Dharrsheena warning!
"What's that, Mama?"
The children stood around the visitors, unloading their cart, greetings over.
"It's a net, my loves. To catch food. The delicacies of home."
Lucius looked at his mother and saw longing: for Rome and all that wasn't here. But this was his home: he loved the wildness, running in woods.
Lucius wondered what they'd catch in such a big net.
*
Lucius was running and then he was caught! Panicking, he struggled.
Cobweb?
No! Net!
What else had it caught?
He peered. Strewn, hanging, were hundreds of small, delicate birds.
All dead.
Lucius' screams pierced the air.
About the Creator
Reader insights
Outstanding
Excellent work. Looking forward to reading more!
Top insight
Excellent storytelling
Original narrative & well developed characters
Keep reading
More stories from Rachel Deeming and writers in Fiction and other communities.
Magpie: Final Chapter
The world did not end with a bang, but with a frame-rate drop so severe that reality stuttered into a series of jagged, frozen tableaux. Merlina Magpie stood in the center of what used to be Leo Vance’s luxury penthouse, but the floor had surrendered its texture, becoming a flat, unrendered grey plane. Above, the sky had peeled away like wet wallpaper, revealing the terrifying architecture of the substrate: pulsing veins of neon light and vast, incomprehensible structures of shifting geometry.
By Eris Willowa day ago in Fiction
Comments (17)
Eek, that was quite a twist to land so smoothly and deflty in so few words. Amazing work and frightening experience! Well done, chum!
Oh wow..... didn't see that coming.(Loved the "Dharrsheena warning" - how appropriate!)!
Well done!
Golly! How frightening! Feel like I learned a historical tidbit too that I'd been completely unaware of. Was this a common practice?
Nicely done, Rachel.
Gosh I owe my life to you at this point! As always, I'm so grateful for that warning 🥹❤️
Oof phew. For a second I thought it was going to be other children in the net! Glad it was ‘just’ birds! Great Drabble!
Why, this story must surely be counted as profane, Rachel. Afterall, they've flipped Lucius for a bird!
That's blood-curdling, Rachel. Great drabble.
Aw man, poor birds. It’s weird how some birds are deemed “okay” to eat while for others it just seems wrong—human hypocrisy at its best, I guess. Awesome and unsettling work!
Heartbreaking at best. Nicely Done!!!
Yeah, that would freak me out too. Poor birdies.
Very thought-provoking Drabble, Rachel! But I guess not quite what Lucius was expecting. And yet the birds suffer far greater deaths now. Migrations disrupted by human light, bird strikes on tall buildings, pet cats….
I’m glad I read the comments, I assumed the birds were incidental and the little boy was the target. Well done either way!
OOOO this is absolutely terryfying...or heart breaking, I am not quite sure. You really have an increbible abilty to maximise impact in such a short amount of space! 💜
⚡😱⚡
Human intervention in nature, and specifically in the animal kingdom, creates deep wounds in a sensitive child's soul. An ingenious piece of writing.🕊️💔