latest until tomorrow morning, hoping the rain finally screws off and we'll have smooth flying.

My stomach is a plastic grocery bag, emptied and tossed into the wind. Guilt is the only thing abundant enough to fill the void—that and rainwater. Dolly wants to know what I think will be best for the other girls. But it's not them I'm really worried about.

The flock leader is the last person you'd want to think of as weak. Chiefs have to cut the wind for everyone else in their pack. And Dolly hasn't looked the best these days. When she looks at me, her body sags. The kids are young and healthy. While I feel confident that everybody, including little Jasmine, will make it through the shower without breakfast, I'm not so sure Dolly will. She's given up her share of the not so sour berries we'd found to feed everyone else. She needs nourishment if she's gonna stay aloft.

If something happens to her…

I can't be left alone with this responsibility. I just can't. I'm not ready.

Even if we run similar routes every year, some of these locations are still new to me.
At the end of the day, this is the perils of the wild. There's only so much we can do to protect the smallest.

"Maybe we outta consider breaking up." Dolly's voice is sober. "Willow, you and me. Three different directions. We'll take a few bites, then rustle up somethin' for the lil' ones and come straight back."

"We could do that." I looked over the edge of the branch. The nearby plains must have flooded, turning the floor beneath us into a swamp. The water below was deep. Too deep for anything our size that needed air, and too muddy to see. "But what about when we're gone?"

"You mean," Dolly leans forward and sees what I see. "If someone were to fall out the tree now..." It's like she reads my mind. But she has the courage to say it out loud. "Rescue's ain't gonna be an option."

Definitely not, if all the adults left. But that wasn't my only concern.

"Surely they can sit still for a few hours, don'tcha think? We're still in the best spot, well tucked out of sight… but then again?"

I stared at the water and saw ripples that hadn't been made by the raindrops. Morning light gradually turns the skies from black to gray, but the world under the treetops is full of shadows, anything further than twenty feet away is shrouded in darkness. The limited light has turned the flooding beneath us pitch black.

When I was a nestling, my older brother liked getting a rise out of me, filling my head with images of monsters that posed danger outside the nest. Mom scolded him for making me paranoid, and maybe giving me reason to keep postponing my first flight. But she always took hold of me when she saw me near the edge. Especially In the dark, when creatures with night vision came out to eat.

My brother wasn't lying about the monsters. It's just that mom didn't want me to know about them yet.

A raindrop hits me on the tip of my beak. I'm back, and it's the present. The drop rolls off the tip and falls down below, making ripples in the black abyss, just several feet away. My heart picks up speed. The forest is flooding, and as a result, the 'floor' that was once twenty feet away is getting closer to the treetops.

And who knows what else with it. "Just because we haven't seen any dangers so far," I say, "doesn't mean they're not there."

"And how!" And Dolly shoots me an impressed look.

It's settled. We're not taking any chances. We're all going—all of us, together. We're gonna head out at noon, or at least what we roughly estimate is noon. It's even harder to tell time without a clear view of the sun.

The others aren't thrilled about our plan, and the whole time you can hear squalling and complaining in our wake. Gradually, we all rise from the treetops, spattered with rain, flying after Dolly. It takes twice as long, but soon enough, we slide into formation.

I feel like I have to pump my wings twice as fast just to stay in the air. In this weather, the air pressure is so low that any backdrafts the adults at the front create are weak. Because of this, I don't have the luxury of flying to the back of the formation every now and again to guard the others from the tail. I just have to rely on Willow to report if she notices anything coming up on the right of our V. For someone so slim, her wings are massive, and the smoothness of her flight more than double makes up for her awkwardness in speech.

We're dodging raindrops, just to find more. I squint as a drop on my beak splatters near my eye. I wish I'd lowered my goggles before we took off, now my wings were occupied. But if the others could make do without this human-like aid, I'd have to, too.

His laughter carries me. His smile pushes me forward. The urge to remember what it feels like to be near him—really— is what's keeping me going. I fly like I'm about to crash into his open arms, and he's going to hold me, and tell me he's proud of me. And for once, I'm going to accept that someone feels that way about me.

By the time we arrive at our benchmark town, we're twice as normally tired and soaked to the bone. The skies have gone from gray to white, and we fly through an ajar door, right into an empty barn. Thankfully, it's free of cats and any other occupants that wouldn't welcome us in for the duration of the storm.

I land on a dry plank in the rafters, and feeling it's sturdy enough, I shiver and sigh. It's over. I breathe in and out through my mouth until my breathing slows, and then I take off my scarf and wring it out. Water drips from the straps of my cap onto my shoulders, the brim onto my upper beak. As I do this, I take an appreciatively long look at my pin, its hairline crack hardly visible to anyone unless they knew it was there. close my eyes for just a moment, putting myself back in the Little's living room. The fireplace lit, a small, soft towel being wrapped around my back, over the shoulder bend of my wings. Shadows dancing off his dorky face…

I feel a rough smack against my back. " Gah! "

When I jolt, my scarf and pin fall to the hay-covered floor below.

"Mighty fine executive decision, little C.I.T.!" Dolly laughs what I can only imagine is relief. She may be a granny, but she can give one hell of a slap, even half starved to death. Imagine if she was mad instead. I'd hate to be one of her kids. Her age lines are deepened In a smile. "We made it! And no worse for wear!"

"I just don't like taking chances with threats I can't see." I shrug. I was tired of being stuck in my lame attempt at a nest, with wet leaves and muddy sticks. "Besides, I wanted to leave, anyway. Getting stir crazy back there."

"I know you don't think highly of yourself, Margalo, but I just want you to know I'm proud of you. Look, I know ya'll don't like talking about it. I can tell based on the bits and pieces you've told me that you've been through the wringer in your life before this. You've got the kind of skill that makes you leadership material."

Leadership material. God, would she lay off with this? I shouldn't even be a chief-in-training. I'm no gifted woods-woman. I've got no instinct about these things. The only reason I'm always looking over my shoulder is because for the last several years, I was constantly aware of a single predator watching my every move. Not that I expect her to get it. Even Dolly, the only person in the flock I trust to confide some grimmer details of my past, knows more about my boyfriend back in Manhattan than anything before him. She only has vague knowledge about the Falcon.

I fake a smile and join the girls as they chomp down on moist fruit from a crate in the corner. I hold a piece in my wings but it stays there. I can't eat it. As soon as nobody's looking, I drop the food my body has been aching for, snag my soggy cap and leave the barn, ducking back out of the storm to the nearest tree branch with dense leaves, for some amount of privacy. Pale yellow was emerging from behind the clouds, but it's a trick to get the hydrophobic out of their homes, since it's still drizzling.

And with the last of my energy, I crawl behind a curtain of wide leaves, and empty my stomach of the rest of the rainwater.

It's just another day in paradise.

Hey it's Moza again, back with more bullshit.

This new story is a batch of scraps from Margalo's migration time. I'll upload them as they get finished (or at least finished enough to be cohesive for posting. Typos may be present. Feel free to point them out to me.)

Hope to do more drawings of Dolly, Cleo, Willow and the other birds who play a prominent role in these bits. I have a distinct idea of how the first three look at least, IDK if it comes through the description as well.