The hawk lay on the solemn earth, looking to the faded red sky, as the others fly away.
As he looks downwards, he remembers back on the path that led him to this mound of lifeless grey.
As a young bird he tried so hard to be like his brothers.
He flapped his wings and stood so very close to the edge of the nest, daring himself to go beyond its walls.
But as one by one the others left, the hawk found that he could not. He just stood in the corner of his world all the while being cruelly mocked for his anxiety and fears.
The hawk not only retreated to his physical home, but the home inside his mind. There he grew physically, but not mentally. He did in the imaginary worlds of his dreams, what others were doing in the skies of the real world.
Explored new lands, met many new friends, achieved greatly and found true love. But the hawk continued to be alone and fell behind in all aspects of life.
For a while the hawk felt purpose in taking care of the mother hawk who had become very sick. But as he grew older and older, he began to realize more and more that his life was meaningless, that while others of his time had gone onto great things, he had been long forgotten. With the death of his mother, he realized that he had nothing in the world. The hawk sat on the edge of his rotting nest. He stared, crying silent tears, watching the world he had never been a part of. As he closed his eyes, he felt the cool autumn wind hit his feathers, for a brief period he felt like maybe it would be ok. The wind comforted him, stroking the pained lines of anguish to a soothing calm.
But then, as he opened his hopeful eyes, he felt a shadow overwhelm him. As he turned to look behind to his home, he felt the kick of a claw push him over the edge.
He fell, and fell...starring up at his home that had now rejected him. He closed his eyes again and fell for what seemed like forever...he wished it all to be over...and then with a thud...silence.
The hawk lay on the solemn earth, weakly he tries to lift his wings and stand, but it is all in vain. Alone and without the will to go on, he folds his wings and buries his head into his chest, quietly wishing for it all to be over. Sun shadows turns to moon light and the hawk lies alone and rejected, crying himself to sleep and hoping to never wake again...

~~~

The long night rolls on and moonlight bathes the land in its luminesce blue glow. A hawk of another kind, fly’s low above the ground. Suddenly the hawk darts lower towards the earth and lands quietly in the dust.
It steps slowly towards a shadowy mound beneath the shadow of an ancient oak. Quietly starring at the something that no other bird had seen...

He slowly came back to consciousness, he felt the pain in his head and felt the dark of night pressing against his closed eyes, but he also felt something else...he wasn’t alone. He laid still as the dead, dreading what it could be that was so near, wondering if it was some foul creature come to devour the remains of a life not lived.
But before he could continue his spiraling thoughts, the warming embrace of another covered his cold and dusty body. It was the wing over another hawk. Someone had found him, someone had seen him, someone cared, and she always would, despite his flaws, despite his anxiety and pain. From that moment on, she would love him and be with him till her last breath. She will never let him be alone again, she will help him to fly and to find his place in the sky as the hawk he never thought he could be.

the end.