Different (A Post-Aesop Fable)

Deep in the woods, among standing pine and cedar, a squat cabin lay. Its chimney slouched, its once-snug windows now let the wind sigh through; in its heyday this cabin had been the sort of place where people came together and learned and loved, but now no voices disturbed its slumber. 

Such was the case until a deep new blanket of snow gave the bristling forest a chance to reawaken.

In their nests on the empty sills, the dark-hooded juncos watched the flakes continue to fall. From time to time, a voice from the southeast sill, or the western window, or the ledge above the old door would trill out:

“Cloudy as night, not a shadow in sight!”

“Snow too deep, my nest I keep, when and what will I eat?”

“Snow still here, snow still here, I am waiting, no movement near!”

In their burrows in the old plank walls, a family of brown mice listened and shivered. They huddled together, ears and noses twitching, straining to hear beyond the muffle of snowfall. 

“The birds say there isn’t anyone else about,” said one clever mouse. “If we want, I can go out and--”

“But you can’t, none of us can!” One of the littlest mice interrupted. 

“We have to stay in and focus on being warm!” agreed another. 

The clever mouse ran a paw over its whiskers. “We need more nest scraps. I wouldn’t go far, and I wouldn’t even have to go outside. I could go look in the Room --”

“We’ve heard enough of this,” said Grandmother Mouse. “We have more than enough food stored, even if the nest isn’t as warm as it once was. There’s no reason to risk letting anyone out alone.”

Perched on a ledge at the other side of the cabin, one curious junco peered into the depths of the one littered room. The curious junco heard nothing of the mouse family’s conversation, and wasn’t at all interested; it was preoccupied with the rumblings from its stomach. 

Fluttering down from the window, which long ago had lost its protective glass, the junco dipped and hopped among the leftovers of the cabin’s life. Under normal circumstances, no junco ever came inside the ruin on which they lived. It was dark, and besides, any food left there would surely have been eaten by someone else already. But this winter storm was far beyond normal, and this junco was very hungry. It moved constantly, bobbing between piles of broken lumber and scattered shards of glass, keeping its eyes to the ground in hopes of spotting food before it was taken -- or shadows before they took it. 

Then all at once the curious junco saw it: one lone seed glinting in the snowy light coming down from the holes in the roof. 

But as the bird leapt to the seed, it heard something, too:

“It’s not really ‘going out alone’ if I’m retrieving a seed, is it? I had to go and get it and put it back in the store,” the clever mouse said under its breath. It scurried with purpose across the uneven floor, whiskers twitching. 

“My seed, my seed, my seed,” trilled the curious junco. But it was quite taken aback by this mouse’s behavior, and could only shake its tailfeathers helplessly as the mouse reached out and took hold of the food. 

“Our seed,” said the mouse, clutching its prize. Then it hesitated, appraising the junco. “You do say more than ‘mine’ and poetry, don’t you? I was really hoping you do, because otherwise I don’t know how we’re going to help one another.”

“‘Help?’” The curious junco twisted its head. But soon a little shine lit its eye, and it came closer, alighting on a forgotten shoe. From there it leant over the clever mouse. “You want to make a deal?”

The mouse sighed. Its tail shifted over the cold floor, swishing aside the snow that’d blown into the cabin. “In a way, I suppose, but we don’t have time to haggle. You see, my family is suffering in the cold, and we need more scraps to keep out the snow. And I have watched you birds, and I know you have nests all around full of grasses and leaves, while we have stores of seeds. So if we could trade--”

“You talk a lot,” decided the junco. “Eep, wait, you say you know about me?”

“No I didn’t, I mean I don’t, I just know about birds in general and that’s why it came to me that maybe--”

“I’m different from the others,” the curious junco said, puffing itself up. “I’ve gone farther than anyone. I know all about the woods.”

“It really doesn’t matter if you’re different--”

“But it does,” the junco interjected. “Right? Because if I wasn’t, I wouldn’t be here.”

The wind beyond the cabin laughed at them, at anyone so cold and hungry and squabbling. The mouse took a deep breath and realized that while its plan might have gone astray, the junco was right. 

“I’m glad,” said the clever mouse, and meant it. “So what do you think? You can have some seeds, and we can have some nest scraps?”

“Yes,” said the curious junco, “yes, yes -- erp! We didn’t talk numbers. How many, how many seeds, how many grasses?” 

“Enough? I told you I don’t want to haggle.” Forgetting the seed for a moment, the mouse wiped a paw over its nose. “I’m in a hurry. I took a big chance being here, too.”

The curious junco shook out its wings, its dark eyes more shrewd than before. “Took a chance! That you did, mouse. Mice are little shadow creatures. You are different, different like me. Of a feather.”

The frosted walls leant in, listening, listening to the junco saying such strange things. A bird of one kind would hardly say of a feather to a bird of another, much less to a creature who was not a bird at all. But there amid the sparkle of snow it was a time for such strange things; only by these strange chances would bird and mouse survive.

“That’s really not very kind, you know,” the clever mouse couldn’t help but say, focused on the comment about shadows. Its ears twitched, always listening, and its hind paws braced: maybe it was time to leave. Maybe there was another way.

“‘Not’?” The junco thought about this. It said, honestly, “I do my best.”

“Well, you could do better.”

“Not without food.” With a hop in place the junco added, “We can do better together?”

“Alright.” The mouse’s whiskers twitched once more, and it smiled. It could do better, in a future beyond this entombing snow -- provided everyone survived. “Come on then, let’s get to work.”

Around them the very beams of the little cabin sighed, beneath the weight of the snow. The winter storm paused a moment, and that little cabin which had seen many live together and many die alone knew its truth.

Birds of a feather flock together, until together they flock no more.