Feathers in the Wind
On a gentle spring morning, a girl named Elara wandered through the wildflower trails that bordered the forest near her grandmother’s cottage. Elara was eleven, curious-eyed and always barefoot when the weather allowed it. Her heart often seemed to beat in rhythm with birdsong, and she believed trees whispered secrets if you listened long enough.
That morning, while chasing a monarch butterfly, she stumbled upon a nest nestled low in the crook of a bush. Inside were four delicate blue eggs, glinting in the early light like tiny sky-colored marbles. Elara gasped in delight, crouching beside the nest with wonder painted across her face.
She waited and watched. Hours passed, and no bird came. Her brow furrowed with concern.
"What if their mother left them? What if they need help?" she whispered aloud.
That night, Elara couldn't sleep. The thought of those tiny eggs alone in the dark forest filled her with a fierce protectiveness. By dawn, she'd made up her mind. She tiptoed out with a shoebox lined with cotton and carefully, reverently, carried the nest home.
Her grandmother noticed the box as Elara set it beside the window and began researching how to hatch bird eggs. When she explained, her grandmother simply smiled gently and handed her a book: "The Wild Belongs to the Wind."
Days passed. Elara tended to the eggs like a mother hen—warm lights, quiet lullabies, and hopeful eyes. She imagined the birds would grow to know her as their guardian, maybe even stay and sing for her from the willow tree in the yard.
But the more she read, the more questions stirred in her.
Birds learn from their parents—their song, how to find worms, how to leap from the edge of a branch and trust the air to hold them. Could she teach any of that? Could she really give them what the wild could?
One evening, after watching a mother robin feed her chicks outside, something shifted in her. She looked at the eggs and finally understood: love, sometimes, means letting go.
The next morning, Elara returned to the bush in the forest. She placed the nest back, just as she had found it, and whispered, “I’ll still visit, but I know now—I’m not your home.”
She left with a heart both heavy and light.
Weeks passed, and one morning, Elara returned to the spot and found the nest empty—but nearby, in the branches above, a flurry of wings and chirps erupted. A robin, red-breasted and proud, perched and sang.
Elara stood silently, smiling up into the leaves. In that song, she heard something more than melody. She heard trust. She heard nature saying thank you.
And she sang back, in her own way—with the wind in her hair and her feet on the soil, part of the world, just as it should be.
