Too Lovely A Bower Breaks

By Evan Satinsky

Orav the Crow steals trinkets of silver and gold from the great City to build his bower, to his own downfall.

Orav the Crow crept through the streets of The City under the solicitous wing of his

friend, the darkness of night. Despite his sleek black cloak of polished feathers and the

mellifluous croak of his cawing cry, the people of The City–their bright eyes shining gold as the

domes of their temples and their flowing linens of white and silver blending beautifully with the

metallic marble of their boulevards–threw him odd, disgusted glances before casting him out

again with derisive laughter. One such as him did not belong in a place like The City, they said–

so Orav the Crow had no choice but to sneak in by night, when the people slept and the gold and

silver dimmed.

He drew a thread of iridescent lace from the decorations adorning a temple doorway as he

passed, adding it to the pile of similar such items hidden deep within his plumage. Silver leaf he

had, scraped from the embossed friezes set between high marble columns; small gemstones, too,

plucked from the rings of marble statuettes which sat upon every balcony, wards against demons

of the night, an irony too reflective for one such as Orav; even some of those linens, and the silks

and satins worn with them, were folded and stuffed within the Crow's bulky cloak, those which

had hung to flap in the breeze, newly washed in the clear, bright river which perfectly bisected

The City's circular boundaries.

His pockets heavy with the plunder of these supercilious swans, Orav the Crow scaled

The City's outer wall and disappeared into the night, soaring across a smattering of farms up to

the shelter of the overlooking forest, his home. Dark it looked, and bleak he thought it as he flew,

failing to see the shimmering green of the trees' leaves in the glow of the waning moon, the

yellow eyes of owls hunting silent in the night, the purple berries adorning each bush to tint the

dark wood with color. Lifeless, he thought his home, as he remembered the busy streets of The

City by day, ignoring the squeaks and rustles of small, warm bodies awakening before a coming

dawn, deaf to the armies of insects battling across the forest floor.

He ranged deep into his home, where the trees grew taller and their canopies merged,

where moon and sun both threw only a twilit pall across the valley. And in the ravine's center sat

Orav the Crow's bower, his life's work, his pride. Built up from the ground as if it had grown

naturally was a monument of detritus, an idol to hateful gods. Slivers of marble stuck from the

ground, chipped from columns or roadways by Orav's sharp beak, topped with trinkets of

alabaster and pale wood, and gemstones of blue and red and yellow were fastened to every

surface. Cloth was draped artfully around, forming the bower's open, ovoid shape. Between it all,

forming the structure, were sticks of wood harvested from the forest itself, each with its bark

stripped–a careful and painstaking process–and laid out to bleach in the sun, so as to lighten the

wood to match its surrounding ornamentation.

A pale, gaunt, misplaced likeness of The City which it aspired to imitate–but one which

Orav the Crow could enter freely, one he had built himself. He took the cloth reverently from

within his cloak and began to layer it around the bower, taking little notice of the way it sunk

into the mud of the swampy ravine each time he patted the cloth into place, mud which Orav's

hollow-boned, splayed feet sat atop with ease. He threaded the silver filament between two

sticks, and patted on some silver foil, adding a dim sparkle off what remained of the moonlight

filtering through the treetops.

Orav the Crow pulled out one final item. He was almost shaking with anticipation. Silver

and marble, alabaster and silk, all these fineries and more he had managed to pull from the

buildings and clothes and streets of The City, but one substance did they value above all else,

and this he had not yet managed to lay hand on: gold. Only the roofs of their buildings, the inner

sanctums of their temples, and the irises of their eyes sparkled with that kingly substance, and so

Orav had had to make do with his silver. Until tonight.

He unwrapped a long golden stole, the kind worn by their priests on holy days. It was

thick, luxurious, and heavy enough to have weighed him down on his return journey, but it was

worth anything, worth sore legs and feathers, worth being proscribed from The City altogether,

even. What did he need of The City, anyway, when he had his own golden bower right here?

Arms straining with the effort, Orav the Crow raised the golden garment high over his

head, up to the top of the looming bower, and draped it over the opening at its roof. As anyone

but he might have expected, this final weight of gold was too much for the structure to bear.

Slivers of marble cracked, branches sunk or splintered, and then before his eyes, Orav's bower

crumbled to dust and rubble. Mud spattered the once-bright cloth and there was hardly an

alabaster figure without a deep gouge or chip. He might have found some of the gems had he dug

through the wet ground for long enough, but instead he just stood staring at the heart of his

kingdom as the sun rose, brightening the valley to its eerie twilight, in which little flashes of

yellow gold could just barely be seen.

Author Bio

Evan Satinsky is a writer of science fiction and fantasy from St. Louis. He has stories published in The Heartwarming Stories Anthology by The Brussels Review, the Opolis Anthology by NUNUM, and The Forbidden Fruit Anthology by Newton Press. More information can be found at www.EvanSatinsky.com and on Instagram at www.instagram.com/evansatinsky