Saving Private Raven

On a dusky evening of an early fall, I and my consort were walking towards the doors of knowledge. We were waiting for our superior blokes to get relinquished from the portal of the goddess of wisdom. Meanwhile, to pass the time, we decided to explore the meadow.

There was an antiquated,  fathom-wide canal through which the dark liquid of terror flows. The entire city’s filth flowed through that conduit which was hundreds of leagues tall in measurement. In which all kinds of despicable and maleficent beings use to transit.

A tiny, loner, grey cloud was hovering above us like it was ready for some mischief. A little spark in the cloud had been noticed by my blurry eyes. Suddenly an object starts descending with a horrendous, spiraling motion. It was unclear what the thing was because it was carrying a froth of mist around it.

The entity fell into the furrow, with a burly ponderous splash, a horse-length away from us. It wasn’t an ordinary crash. The whammed object felt to possess some unique qualities. Only an unusual thing could make such a splash. We ran to the vantage point with angst building up in my heart.

I saw a dough of tar formed around it, moving very slowly with a stumpy fluid. With a jitter, a pair of pinions emerged from the marsh. Then I heard a loud croak. The kind of croak one can only hear in one’s nightmares.

It was a Raven but not one of your run-of-the-mill kind of birds. It was an unusual avian, it was as big as the size of a mature eagle may be bigger. I gazed upon the sky. The little cloud flew away rumbling as an urchin runs away chuckling after a misdemeanor. In this short period of time, the raven had been taken forward by the torrent.

My acquaintance brought back a staff to stop the rook from going further away. He stopped it along the farther side of the canal wall. The tar is still drowning the raven so I ran to the nearest oak tree. I jump on one of its branches and tore a cudgel from it. I made a hook out of it and came back to assist my colleague. We were finally able to extract the raven from the kill zone but it was still in the jaws of death and I was stuck.

No thought was passing through my anxious mind. The only thought which prevailed in existence was about successfully saving the Raven. Thoughts do not save, the action does and there I was without action and strategy.

Then a voice shattered my panic. “Let me handle the sticks,” said my ambidextrous partner in rescue. The voice was so confident that without a second thought I hypnotically relinquished my control to the unknown. I carefully switched my position and let the guy do the job. As He held the equipment of salvation in his stalwart hand, it was just a matter of seconds as he lifted the creature from the fatal current. The bird was palpitating as if holding its life in its abrupt quiver. He gently put the critical raven on the soft green bed of grass in the alp.

I launched myself vertically in overwhelming joy, and why not I’d saved a life of a mortal being. But after a couple of jumps I regain my solicitous stagnancy. “why isn’t it moving? What happened to...it’s not dead is it?” I asked in clutter. He prompts me to keep my calm “Wait, I don’t know...” and then he lifted the stem with the thickest base and threw the other. He turns the filthy fowl-emitting slug and grabbed its beak open. Then he gently starts pushing and brushing the stick over its breast. SNAP! It came back to life with a loud squeal.

I quickly drew my big, pearly, white handkerchief and wrapped the poor thing in it. We took it to the monastery of Knowledge on the apex of the hill. On the crown of the great, ancient institution, ‘Surya’, our primary sun, shined at its best even at the brink of dusk. We put the raven, that we had just saved, on the rostrum and my friend brought a saucer of water for it to drink. The rays of purity from the Helios burnt the slug and formed a thin membrane of hardened mud around the bird.

The raven slid towards the saucer and commenced drinking the liquid of verve. A new life had begun to explode in the creature, and suddenly with a shimmer, it break through the film of clay. It scoured its whole body and fluttered its wings to scatter away the shattered pieces of mud. The wings shone blazingly in the embellishment of the sun's rays. Next came the whirling of the wings and up it heaved like a ball from a canon.

After scaling a few yards of the sky, the much-obliged raven encircled us, twice, probably as a token of thanks, indebted to us for saving its life. And then, this another soldier of life, the private Raven flew into the evening sky and disappeared in the dusk.

Before completely vanishing into the heavens the raven relinquished some of its dark, black feathers as a souvenir for us. They were the feathers of grace. My friend took one and gave me the rest. I patted his shoulder in overwhelming awe.

As the guttural ‘CAANW CAANW’ of the rook perished in our ears we entered the gates of knowledge with the everlasting memory of SAVING PRIVATE RAVEN.