HiveComb

It was a simple afternoon until a particular hen of my dad’s decided otherwise. Since she had chicks, she had become fierce, territorial, loud and unnecessarily charging at anyone who came too close. This time, it was my eldest sister she chose to trouble. Frustrated and fed up, my sister reacted without thinking. She slipped off her footwear and hurled it at the hen.

The hen dodged but the footwear hit one of the chicks instead and everything froze.

The chick spun, stumbled, and kinda collapsed. Its tiny neck twisted at an impossible angle, and in that moment, our hearts sank. We stood there in stunned silence, watching something fragile struggle to stay. The mother hen lost her mind. She circled the chick wildly, pecking at the ground, at the air, and was sure waiting to attack anyone who dared step closer. I know she was trying to will life back into her child.

We couldn’t help because we didn’t know how, so we watched with racing hearts and held breaths and eyes already brimming with tears. She didn’t expect the footwear to hit the chick because it wasn’t aimed at it. Then, unbelievably, the chick moved and its neck straightened, its legs found balance, and in a burst of instinct and life, it ran.

We screamed in unison, “It’s alive!”

Relief flooded the air and laughter followed the shock. Gratitude replaced fear because somewhere in the back of our minds, we thought of our dad, how furious he would have been if anything had happened to his hen’s chick. But oh well, at that moment, none of that mattered anymore. What mattered was the miracle we had just witnessed, cause that’s a real miracle. How life clings, how it fights, how it returns when you least expect it.

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My response to the freewriters dailyprompt

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