Menolyrical; Taking Flight - an FFHT episode.

Over at Murphy and Stanley's place it is last Friday of the month story day... click to read more!!!

Normally I use a photo to prompt my stories and this is no exception; we are also given a sentence by M&S which we have to highlight in the story.

This month it is "That was the first time I ever..."
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Namaste. Vivek here. I was just sitting on my favourite tree the other morning and had a bit of a flashback. I realised I was sitting at the point - yes the very point - from which I made my fledging flight!

It was about five years back. There had been two of us in the nest. 

Instead of the usual Mango or Neem trees, mother chose this foreign specimen called 'Eucalypt'. How did I know that? Well, the tree is on an ashram and down below, not long after Aachar and I cracked our eggs, we overhead some voices. One of them was someone from Australia who was all excited at finding a tree from her homeland here.

She and her mates also got rather excited on the day the Rock Python started crawling up our tree. They had all been waiting for Aachar and me to fledge and luckily someone was around when the snake slithered up the trunk. They yelled and others came and lots of stones got thrown and lots of banging of things and then mother flew back in a big hurry and started to peck at that pesky invader.  Mother managed to get a good grip of the beasty and flew off with it wriggling and writhing. We were all thinking that she might just drop it into the village on the other side of the ashram wall... but no! She took it all the way to the lake and dropped it in the water!!!

It was the talk of the ashram for about 87 hours after that. However, the buzz settled and moved on to the next bit of disturbance. As I had grown larger than Aachar, I needed to shift things around a bit in the nest. Horror of horrors...

No one was more distressed than myself that Aachar fell. Mother came very quickly when I cried out and she flew down to Aachar on the ground. Nothing to be done though.

She hardly left the nest after that, only going long enough to obtain food; which was also not far, for there were plenty rats around. A few weeks later I started to stretch my wings and creep along the branches of the home tree. Mother brought less and less food for me now, as she wanted to encourage me to take off. 

Then the morning came. That was the first time I ever wandered out of the cover of the leaves and into the wide open.  I don't mind telling you it was very hairy scary! I looked across and got a surprise. There was the Australian who had been so excited about my home tree. She was watching me closely and seemed to be waving to me. She kept flapping her hands up and down. She looked for all the world like mother did when she came in to land. I took a deep breath... then leaned forward and fell from the branch. The wind tickled but felt oh so very good. I remembered the Australian flapping her hands. I tried to copy her. ..........WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.....

LOOK AT ME!!!!!!!

We won't talk about the first landing attempt. Suffice to say it wasn't pretty.  However, I kept trying and soon got very clever at my aerial capers.   Sigh... well, there you have it. A memory shared.