Crow and The Four Horsemen
Whilst chaos reigned supreme on the earth below, Crow sailed effortlessly on the warm air rivulets above, watching the people scurry about like ants in a farm, panicking, confused, trapped.
Crow saw it all, and he understood it . He’d been unseen forever, and he preferred it that way, sailing across the ever changing skies, barely meeting another on his journeys. He couldn’t even imagine how it would feel to be imprisoned down there, with the rules and the routines and the responsibilities.
The only rules for Crow were to survive, and enjoy. He did pretty well at the surviving part, being of good breeding and strong constitution. Joy came easily, due in no small part to his adventures and the courage he had gained across the years. He enjoyed his life in the sky and on the rocks, or in the trees and sometimes the fields.
Now he watched, not entirely impassive, as the chaos and upheaval carried on below, but he didnt feel surprise or worry. This is what was needed, for their incorrect world to be picked up, shaken around, and thrown back down to land where it would, like a pack of cards.
Being unseen, Crow had always been able to observe without restriction, and he did so with interest but also sometimes with some concern. He wasn’t part of that world, and as long as he could continue to live with the sky birds, then all was well. But after watching the people for so long he felt something else, not an affinity exactly, but a compassion. And frustration. He could see where they were going wrong, how they placed importance on all the wrong things, put their energies into material possessions, people, ideas and events that were not joyful and satisfying. They were blind to lessons they could learn to move their lives forward, obscuring their view with ego and nonsense. Nothing could help them now, save what they had built and were now tearing down, Crow knew. He felt a kind of loss as he foresaw the beginning of the end.
The little ones were his worry, following along, indoctrinated into this mindset, without a chance to develop their own hearts and judgements. He had hope there would be a breakout group, somewhere for the little ones to go, with the seers, those who understand what is to come and saw what was wrong. Although Crow saw a spark of hope, he knew instinctively that it was too little too late, that is all.
Buildings falling, fires burning, water engulfing. The four horsemen barely needed lift a finger should they wish to to push the rock off this cliff, as the people had done much of that themselves already. Now that everything was collapsing around them, they are being razed to the ground. Everyone back at the same level, with a set of unfulfilled basic needs, each with self-preservation as their only priority. Crow even saw some of the little ones left alone to fend for themselves, while their protectors put on their own oxygen masks. The last bastion, the one thing no one though they would ever do, that their neighbour would do, that a fellow human would do. This is the moment they realise that they got it all so wrong.
Like Crow, the people only have two rules now: Survive and enjoy.
