The Last Harvest

Seated Lavana with egg child S’karra (image by James Goudie)

The Hadjaran red sunlight streamed down through the leaves of a large tree overshadowing a small garden. The red beams of light flickered down to the flowers below, illuminating some while others were cast in shade. Today was a day like any other. Nice and warm, perfectly cozy. The perfect day to go out and enjoy nature.

Lavana, an aged and frail Saraven, reclined in her antique wooden chair, her wings draped delicately over the carefully crafted back. Her feathers, patchy and ruffled as they were, momentarily shimmered a faded blue as they brushed against the tree trunk behind her.

She had no use for her wings now. She was too old to fly, her wings too weak to lift her up off the ground. But she still remembered the crispness of the wind as her wings took her toward the heavens. The peaceful stillness and silence of soaring above the world. The happy times when she and her family flew as one, the currents of air passing from one to the other like a grand, graceful dance. But that was many years ago. Her wings were once a brilliant and glossy deep blue, ever glistening in the starlight and the whispers of the breeze. But now… now they were mottled and dull, her feathers fading and falling like the leaves of the tree above her, captured and changed by the ripples of time.

A once proud broodmother, Lavana now lived with her eggchild, S’karra, and her hatchbrood. While she didn’t mind the company of the little ones, she wished she had the energy she once did to teach them to fly and train them in the ways of her people, as her broodmother had taught her. Some days it was difficult for her to accept that all this fretting over her was necessary, cared for by the ones she once tended. She could care for herself, as she used to, if they would simply let her try.

Lavana lifted a trembling and wrinkled hand from where they were nestled in her lap, the movement causing a sensation of discomfort as her dry skin slid over itself in folds. S’karra rubbed a special salve over Lavana’s wrinkles and talons every waking and resting time, but the dryness remained, her talons brittle, their once sharp tips broken and gone.

With slow and careful movements, Lavana grasped a berry from the dish next to her and brought her talons to her beak, her hand shaking with such violence the berry hardly made it into her mouth at all. But the sweetness of the fruit made the trouble worth it. She had planted these berries herself, and they tasted all the sweeter knowing they were the harvest of her own talons.

Many years ago, Lavana had turned her eyes from the heavens and down toward Hadjara, studying the wonders of the ground and the tropical life around her. Even from the time her hatchbrood were fledglings themselves, Lavana had taken careful consideration of the plants in her garden. Some berries were planted in the shade of the large tree, the heat of the sun too much for the delicate plants. Other, more robust fruits were planted on the other side of the garden, where they received a constant beam of red light, ever ripe and bountiful. Still others - flowers and blossoms, herbs and vegetables - were all planted along the side of the nesthome, encircling the space and turning it into its own realm of wonder.

“Broodmother?” S’karra, a middle-aged Saraven female, called from the back doorway of the nesthome nearby. “Broodmother, it’s time to go.”

But Lavana didn’t hear her. She was far too lost in her memories of planting fruits and flowers.

With a soft sigh, S’karra, walked over to her elder and placed her talons lightly on her lifegiver’s shoulder. “Broodmother.”

Lavana jolted slightly, startled, and a bit vexed someone had been able to sneak up on her. In all her years, she had had the keenest of sight and most sensitive of hearing of all of her nestkin. With an irritated huff, Lavana squinted up through partially clouded over eyes to see a stranger standing over her. No, wait… she recognized that face. From somewhere… somewhere. Oh, of course! How could she have forgotten? S’karra!

“Come, come. Sit with me, dear.” Lavana quickly lifted her talons to move the bowl of berries from beside her, off the arm of the chair so S’karra could perch herself there, but only succeeded in toppling the berries over. She sat in shock for a long moment, unsure what had happened, as she studied the shapes and colors of the berries on the grass. Why were they down there and not in the bowl? What had happened? “Oops.” Lavana finally murmured as realization and embarrassment of what she had done sank in, “Here, let me get that.”

Before Lavana could stoop down to reach for the berries, S’karra crouched down herself, scooping them back into the bowl. “No, it’s alright. They’re only berries.” But she could tell it was more than that. She could sense her broodmother’s irritation and embarrassment. Her wounded pride.

As Lavana watched S’karra clean her mess, she glanced up at the vines hanging down from the tree behind them. The vines were covered in tiny purple flowers, barely blooming yet still beautiful. “Do you remember when you used to climb this tree?” Lavana began, lifting her talons to examine the flowers, “You took your first flight from the top of its branches. I was so proud to watch you soar back and forth over the house.”

“I remember.” S’karra nodded, standing upright again, a certain sadness to her voice. How could she explain to her lifegiver that she would have to leave all this behind? Her life’s work. These plants were as much her broodmother’s hatchlings as she and nestkin were. But the plants would be gone soon. Burnt to ashes in the explosion. There was no saving them. S’karra had already gathered the last of the harvest and potted her mother’s most favorite plants. But the others - the fruits and vegetables, the orchids and lilacs... they could not be saved.

With a deep breath, S’karra announced, “Broodmother, it’s time to go.”

“Go?” Lavana looked up at her eggchild, confusion marking her age-worn face, and squinted in the sunlight, “Go where?”

“We have to leave. It isn’t safe here anymore.” How to make her understand? How to explain something she had already explained so many times before?

“Well, that’s not right. Here is safe enough. I’m not going anywhere.” Lavana stubbornly turned her face away, pouting like a newly hatched eggchild. How could S’karra even think of taking her away somewhere? Where were they even going? She couldn’t just get up and leave. She was comfortable here. And her plants and nesthome were here. How could S’karra say it wasn’t safe? It had been safe here all Lavana’s life. Why would it not be safe now?

“You don’t understand.” S’karra gave another exasperated sigh and knelt to meet her lifegiver’s eyes. “We’re not safe here. Something is wrong with the sun. I’ve already packed your things. We need to leave. Now.” If she had to, S’karra would call her broodmate in to lift her elder and take her away by force. But that was the last thing she wanted to do. For one thing, she didn’t want to needlessly get her broodmate involved. For another, she didn’t want to reduce her lifegiver to that level of humiliation, despite the old bird’s stubbornness. How to make her understand?

“You’re not making sense.” Lavana shook her head, then turned her face upward, studying the sun above her. Still red, still shining. Still ever present in the sky, in the same spot it had been in for centuries. Always constant. “The sun looks fine to me. This is my home.” Lavana nearly whined the last part. How could she leave the home where she grew up? Where she was raised and had raised her own hatchlings? Where she had helped raise her eggchild’s hatchbrood. She paused for a moment, glancing at all the plants around her. Flowers, herbs, fruits, vegetables. All the work of her own talons and the talons of her hatchbrood. How could she leave?

S’karra frowned as she looked her mother over. So old and frail. Senile, yet still so strong. What Lavana lost in feathers and memory, she made up for in age. And with that age, she’d reversed the clock somehow. She’d become a hatchling herself, playing out here in the garden from the waking hour to the hour she went back to rest again. Always here, among her plants.

After another long silence, S’karra spoke again. “Broodmother, we have to leave.”

“Leave?” Lavana blinked up at her eggchild, confused. “To go where?”

S’karra glanced away. Her broodmother had already forgotten, if she’d ever understood at all. With a small, sad smile, S’karra looked back at her elder. “We’re going to go see Hina, my nestkin. Do you remember her?”

It wasn’t entirely a lie. Hina was going to be there after all. Maybe now she would help S’karra take care of their broodmother. There wasn’t the necessity of trying to keep a job holding Hina back anymore. In fact, there wouldn’t be very many jobs at all. Just darkness… and waiting.

“Of course I remember her!” Lavana stared up at her eggchild in complete amazement, jolting S’karra out of her musing. “How could you think I’d forgotten her?”

S’karra gave a wry smile and held a hand out towards her mother, helping her to stand. “Just making sure you’re still sharp as ever, mother.” She carefully grasped her mother’s elbow as the two slowly made their way towards their nesthome.

“Oh, wait.” With a smile, Lavana stopped just outside the back door and plucked a large blue flower off a nearby tree. She held it out to her eggchild. “For you, dear.”

S’karra took the flower and let it rest in her palm, studying its shape and color. This flower would be the last token of her broodmother’s garden. Soon, the tree it came from would be nothing more than a memory. The tree she took her first flight from, the bushes and trees that had yielded such a bountiful harvest for her family for so long, even the root vegetables along the side of the nesthouse… all would be vaporized away.

But there was nothing more to be done. The once proud planet of Hadjara would wither away into nothingness, its citizens cowering in darkness. But in the darkness, there was safety. In the darkness, there was life.

“Come, broodmother. Let’s go home.”

by Kelsy Mascorro