Freedom is a word spoken so often, yet so rarely felt. Of all the forms freedom could take, perhaps flying is the most beautiful—but only for birds. We envy the endless sky they call home, yet are they born knowing how to fly, or do they fall before they learn to soar?
A bird with black feathers and a heart far too large for its tiny body, lived in a small forest and spent its days among trees, flowers, and butterflies together with its friends. In the quiet forest, storms come here and there, creating a lot of mess in its middle-class nest. The first storm came and took away the little bird's one and only toy. It stopped mourning its toy because of the company of its friends. But soon, it was thrown into a bottomless wall. The sound of its crying echoed inside the empty wall, but no one heard. It tried to flap its dark wings as hard as it could, taking one step closer to the surface only to be pulled three steps deeper inside. It took a long time for Hope to reach the surface, only to see that they were doing great.
Hope fell into darkness more than once. It climbed out each time with trembling wings, only to discover that the world above had continued without it. So Hope flew harder, learned faster, and carried its wounds beneath its feathers where no one ever thought to look beneath.
Every night, while the forest slept, Hope spoke to the lonely moon as though the sky were the only place willing to listen. And every dawn, before the first ray of sunlight touched the leaves, it would lift its wings toward a distant mountain that no other bird believed could ever be reached.
Almost—just almost—before Hope took off toward its dream, another sudden storm came, stole something far greater and took away its dearest. Its dearest vanished with the storm without a sound, making all Hope’s efforts in vain. Agony should have been the first thing to feel, but Hope chose to laugh.
Some losses make us cry.
Others leave us smiling, because tears are no longer enough.
Hope learned that long before it understood the meaning. For no reason, it trapped itself inside its nest and looked at the sky, the clouds, and the other birds every day while singing happily. Staring at the blue sky, Hope didn't realize when its favorite color became green.
Beyond the forest lay an endless field. At its farthest edge stood a mountain dressed in evergreen. Flowers bloomed upon its slopes through every season, and butterflies drifted through the wind as though the mountain itself were breathing. From Hope's nest, it looked impossibly far away, yet impossibility had never frightened it.
Every morning before the sun rose, Hope took flight. Across the endless field it flew, chasing the same distant peak. But there was one cruel rule to the journey; every time it rested, it had to begin again from the nest. Day after day, season after season, those tiny wings carried a dream far larger than themselves.
Then another storm came.
Hope sped up to avoid the rain. Little did it know that, in a storm, rain is not the frightening part—thunder is.
The sky spun.
The mountain vanished.
Feathers scattered into the wind.
Then—
Silence.
The frozen ground reached Hope long before it was ready.
The snow did not burn Hope. It swallowed the sound of the fall, as though the world wished to forget that it had ever fallen at all. White slowly surrendered to crimson, yet the pain did not come from the wound. It came from the silence.
Hope struggled to lift its wings, only to discover there were no feathers left to carry upon the sky.
Night settled over the field. Then came the sound of slow, measured footsteps from all the directions.
"What happened, my little bird?" A deep voice echoed through the empty field. "I thought you almost reached the top of the mountain, sweetie." The voice was deep, calm, and strangely gentle.
Fear may control the body, but curiosity can defeat it in a single blow.
Hope peeked toward the voice, a lone wolf approached through the snow, walking with a limp. With every step, a dark red trail stained the white beneath its paws.
"You are wounded," Hope said for the first time, leaving every other question unasked. “Oh, you noticed,” The wolf laughed softly. Hope nodded, forgetting the fear..
"So are you, sweetie."
It sat beside Hope as though they had known each other for years.
"How did you fall, sweetie?"
"I didn't notice the thunder."
"No wonder they call you a fool." The wolf chuckled.
Hope lowered its eyes.
"A fool?"
"Yes, sweetie. They call you that because you carry what they have long forgotten."
Hope remained silent.
The wolf smiled.
"Hope. Dreams. Courage."
After a long pause, Hope asked quietly,
"Did you once have them too?"
The wolf's laughter faded into the silent night.
"Yes, sweetie."
Its eyes wandered toward the moon.
"I simply failed to notice the trap. (A pause) Do you not love your nest, sweetie?" the wolf asked.
Hope looked toward the moon hanging above the sleeping forest.
"I do," it answered softly. "The forest is calm. It is warm. It has always been my home. But promises and dreams never allowed me to stay. Distant miles kept calling my name, teaching me to fly, to run, and to keep going, even when every part of me longed to hold on."
The wolf listened without interrupting.
"So... you are like me?" Hope asked.
The wolf smiled.
"The pack I belonged to never saw my worth. They believed every wolf must hunt. I never chased prey—I chased fear away. Every claw of fear hated me like I was a plague. That was enough for them to call me useless."
Hope tilted its head.
"Why didn't you live as your nature intended? Aren’t your claws one of those fears?"
"My nature?" The wolf chuckled. "Who decided that being born a wolf meant I had to hunt? Must I become what others expect simply because they named me before they knew me, sweetie?"
After a small pause...
"We are just... us. Living for what we choose to live for."
For the first time that night, Hope smiled.
"You are different."
"We are different," the wolf corrected gently. "We are simply ourselves."
The wind passed between them without a sound.
Night slowly surrendered to dawn. The moon faded beyond the mountains, spring knocked gently upon the world, and the pain of countless struggles sank deep into their bones, just as the melting snow disappeared into the grass. At the same time, they looked at their fading scars not as strangers, but as two souls who had survived the same loneliness in different forms.
As the first light of morning reached the field, Hope whispered,
"Who are we, if we cannot simply be ourselves?"
The wolf raised its eyes to the rising sun.
“ Who will we become when all these scars fade beneath the morning light?"
As uncertainty met the rising sun, would Resurgam become the beginning of their own stories?
