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Monday 7 July 2014

Hello again folks!
Just a quick post to let you know that The Boy Who Rescues Pigeons is now half-written. [Working Title]


 This is where Lucas is just about to rescue his first bird. I hope you like it.
Carmen x

It was an almost eerie experience, walking home along familiar roads whilst everyone else was still in school. With no reason to rush, he walked at his usual pace.

Had the streets been filled with other children he might not have seen it. Had he walked this particular path just an hour later, it might have been too late.

At first he thought it was a piece of rubbish on the road – a discarded crumpled up newspaper or chip wrapper – but as he approached it moved away, cowering from him, drawing its injured body inwards to shield its already broken and battered wings from further harm. A bright red crescent of blood bloomed around its neck and across the area between its wings where feathers and skin had been ripped away to expose the fine muscles beneath.
  
Terrified, it huddled into the side of the kerb as he towered over it, too terrified to drag itself away, too terrified not too. He saw the indecision flicker under its brightly beaded eye. But more than what he saw, it was what he felt that crushed his heart.

This bird had been beaten and savaged by life – just as he had been. It didn’t much matter who or what the perpetrator had been, a car, a cat or even another, bigger bird…what mattered was that life had dealt this creature such an unkind blow and left it abandoned here to die like a piece of trash, discarded and disposable.

With no awareness of what he was about to do, Lucas carefully scooped the pigeon into his arms, trying to avoid touching it where it was wounded. It tried to flutter away from him, chest heaving in frenzied gasps, beak wide open in a soundless scream. Inside his head Lucas heard its cry. It was a strangely human sound, full of sorrow and misery and desolation.

Only as he brought the bird to his chest, resting it against the beating of his own heart did he recognise the source of the scream. It was his own.






2 comments:

  1. The Boy Who Rescues Pigeons promises to be very soulful and emotive and - as I just learned from googling to find a synonym for 'drawing out emotion' - perhaps an Art Therapy for grief.

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  2. Thank you Karin - I certainly hope so. Poor Lucas has real problems in his life! He is a lovely character to write though - full of fire and a longing for things to be different to what they are. I'm sure that everyone feels like that at some point in their life.

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