Dumb bird

We had been walking across this world for days. Actually, more than a week. Despite not following any specific route, we had not found a single trace of intelligent life. We came across a multitude of animals, but none of them could be called a person.

It looked like the cities and towns were too scattered and distant from each other, without any relationship between them. Any trace of civilization was non-existent, to the point where we had not been able to see any path. Grass, trees, plants and more plants, this was the only thing we could see during our entire trip.

After a long time walking, we decided to take a break. I was sitting in front of a large tree with my legs crossed and my eyes closed, carefully moving and absorbing the energy around me.

"Are you sleeping?"

I don't know how long I had been in that state, but Raidha's voice brought me back to reality and made me slowly open my eyes. The first thing I saw was her surprised expression.

"Your eyes are becoming green again."

"I'm recovering energy little by little… I already supposed this could happen…"

"Probably you will turn into a dog again, ha, ha, ha."

"Maybe… and isn't something I'm glad about."

Inadvertently transforming again worried me a bit, so I had been slowly collecting the energy to a level where my hair wasn't changing its colour. That left me somewhat limited, but at the same time allowed me to better understand how to control this power.

"But I think I found how to avoid that."

I closed my eyes again and focused inside myself, sending all the excess energy flowing through my body directly into the container… and I sealed it.

"They are normal again!" Raidha exclaimed the moment I opened my eyes again.

"Yes, it was simpler than I expected", I agreed. "Although easier said than done…"

Last time, the energy rampaged through my body. It flowed everywhere uncontrollably and I probably wouldn't have been able to stop it even if I put all my effort into it.

'Anyway, being a wolf wasn't so bad. Both regeneration and control were superior to the current one… I guess I'll have to experiment with the transformation as well.'

I looked up at the sky as I lost myself in my thoughts… and what appeared in front of my gaze was something that seemed to be the smoke of a huge fire.

"What the…?"

Seeing my reaction, Raidha also looked at the sky, and her reaction was similar to mine.

"That is… smoke?" the princess muttered.

"Apparently there's a fire in the distance. What do we do? The biggest cause of fire is usually people. Maybe we will find someone out there. Gonna take a look?"

"Yes, let's go!"

Walking into a fire didn't seem like the best idea in the world, but if that meant the possibility of running into someone, we didn't mind taking the risk. Anyway, from the amount of smoke, it didn't appear to be a massive fire, but not a small one either. If it ended up being a village, would they be under attack? It seemed that wherever we went we ended up encountering problems…

***

It didn't take long for us to reach the source. As I thought, it was a village.

"What the hell is happening here?" I muttered.

Five houses were burning out of control… the others were intact. It was strange, the separation between the houses was very large, not to say enormous. More than a village, the place seemed to be a pile of houses thrown in the same place without following any pattern.

The space between each other was far more than fifty meters, so unless a spark jumped and the wind blew it away, the fire would not spread. No, even then it would be difficult...

'How could this happen?'

This was the strangest thing, the five houses were in different parts of the place, with houses in the middle that were intact. Everything indicated that there were five independent fires, so it would be normal to think that someone caused it… although perhaps saying that this was the strangest thing was not correct.

"Why is nobody doing anything?" Raidha asked.

"Is as if they don't mind having their houses burn in front of their noses… Are they right in their heads?"

—They are morons.

What could really be called the strangest was the part in which the inhabitants of the place continued doing whatever they were doing, completely ignoring the fire. In the end, we decided to ask them directly.

"Why is nobody doing anything about the fire?" I asked to a man.

"Travelers? I see, I guess it looks strange to outsiders, ha, ha, ha," he replied as if it were no problem at all.

"Don't worry, don't worry", added a woman who was passing by.

"Just stay away from the fire and let it go out on its own. It's not worth worrying about," another guy followed.

In the end we did not get anything clear… They only told us that the fire was not a problem. It didn't make sense to me. Would the fires be normal in the place? From the way they talked, it seemed to be the case.

"Nobody cared about losing their damn house… I'll agree with my partner, they are morons," I murmured.

"These people are weirder than you," Raidha replied.

We went to closely inspect one of the burning houses. Perhaps with that we would get something clear. Halfway through, just passing near a house, a red thing fell on top of my head and knocked me down.

"Ouch… what was that?"

I didn't have time to finish getting up when another red thing fell on my head again. Raidha started running towards me, but suddenly another red thing ran in front of her and tripped her. Result… both kissing the floor… and the locals laughing at us.

"Ha, ha, ha, are you fine?" a man approached us.

"We are ok…" I groaned as I got up.

"You better watch where you are going. If you are not careful, you could cause a serious accident," the man replied as he pointed to one of the burning houses.

I took another quick look across town. From time to time, some huge, very fat red birds could be seen running on the rooftops and in the street. That damn overweight bird was what brought us down.

"What are these birds?" I asked the man.

"A plague in the area," he replied as he kicked one of the birds, sending it flying like a soccer ball.

"You don't have to kick it!" Raidha yelled at him.

"If they disappeared they would be doing all of us and themselves a favor."

Time to shout that, we could see other of those birds leaping from a ceiling as if to take flight… but it could not take off and fell headlong to the ground, clearly breaking its neck and dying on the spot. In another place, one fell into a barrel of water… and apparently it did not know how to swim, because it didn't surface again. Further away another one of those birds was swallowing a rock that was undoubtedly bigger than its throat and obviously got stuck in the middle of its neck… it ended up dead like the other two. Everywhere I looked, I could see one of those birds dying in the stupidest ways I could ever see a bird die...

"I can't believe what I'm seeing" Raidha was also surprised.

"Nor I…"

"Now do you understand? These birds are dumb."

"Calling them dumb is an understatement… you could even say it's an insult to dumb people…"

"We call them pyropo, and they are the worst plague we've ever had in town."

"But if they kill themselves... How can they be a plague? In the end, they will end up disappearing on their own," I replied as I watched another of them die.

"Because of this."

That man pointed to the corpse of one of those pyropo that had practically died in front of us. We stared at the bird without understanding what he wanted to show us... until suddenly the corpse caught fire.

"Whoa! That's dangerous!" Raidha yelled as she leaped back from the fire.

"Because of that we have fires everywhere. We have already conditioned the houses and the streets so that they cannot cause a fire easily, but there is always one of them who dies in the worst possible place and ends up creating one."

"So this is the cause…" I muttered. "Is it some stupid defensive tactic? If you eat one you end up dying burned from inside… As fat as they are, they must be an attractive target for predators…"

"If it were as simple as that it would be fine. The problem is that after burning they revive."

"Eh?" Raidha and I shouted with stupid faces.

But it really did happen. The fire did not take long to extinguish and in the place where moments before the corpse of the pyropo was, the damn bird was there as if nothing had ever happened.

"A phoenix... That bird is a phoenix... I always wanted to see a real one..."

I almost burst into tears at what was in front of me.

"Are you so excited to see one?" Raidha asked when she saw my face.

"Excited? Shit! My vision of what I thought that legendary bird would be like has been completely trashed! All my life imagining a huge bird with shiny golden feathers. An animal that flies majestically through the sky adorning it with its brilliance… and instead I find a stupid fat bird that can't even fly!"

Frustrated, I kicked one of those fat birds the same way that guy did just before. They were probably worthless, but as a ball they may be useful.

"That is why they are a plague. There is no way to get rid of them. If we kill them they revive and there is no way to scare them into leaving. The only thing we can do is catch them, and believe me, having too many together is terrifying."

"I can imagine it," I laughed wryly.

It would probably be similar to a living napalm bomb…

Every day we catch as many as we can and send them as far as possible. Even so, they always end up coming back sooner or later. Keeping the number of them low is our biggest problem. We even created a group in charge of hunting pyropos. Oh, just talking about them and there they come.

We could see a carriage coming into town… And a couple of dumb birds get run over by it.

"We found something amazing right on the way back!"

One of the men in the carriage screamed and people began to gather around the carriage.

"Let's see what they found!"

With the same curiosity as the people of the place, we approached that carriage full of cages, which they probably used to transport the pyropos. All of them appeared to be empty, except for one that was covered by a black cloth.

"Look at this, you will probably never see something like this again."

With a swift movement, one of the men removed the cloth from the top of the cage and what was inside left me with my eyes wide open... Well, it wasn't what I imagined either...