Thread by @MXS_Nightmare

In remoter eras of man, bright & formative years rendering our lives today colorless & faint, dwelled many strange, often wondrous creatures.

These lay scattered throughout the world - some were a local phenomenon & bound solely to this earth; others were shimmers of elsewhere.

In one of the relatively isolated little kingdoms of the older world was an ancient forest near a sea.

Its trees grew so tall, dense, & dark that very little light fell toward the shoreline beneath them, as it was an eastward facing shoreline, caught between two high mountains.

In the old forest, which was really just an enormous ravine, lived an unusual bird:

During the day, when the light was fair, it sang a song that was cheerful and soft, short and sweeter than honey wine.

When the light grew faint, the bird grew melancholy and sang differently.

Any creature who heard the cry of this bird (except for its mate, others of its kind, and animals without such ability), once the sun sank behind the trees, was stricken with the most terrible grief it had ever known - and it died before the morning, without fail.

Some miles away from the enchanted forest lived a tribe of simple but beautiful people, people who traded in bright red and white beads, shells, and an abundance of turquoise and soapstone.

One day, a different kind of merchant came to call, sent by a king in search of wonders.

The tribesmen told him of forbidden treasures: amber washing up to collect in treacherous sea-caves, gold hiding in evil quicksand beneath certain waterfalls; things of that kind, but the merchant was unsatisfied.

Then, one of the villagers told him of the terrible, sacred bird.

The merchant considered this, and instructed his men to build a cage of iron, surrounded by a wall of woolen felt, and finally, encased by wood, so that a door might be lifted in order to tend to the bird, without destroying the cage's ability to dampen its deadly night music.

He led a band of foreign soldiers into the ancient forest, a region in which the natives dared not set foot; before evening fell, they captured most cruelly, with the use of nets, and managed to imprison in the cage a member of this most rare and supernatural race of birds.

With aid from the increasingly reticent natives, the merchant established food and other provisions for the creature, and set out in his ship toward the land of his birth.

Behind him, in the gathering shadows, a cloud rose from the northern shore to settle in the village.

Unbeknownst to the foreigners, a flock of birds had arisen from the forbidden forest to track them to the village, in search of their missing companion.

When he was not found, the other birds landed & began to sing: softly, slowly... until the village was full of deep wailing.

The merchant was many miles distant by the time the sun rose into the eastern sky.

He did not know of the fate of the villagers, nor would he have cared much, for he was a cold and ruthless man, without heart.

But all the same, they lay stricken in the sands of their betrayal.

When he reached the capitol, the merchant discharged his cargo, along with rudimentary instructions, simply not to let the bird sing at night.

He conveyed the dangers of failing to hutch the creature before sunset, collected his reward, and departed.

Later in the month, the king planned the attendance of a great solar festival of unprecedented brilliance and expense, giving a great feast in honor of his pursuit of knowledge and wonder.

He had timed the celebration of this day most cleverly, to coincide with a coming eclipse.

It was noonday when the kingdom's subjects gathered in and around the palace, to honor the wisdom and glory of their king: he who would save them all from ignorance & the darkness.

It was about one o'clock when the bird was presented, & then the eclipse began to darken the sky.

As the shadows grew, lost their edges, and coalesced, the banquet hall was flooded by a red-brown darkness, thick & strangely vibrant, like oil.

The people were then uneasy; the king raised his hands kindly in preparation for his great speech, but then, the bird began to sing.

Losing the shyness formerly inflicted by the light & by the milling crowd, the imprisoned bird raised its voice in a clear, plaintive note: music that seemed to spiral up & away toward heaven, an arrow of pure music fired by Apollo himself, striking every heart in the room.

The king ground his teeth in terrible pain & grief, hot tears pouring uncontrollably from his eyes, obscuring everything around him - except for the form of the merchant who had sold him the bird of paradise.

He stood there, the harbinger of destruction - untouched by his crime.

The other attendants roiled and moaned, in varying states of distress, but slowly, they all came to realize that the king wasn't crying tears of sorrow, but instead, terrible rage.

Turning on the merchant as one, the celebrants tore him brutally limb from limb, as the bird sang.

By the time the frenzy of the mob had died down, the song of the bird had reached a similarly quiet point; the eclipse was ending.

The bird looked at them wisely, looked at the king, then at the heavy chain holding its leg to its perch.

The king told a man to loose the chain.

The bird spread its wings immediately and flew away through an open awning, the sun casting a scintilla of rainbows against the wall opposing, through the feathers of the bird.

It was the most beautiful thing the people had ever seen.

Then one by one, they laid down and died.

*finis*

@threadreaderapp unroll