Learning To Breath

When the morning sun peeked through the tall trees the elephants were up already and the bigger birds were flying away as usual. As for the lucky chirpy bird it was deep engrossed in sleep.

The bird was small, the size of a fist but now it was barely the size of an adult thumb. The reason for its shrunken was apparent. The winged baby.

For some unknown reason, the bird has moulted its white feathers twelve times. And to moult it has used its body's energy.

Now, it has become small and comfortably patched on the winged baby's head while sleeping. Its feathers now resembled the baby's wings.

When the ray of the sun slammed on them both the bird and baby woke up with a frown. The winged baby jumped with a smile as this is another day for more adventures.

For the following days, the baby followed the elephants in their activities except for one. The gave chill whenever it looked at it, afraid the thing will devour or injure it.

It was something, mostly transparent, but it get murky when elephants were swallowed by it. Later the elephant will fight it to be unswallowed. 

It was strange as the thing behave in complete opposite to the solid ground the baby used to. 

And because the baby was usually injured by the solid land, it didn't want to touch this new flexible thing.

But by being with the moving object that has a long hand on its head and loves going every day, the baby was always tempted to fight its fear and touched the most malleable and flexible substances it ever met.

One will ask why won't the baby pluck its wing feather and dip it in the thing to test it. 

The answer was, to the wing baby, there was nothing in its eyes more valuable and respectable than the two wings that served as its two guardians. It will rather lose its hands than lose them.

Until proven otherwise, the winged are far more important than the Priceless Jawel, well, that was me saying. 

To the winged baby, they are the most useless thing it has. In fact, they are hindrance because every single brid wants to peck them. To add insult to the injury, they were the most sensitive part of its body apart from the eyes which were less sensitive than the edge of its two wings.

The winged baby with bright silver grey eyes stared at its own reflection on the surface of the rippling malleable substance.

Ah ha

It laughed at its beautiful innocent round face. Its hair floats and behaves as if underwater at the slightest breeze or movement. Its small cute rosy lips were the only thing that indicate there was red blood in his body together with his feet and palms. Its silver-like skin was eye-catching as it has this glow in it that isn't reflective.

Whenever the baby entered directly under the sun, there will be a push of opposing light between the sun rays and the baby's halo veil. In the end, the sun's rays always win.

But if the baby stayed thirty minutes in a shade the halo veil gradual return.

The wings behind the baby shrunk in size. But from time to time it stretched them just like a person needs to stretch its legs.

After the baby finished admiring its beauty and magnificence, he contemplate whether to touch it or not. In the end, he obtained a reason.

The ground and the plant never reflected its magnificence and thus he injure himself. Since this substance was reflecting him then may many of it was saying come inside.

The baby stretched his finger and hesitantly touched the clean crystalline water. Ripples occur, travelling everywhere. For some reason, the water calmed and all waves disappeared.

And three minutes later the water resumed its normal waving due to the wind and underwater animals.

All the time the baby was able to see the depth of the water at the moment of stilled. At the same time, it looked at the drop that cling to the finger.

Confirming its safe, he felt joy and dive completely underwater. And then a new world opened to it.

….

30 minutes later the winged baby felt tired, the worse fatigue he ever felt. But that wasn't the only disturbance, it felt its chest hurting and vision reduced. In the end, it decided to take a fish out of the water and find the reason. It comes out and floats on the water observing the fish, then it dives took another fish.

In the baby session of fish scrutiny, he realised he felt more comfortable outside the water, his chest doesn't hurt. 

Nevertheless, he liked it underwater because it can touch almost everything. Even the solid ground and plants under water.

Now, the baby's legs were in the water and it has been three hours and his chest was not hurting, then it went deeper making his chest in the water with fear. Believes that his chest doesn't want to be in the water but spending hours in that situation make it think otherwise.

The sun was setting and saw his beds, the elephants coming for a drink. He went there and occupy a good space before the annoying birds came. Being hyperactive for the whole day underwater made him fall asleep, faster.

….

The next day before sunrise he woke up and shove away the annoying tiny pest of a bird off its silky silver hair. The bird always finds him no matter how many different beds he changes.

He was about to fly when he noticed something, a trunk of the elephant was blowing air in and out as they sleep. He had seen that countless times but it was now he realised he was the same right?

The winged baby used its adorable chubby hand and covered his nose, and after some time it didn't feel a thing. Then it flew out into the forest and find the large river and dived in.

Thirty minutes later when the sun was rising it felt the familiar pain in the chest then it careful floated out making sure only its mouth and nose were out…. And then...

The winged baby took a deep breath and… then fainted.