A bird flutters its pitch-black wings, awaking to the noisy sounds of birds croaking around it. It's still dark out, the only source of light coming from the gentle beams of moonlight the falls into the nest.

Kwaaaaak! Kroack!

Why is it so noisy? I wish Mom would stop waking me up so early in the mornings.

This was probably another one of her tricks trying to mess with me.

Though this trick sounded more like Dad’s.

Mom usually woke me up by throwing my clean laundry onto my bed. Usually aiming for my face.

Dad would come dancing into the room with a wireless speaker, playing whatever oldie song he felt like at that moment.

My parents were both morning people. I was not. Or was I?

I’m not sure. It’s still dark and my mind feels hazy with sleep.

I groan, and roll over in my bed.

At least I tried to.

I can’t roll over. My arms aren’t responding to me.

Maybe my legs? I try to wiggle my toes.

…….Nothing.

My eyes won’t open either. They’re glued shut.

Please don’t tell me I’ve become paralyzed. I loved laying in my bed at home, but not to this extent. At least let me use my arms! I didn’t care about running or walking, but how would I entertain myself if I couldn’t use my hands to read a book.

I know I might sound stupid, but I would rather be able to read than be able to walk.

Panicking, I tell my body to move, trying to move my arms and legs.

All I can hear is a swishing, flapping noise and the bird squawks and croaks that continue around me. They sound really close, like Dad’s put the speaker by my head.

I keep moving my body., until something pointy rubs against my head, ruffling what feels like hair, but thicker, and flatter..

Ooooookaay.

That’s scary.

Dad wouldn’t do that.

For a moment I stop, and the swishing noises stop as well. The pointy thing runs against my head again, like it’s trying to calm me.

Every time I move, that pointy thing again. Wind blows against my body (At least I can feel sensations!), and with what sounds like someone shaking their bedsheets, the gusts fade away.

The bird squawks are still happening around me.

This was the worst.

————-

12 days passed like this.

I would find myself unconsciously calling out like the birds around me, and something either slimy, furry, or both, would slide down my throat, filling my stomach.

After a few days, which I’ve kept track by the number of times I eat, (3 meals = 1 day?) my eyes finally open, and adjust, blinking against the clear morning sunlight.

The first thing I notice is how clearly I can see. Everything is crisp, like a 4K television screen, maybe even better, with new colors that I’ve never seen before.

My peripheral vision is on another level compared to what I had before, too. I can see black shiny wings on either side of me. Cocking me head to the side, I can see a flash of white, from what seems to be a ruffle of feathers around my neck.

There’s a bunch of black baby chicks surrounding me in a tightly packed nest, their squawks already turned into white noise in my brain.

That’s just great. I guess I’ve become a crow.

Wishing I could grab my hair in despair, my wings flap in disgust instead. I would rather be a rat, a worm, even a cockroach, anything but a crow!

Curse you, whatever Being that brought me here!

I wanted to shake my fist at the sky, but I settled on shaking one wing up and down.

My brothers and sisters, had learned to ignore me over the past couple days or weeks that had passed. They simply moved out of the way, to the edges of the nest, when I had one of my panic attacks/fits.

When that happened, the pointy thing, which turned out to be the beak of Mother, the huge black bird that came and went with food, would stroke the feathers on my head, trying to calm me.

Mother was nice. She almost made me forget my animosity with crows.

I could remember the most inane details of my former life, but not my name, my job, or the names of my parents and other family members. I think I had a sister, I’m not sure. I feel like I had one. I know I was a woman with a job, ashamed that she still lived with her parents.

Here, I don’t even know if I’m a boy or girl. How do you tell a bird’s gender anyways?

The memories seems to fade with each passing day.

One thing I carried with me from my time as a human was my hate for crows.

They were my eternal enemies. It was a mutual animosity that I carried over into this life.

Crows are smart, but mean birds. This, I knew from personal experience.

In my neighborhood, we put our trash into plastic bags, setting it out in the mornings for the garbage man to pick up. Every time, a flock of crows would descend on the trash, utterly destroying the bag and spreading the nasty contents over the street.

Which was my job to clean up.

They did this every week.

Every. single. time.

There was also the Potato Chip Incident.

After a long day of work, I had stopped by a store and bought a bag of tasty potato chips.

Unable to wait till I got home, I had set my leather work bag and plastic bag with potato chips, onto the bench at a nearby park on the way back to my home.

Delicious crunchy, finger licking goodness. Thinking back on it now, my small bird throat gulps.

It took only one moment of distraction, and my potato chips were gone! A crow had taken it with its claws, over the fence of a parking lot next to the park, where I couldn’t reach, and proceeded to peck open the package and eat my chips with gusto.

As I was watching.

I was all the more outraged, thinking about it now, looking at the baby chicks around me.

Any one of you could be a potato chip thief in the future.

Turning a beady eye onto them, I watch them carefully. They ignore me, as usual.

Potato chips.

Yum.

There was that other thing. With my new and improved vision, I could now see what I was eating. A mushy mixture of pink meat, grains, insects, and rodents, in all of its clear, 4K glory.

That made the Potato Chip Incident all the more a tragic affair.

It was a good thing Mother was force-feeding me along with the other chicks, because I would never have even touched any of this if I knew what it was.

Right now I was starving. Mother had been gone for too long. All the other chicks were becoming even noisier as they begged for food.

The one thing I could eat on my own, small chunks of a pink meat that mother left behind, was gone,

I drool.

Those tasted lightly like pig. Flapping my wings I hop to the edge of the nest, looking out over the wide forest that spreads out around me in a sea of green.

Where are you Mother?

The sun was already setting.

Kraaaak! Krawwwk! Kaw!

Two chicks fight behind me, playing tug-of-war over a worm that had somehow made it’s way into our nest. They’re the biggest ones too, with large wings that send out smaller bursts of wind compared to Mother.

My body was the smallest out of my 5 siblings.

When the other chicks rushed into get a piece of the meal, I was inadvertently knocked off the nest.

NOOOOOOOOOOO!

One black dot falls out of a nest from the tallest tree in the forest.

Thanks a lot, my new family.

I can’t fly.

I’m a human!

………..

Wait.

I’m a crow, I should be able to fly.

The wind whistles by my ear openings, the canopy of trees that seemed so far away growing closer with every second.

FLAP.

My wings catch the air, and I glide, breaking my fall.

I don’t know how I’m doing it, but I’m doing it!

The wind resistance feels heavy as I keep falling at a slower pace.

With a crash(More like a snap), I break through the tree branches, flap crazily, and somehow make it to the ground.

Though I’m unable to move.

“Skrei?”

I seem to have crashed by a blurry green thing.

My eyes have trouble focusing from the pain that pounds into my bird brain, originating from my left wing, that hangs limply at the side.

The giant green thing has arms and legs, something I wish I had. My eyes focus, and I can see a monstrous face with sharp canines that peek out of flat lips. The thing wears a dirty brown loincloth, a necklace of teeth in various shapes and sizes, and holds a sharpened stick decorated with bird feathers.

Yep. No doubt about it. That’s a goblin.

Can crows faint?

I close my eyes, hoping next time I wake up, I’ll be back in bed.

I guess they can.