Birds Can’t Fly Everywhere

In Promo by Sir Gable

Teaming up with Grimwolf again has me reminiscing about the voyages we took together and all the little things you don’t think about when you first set sail.

I was ready for the weirdness of trying to acquire sea legs.

I was ready for the uneasy feeling of motion sickness to come over me.

I was even ready for the ribbing of the crew after witnessing me struggling on the high seas.

What I wasn’t ready for was how empty everything felt.

When you’re sailing and in the middle of the ship, there is an almost eerie silence there.

If the captain or his crew wasn’t around you wouldn’t hear anything, not even the splashing sounds of the ship traversing the ocean.

At a certain point of day, you would stop seeing any signs of natural life.

Even the dolphins and whales returned to the sea to hide from the overbearing sun.

The one thing I never thought I wouldn’t hear was the simple sound of birds.

The chatter of sparrows, the twitter of finches, the cawing of crows that I heard way too much as a boy in Indiana.

Even the so-called seagulls were absent from the sky at a certain point away.

Grimwolf noticed me peering at the sky one day and asked me what I was looking at.

It was a good question as there was nothing there, not even a cloud.

When I told him, I was searching for signs of life, he chuckled.

He told me, “ah matey, I thought you finally got used to the mistress that takes you away from home. You got the legs of a pirate and you finally have the stomach but your heart and mind is still stuck at home.”

He explained to me how out there all signs of life were under the ship. We wouldn’t be out there if not for the ship to give us a base to feed and rest.

Only a rare bird can cross the whole ocean without needing something to land on in between.

So rare in fact, that albatross is a nickname for a hole in one in golf.

Others can’t survive doing it.

Flying burns through that precious resource of energy and those creatures know to turn around back to safety when they don’t know if any land is near them.

It’s why Noah used birds to see if the world was returning to normal after the flood.

Once the proverbial dove returned with an olive branch, he knew it was safe to voyage home.

Out in the deep, there are no olive branches, there is nothing to perch on.

There is nowhere to rest.

Corvus, you little bird, it’s about time you learn what your crow brethren learned long ago.

You can’t fly everywhere, the world isn’t made for that. Humans only have the ability because we created the tools for it.

You can’t do it on your own.

Even those who know the sea like their own hand eventually drown under it.

If even an immortal captain can drown, what makes you think you can survive when Pirate Gold goes to the deep one last time?