Birdie weren't old, but he felt it. Felt like he'd lived a thousand years, a thousand lifetimes, all leading him precisely to this moment. If he could speak, he'd tell 'em to go fuck themselves with those damn batons they kept hitting his friends - his family - with, but they'd taken his tongue a long, long time ago to shut him up.
It didn't work. He found other ways to make noise.
Too much of it, probably. The world was splintered - his left eye swollen shut and blocking out his sight on that side. Damn soldiers had given him a concussion or somethin', because his vision was swimming fiercely and he felt unsteady on his feet, and not because the bastard behind him was shoving him down, bringing him to his knees on the cold pavement.
It was raining, heavy. Poetic, really.
Cold metal pressed to the back of his skull,
a melody his father used to sing to him replayed in his mind,
it was soothing, always made him sleepy. It did, even now,
and then it all stopped.
There was no pain, save from the light ache in the back of his mind - a memory more than a physical sensation. Songbirds filled the air with a soft music, the first few tweets somehow reminiscent of that same lullaby from his dad, and Birdie felt his eyes sting something fierce. Instead of rain falling on his skin, it was filtered sunlight through tree branches above, catching on dust motes that danced through the air in tandem to the birds' natural tunes.
When was the last time Birdie'd had the chance to listen to birdsong?
For a moment, he basked in it, unwilling to disturb the harmony of the forest, and then pushed himself to his feet. Four of them - curious, but something he was more than okay puttin' up with, considering he'd just had a gun pressed to his head. This was miles better than where he'd been just moments ago. It must be some sort of dream.
He walked. There was nothin' better to do, after all, and Birdie'd never been good at sitting still. He walked, and walked - he wasn't sure how long, but eventually his feet took him to a clearing where a wolf rested. He'd only ever seen 'em in books, really, or owned by the elite, but he recognized 'em regardless. Woulda turned tail - which, he had one of those now! - and left, too, had the wolf not spoken in a painfully familiar voice.
These yours, sweet thing?
Birdie didn't think before he moved forward, and his mouth was moving before he could stop it - his usual quip on the tip of the tongue that he was unaware he now possessed. "Who're ya talkin' to, sweet thing?" he drawled, and then paused, surprised by the sound of his own voice falling from an unfamiliar maw.
It made more sense, now. This had to be a dream, didn't it?
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