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“I didn’t realise I’d be joining you,” Faye sighed, trudging through the long grass.
“Of course you are! It was your idea!” Colin insisted, fiddling with some buttons on his camera. “And you like birds, don’t you?”
“Hm. Not as much as you.” Faye glanced to the side. “…What about that lady from the orchestra? Do you think she’d come?”
Colin frowned. “How’d you mean? Like a..?”
“Like an anything. Maybe she’d enjoy it.”
“Uh… I dunno if she would.” Colin turned his attention back to fidgeting with the camera. “Well, I have no idea, actually. But probably not. I don’t even know if she’d, um…”
“It’s as easy as just asking, you know,” Faye interrupted, rolling her eyes. “You might just enjoy some company, every once in a while.”
Colin laughed. “I don’t think you’re great with this kinda stuff, Faye. But it’s fine. I’ve always got you for company, right?” He finally managed to click something into place, and the screen on his camera lit up. “Aha!”
Faye clapped her hands in delight. “Ooh! Find something to take a photo of!”
Colin tried messing with the different settings to take wide shots, then a picture of a tree, then a dreadful picture of himself, which Faye laughed at. But he felt he was getting the hang of it. “Is there something small I can try? I should test the zoom settings before I try anything moving…”
Colin scanned the grass for something nice to photograph, then froze.
Faye caught his gaze, and leant down to pick up the offending object from the ground. It was a small, brown feather. “Boooring,” she remarked.
“I was just thinking…” Colin looked up at the trees wistfully. “Do you think it could be out there, somewhere? The same one?”
“You mean the bird? That one you rescued as a kid?” Faye tilted her head in thought. “Depends. It was a long time ago. How long do birds live?”
Colin sighed.
“I wasn’t kidding. I meant it,” Faye insisted. She met his eyes. “How long do birds live?”
He tensed up a little. “I-I don’t know… As long as they need to, I guess.”
“Hmm…” Faye observed the feather for a few more seconds, then shot Colin an impish grin, and tossed it over her shoulder.
“H-hey!”
“Who cares? We’ll find more interesting stuff than that!” Faye took off into the forest, holding up her dress as she skipped over a stream. “C’mon!” she called over her shoulder, waving an arm. “You dragged me out here! Show me some proper birds!”
Colin stared at the discarded feather in the grass. His hand briefly hovered over his camera, then he reminded himself there was no point. Instead, he turned to chase his friend into the woods. “Faye! Wait up!”
As Colin stumbled through the trees, still calling out, he accidentally sent something small and furry scurrying into a bush. “Oh!” he exclaimed, out loud, by accident. “Didn’t mean to startle you!”
The bush didn’t respond. He knelt down, keeping perfectly still. After a few seconds, the bush rustled again, and a brown squirrel darted up a tree and out of sight. Colin didn’t have any time to reach for his camera.
Something slower, he decided.
He was about to move on when some movement in the tree caught his eye, and he put a hand over his eyes to squint at it. It was a smallish blackbird with one wing outstretched, grooming its feathers with its beak.
He fumbled for his camera, but the bird let out a startled chirp and fluttered away. This time, he let his eyes follow it, and it landed in another tree, giving him a wary look.
With slow, careful movements, he picked up the camera and directed it at the bird. With the click of a button, he finally had a photo. But before he had time to try another, the bird had taken off again, and he lost sight of it. He sighed. Clearly there was a knack to this.
Still, he looked at the display to see what he’d captured, and it wasn’t too bad. A completely normal blackbird, in a completely normal tree, doing absolutely nothing. But it was a photo of a bird, and that was a start.
It occurred to Colin that he didn’t know the bird’s name. A blackbird was his first thought, but did he just think that because it was a bird that was black? There were probably loads of black birds that weren’t blackbirds, right?
…How many bird names did he know? He liked birds, so he assumed it was a lot. But when he thought about it, it didn’t really seem like many at all.
Despite not knowing their names, Colin kept following the sounds of different birds in their trees, squinting up to see if there was anything he could capture. The forest was singing, but it was surprisingly difficult to spot the sources of its songs. It was as if the trees themselves were the ones chirping and trilling and twittering.
Colin wondered if there were any trees he could climb, subconsciously checking for any branches close to the ground that could stretch like a ladder into the sky. But he shook that thought out of his head as soon as he noticed it. As a kid, he’d loved to climb trees, sitting amongst the branches to read, or write, or draw, or do anything else that wasn’t his homework. Some people were afraid of heights, but he’d always felt most at peace when off the ground, closer to the sky. It made perfect sense that he’d end up as a pilot one day. His days of climbing trees were over, now that he could fly instead.
…And he didn’t want to fall and break his camera, either. It was new.
Colin approached a gentle brook, and as he was about to take a break, his eyes caught something: A small, brown bird hopping along the other side. He couldn’t help but let out a gasp.
His memories of that first bird – his first friend – were hazy, and mixed up in imagination. And it had been a long time ago. He wasn’t even sure what’d really happened to her, in the end. In his mind, she’d flown away, but come back one last time to say goodbye. That’s what he liked to remember.
This wasn’t the same bird, of course. Perhaps it wasn’t even the same species. But as it hopped along the grass, Colin felt his heart fill with warmth. It was like seeing an old friend. He pulled out his camera, steadied his hands, and took a single photo. Then he watched. He watched as it leant down to have a drink from the stream, and ruffled its feathers. He watched it look around with bright, curious eyes. He watched it peck at the grass and scoop up a worm to eat. And finally, he watched it take off, and followed its flight through the trees until it vanished from sight.
Goodbye, again…
He glanced down at his camera, and his photo was still there: a little brown bird, perched next to a stream. Completely unremarkable to anyone else, perhaps, but it brought a smile to his face.
As it turned out, birds really were everywhere. The trees and bushes stirred with activity, and the air was always filled with their music, and the more Colin looked, the more he could see them. Every time Colin saw a one, he was fascinated by its movements, its shape, its feathers, and, of course, the way they could glide through the air so effortlessly. They were all so different, too – tiny ones, large ones, different colours, different beaks, different sounds…
They were wonderful. Every single one.
I… I don’t know much about birds, do I?
Colin finally accepted the reality. He’d always been known as someone who liked birds, but perhaps that’d only ever been a story. In this moment, he was surrounded by birds, and they were delightful, and he felt he could watch them forever, but he couldn’t actually put a name to most of them. How strange to think that he’d seen them his whole life, without ever seeing them.
One nameless bird – a tiny one with pretty speckled markings – looked busy at work gathering something in the grass. Eventually, it poked up its head to reveal a beak full of small twigs. It took off, and Colin kept an eye on its course, as he was getting better at doing. It landed in another tree, and he inched closer for a photo. His eyes widened. The bird had landed next to a nest, and there was another tiny bird perched close by. As the first one dropped its twigs and took off again, the second placed them down in some kind of delicate formation. Colin stared at them in awe.
I wonder how they know how to do that? Are they taught? Or do they just… know?
Colin sat himself down by the brook, where he had a good view of the little birds carefully crafting their nest. They paid him no mind, and he continued to take photos. Such sweet little things. Maybe these birds were actually really dull. Maybe people saw them build nests every single day. But he’d never seen it before – or, at least, he’d never noticed it before – and he thought it was incredible.
People had always rolled their eyes when he’d tried to tell his bird stories. Even the kindest of audiences hadn’t been able to conceal how bored they were. But those were stories, Colin considered. These were memories.
Stories and memories… Was there really a difference? A difference that mattered? Colin wasn’t sure. He had a growing feeling that he’d never been sure.
He leant back against a tree and closed his eyes. He let himself appreciate the gentle breeze, the babbling brook, the rustling trees, the soft grass beneath his hands, and the music of a forest alive with birdsong.
One day, this would all be a memory, too.
After some time passed, which could’ve been an hour or could’ve been five minutes, Colin suddenly sat bolt upright, heart racing. He wasn’t supposed to be here alone, was he?
“Faye?” he called out. “Faye? Are you there?”
“Calm down. I’m right here,” said a voice behind him.
He spun round, and indeed, she was. Faye raised an eyebrow at him as she twirled her hair.
Colin sighed. “Sorry, I panicked. I didn’t see you there.” He frowned a little. “I don’t think I’ve seen you since you ran into the forest, actually. Did you wander off?”
“No…” She gave him a thoughtful look. “I think you did. What did you find?”
“Here. I’ll show you.”
Faye sat down next to Colin and peered at the camera. As he flicked through the photos on its tiny display screen, he found words tumbling out of his mouth. Everything he’d seen, everything he’d felt, and how incredible it all was. He paused on the photo of that small brown bird by the brook.
“It’s strange,” he said fondly, “I don’t even know if this is the same type of bird. But to have a real photo to look at like this, after all this time...”
Without warning, he started to tear up, and had to wipe his eyes with his sleeve. Even on this tiny screen, the little brown bird looked so alive. So real. He remembered those bright and curious eyes, and watching it hop around and tweet and fly. Even through a screen, it was as if he could reach out and touch it.
“I really like birds,” said Colin. It was such a simple thing to say – childish, really – but at the same time, it captured everything he felt.
Faye gave him a look. “I thought you already liked birds?”
“…I think I like them properly now. Like I never really saw them before.”
Faye sighed theatrically. “So, all this time… You’ve been a fake bird fan?”
“I… suppose so,” Colin laughed.
Faye grinned, and leant back. “Ha. Looks like this trip did you some good, then.”
“Thanks for the idea, Faye. I’d be lost without you.”
“You think? Seems to me you were doing just fine.”
They sat together in comfortable silence. A few birds fluttered from one tree to another, twittering away. A large one left its tree and soared across the sky with a mighty beat of its wings.
“It’s funny…” Colin followed the bird with his gaze. “They don’t fly away, really. They’re all going somewhere. They’re flying to something. There’s a purpose to it, y’know?”
“And you should probably bear that in mind, if you want to get anywhere as a pilot.”
Colin laughed. “I already know that pilots don’t just vanish into the sky, Faye.”
Faye shrugged. “I wonder, sometimes.” She paused for thought. “So then… Where are you going to fly to?”
Colin bit his lip, and avoided her eyes. “To tell the truth… I’m still not sure.”
There was another pause.
“Speaking of flying… They haven’t moved everything out of the airport yet. I was thinking of paying it one last visit, soon.”
“To say goodbye?”
“Something like that. Do you want to come?”
“…Sure.”
As the two made their way back through the long grass, and the sun was beginning to dip below the horizon, Colin smiled at another pair of birds flying by. Maybe it was to roost, he thought. He’d find out their names when he got home. He’d learn everything. Everything he’d been missing.
He stumbled out of the grass, and glanced behind him. Faye was still there – just lagging behind a bit. As he stopped to wait for her, something occurred to him.
“Hey, Faye… I’ll think about it. Talking to Sofia, I mean.”
Faye smiled at him. “I’m glad to hear it.” She reached the end of the long grass and brushed down her dress, although it was spotless. “I may not always be here, you know.”
Colin bit his lip, and fixed his gaze on the path ahead. “Should we keep going?”
It was a few seconds before he heard Faye’s footsteps pick up again behind him.
After some time, Faye spoke up again. “Hey, Colin?”
They both stopped walking.
“Colin… Keep taking pictures of the birds, okay? I think they’re very special memories to have.”
Colin remembered the sensations of the grass, the wind, the rustling of trees, the gentle rush of rivers and streams, and how beautiful everything was. He remembered watching all those birds, big and small and plain and pretty, hopping around and spreading their wings, and so alive. And that little brown one with the familiar face, washing itself in the stream and chirping out its song.
Those photos he had couldn’t possibly capture all of that. But they were like little windows, showing him something that had happened, and when he looked at them, he was transported to those real, living memories, enveloped in everything he’d felt. A piece of time caught in an image – and the time was a place.
The difference between a memory and a story… Was it something to do with this?
Colin got distracted by some shuffling in a tree, and pulled out his camera without thinking, rushing forwards. Maybe the birds were settling into their nests now?
He stopped himself, and looked back at Faye again with a pang of guilt. But she was sitting on the grass, hands by her side and legs outstretched in front of her. She smiled gently as she caught his glance. “I’m just resting, Colin. You can go on ahead.”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course! I’m watching the sunset.” Her eyes sparkled. “Make some more memories! I’ll catch up.”
Colin felt his hands tremble a little. “…Promise you will?”
“Of course I will. It’s like you said…” Faye leant back, tilting her head at the clouds drifting across the sky. “…As long as I need to.”