The Brief Awakening of Dawn and Death 2

No matter how many times I look back on my past, I can never regret the decisions I made that ultimately lead to my reincarnation as a toucan.
Part of me believes I should, but another part tells me that it’s better this way. If it were not for my obvious toucanism, Kevin would have destroyed me with his infamous beach ball on that fateful day so many years ago. But, I can hardly say life as a toucan is a happy life.

I don’t fit in with the other toucans. I don’t understand their way of life. They don’t like me, because they think I’m a fussy eater (I won’t eat spiders or lizards, which means I use up a lot of their precious fruit). They think I’m an idiot, because I never have quite mastered the art of flight, and a lot of toucan language still, to this day, remains a mystery to me. They think I’m a freak, because, while young children love my stories of my previous humanity, the adults think I’m insane. Eventually, they got tired of me, and that is where this story begins.

They threw me out of their toucan world, not even bothering to try and conceal their prominent dislike for me in their hateful squawks. I was lost, and began to contemplate upon why I had chosen a toucan out of all animals to turn into. But then, I decided opening up those doors would be a bad idea. Last time that happened it lead to the Great Leafy War of 1992, and, well, we all know what happened there. I flew, slightly wonkily, from the cruel, heartless toucans, and soon found myself outside a warm, friendly, and somewhat empty building.

The Canadian Fruit Castle.

Home of the legendary society, the Canadian Fruit Castle was once considered some of the most sophisticated and influential architecture to ever stand on Melvin’s Green Earth (and, no, I do not mean God, I worship Melvin and Melvin only). Nowadays, as the castle crumbles away, Derek is the only one to stand by that opinion.

As warm, friendly, and somewhat empty this building might be, I could hardly say I thought it was safe. Since the coming of the Bulgarian sheep from Essex, the majority of Canada’s fruit fanatics had been wiped out. The remaining few were left seeking asylum, and found it here. With Kevin, that bloody cushioned cat, and the Bulgarian sheep on my tail, I could bring down the whole society with me when I was discovered.

Meh.

I burst through the castle’s welcoming doors and cried “I’m safe! No, I’m HOME!”
But, I soon felt a rather wretched prodding on my shoulder. I kept my eyes tightly shut and refused to discover the source of said prodding, for, to be frank, I found it mildly putrid. It could have been hours that I stood there waiting for the putridity and wretchedness of this bizarre prodding to wear off. But, eventually, I grew weary of standing there doing nothing, and opened my eyes in order to discover this cause of all this putrid wretchedness, and instantly regretted it. The cause of the prodding was the same sight I have been praying to Melvin that I never have to see again.

The sight that greeted me was intense, cushioned, and insufferably cat-like. Hell, I’d go as far to say that it was more than cat-like, it was just plain cat.

Kevin. He’d found me.

It became evident that the prodding I formerly felt was the dreaded feel of Kevin’s cruel beach ball hitting me. And if you think that beach balls are not something fret over, then you are obviously not comprehending quite how dreaded this particular beach ball was. I was momentarily frozen with pure fear. When I melted out of my scary ice, I noticed that Kevin had his beach ball raised high, ready to give me a mighty blow to the head. As I awaited my unavoidable fate, I remembered how annoying it is when you put on a plaster and it starts itching underneath it. Then, I remembered my childhood friends, Patrick and Squidward, and suddenly realised that they were apes. I was about to reminisce about the time I gave birth to a bear, but then the fatal blow I was awaiting struck me.

And, to my surprise (and relief), this blow turned out to be utterly un-fatal. The beach ball bounced right off my head, and then a revolutionary realisation hit me. Toucans must be immune to Kevin’s torturous beating.

This joyous revelation gave me the small push I needed to get me out of there. Beating my wings and heading away from Kevin once more, I flew away, not knowing where the hell I was going, and honestly, not caring. The only thing that could have possibly turned me around at that point was one the thing that did; hearing the vile screams of fruit fanatics. The Bulgarian sheep’s minions had found them. And now they were suffering... because of me.

I may have been a toucan, but I had enough humanity left in me to know I had to do something. But what? That was the real question, and a perplexing one at that. I decided this was a matter I needed to really think about, and so I sat on a conveniently placed wardrobe that happened to be outside the Canadian Fruit Castle, and let myself go into deep thought mode. When I emerged from said mode, the idea seemed obvious. It was so simple, so easy... yet so unexpected. It was guaranteed to work, that much I was sure of. I flew through the window at what might have been the fastest any toucan has ever gone, only to see a dead body, and five mourning Canadians and a man of chocolate milk. No sheep, no minions, no cushioned cats. I was too late.

I ran to them, to see who had been lost. I landed beside Derek, nuzzling against him comfortingly, and looked at the dead fruit fanatic’s face. It was Winifred Flammel, the only CFS member in history to have found a way to know whether or not a fruit knows what it is to be Canadian just by looking at it. What she was yet to find was a fruit that did know what it is to be Canadian. The guilt I felt sent me in a pool of despair. I felt myself being overpowered and lifted away by it. Literally. I vanished from the castle, and unintentionally brought Derek with me.

Derek and I found ourselves in a place that sent shivers of happy memories through my spine. They tingled in my fingers. I bent down and stroked the ground beneath me with my beak, and relived the buggy breaths that had taken place on this very ground. It was wonderful. The sensation that flowed through me as I let the sweet air flow through my feathers was something close to feeling you might get when you buy a brand-new rug and they send you two by accident. I was so happy that in my excitement I pecked the ground far too hard for it to really be considered a peck anymore. I shoved my beak hard into the ground, so hard it took me off my feet, and got stuck that way. How I was going to get out of this situation was a far more perplexing puzzle than finding a way to save the CFS.

I looked over to meet Derek’s questioning gaze, and if the earth wasn’t so tight against my beak I would have cawed a caw for help.
“I would help you,” he told me. “IF you weren’t the reason Winifred was killed. And, well, being made out of chocolate milk, my hands would go right through you...”
I just continued to stare at him with agonized eyes, full of both tears and sorrow.
“I’m sorry,” he said, tormented. “I’ll go get help. Just stay here.”
He really was a good person. I could easily see why the society thought so highly of him. I had just unintentionally killed one of the six remaining people he considered family, and he still wanted to help me.

I sat there and awaited his return, while preoccupying myself with more happy memories, picking up from where I left off with Kevin. I thought about the time I gave birth to a bear. I named the bear Charles William Harrison Ding Dong McSheen Le Supercharge VII. This was particularly odd because there was no Charles William Harrison Ding Dong McSheen Le Supercharge VI, or V, or IV, and so on. You see the pattern emerging.
I cared for that bear with the kind of human-animal love you only see in books and movies. I remember when he was ill, I injected him with honey, and it went through his bloodstream and got stuck in his paw, making it bulging and yellow, and cutting off his circulation. I took the honey out, and the honey died of plastic poisoning, still in the syringe. Oh, happy memories. Then, I wondered where that bear was now. The last time I saw him was my two-hundred and twenty-ninth birthday, when he was rolling around on the floor happily. Then, a cricket landed on his belly, and like that he was gone. He just disappeared before my eyes. I hadn’t really realised how strange this event was before. I just wrote it off as perfectly ordinary and never really gave it much thought. I fervently hoped he was quite alright, though that seemed unlikely, given the circumstances...

My worries were interrupted by Derek’s return. With him, he brought what I thought was a giraffe but actually was a hippopotamus. The hippopotamus pulled me out with his teeth, and it was extremely painful. Ludicrous though it was, I decided this hippopotamus was my long lost brother, and wrapped my arms around it, clinging to it tightly (yes, yes, toucans have no arms, WHATEVER). Our delightful reunion rudely interjected by Derek clearing his throat in ways too loud to be necessary. I gave him a squawk of disapproval, and continued clutching my beloved brother. Did Derek not understand how long we had been waiting to find each other? Perhaps this milky one was not as pleasant as I had previously thought. Just then, my brother, who I had just that second named Loofentyle, charged right through Derek at overwhelming speed. He continued racing across the patented ground of sweet dialect. I turned back to Derek and gave him the smuggest caw of all smug caws. That was thrown in my face, though, because before long, Loofentyle, being a not particularly bright animal, had slammed himself head first into a rock, and knocked himself out. I decided it was time to let myself die. I’d had a good run, but, in the name of Melvin, it was time to let go.

I closed my eyes, and let the end approach me.

I was awoken by Derek splashing me with chocolate milk. Well, the end would have to wait. Derek was obviously in need of a really big shovel. I gave him an eager nod, and went flying.

I returned in mere minutes and dropped a shovel at his feet.
“...Thanks?” Derek thanked me, obviously grateful. Melvin bless him. I just nodded knowingly.
“Okay...” Derek shook his head. “Er... Where are we?”
I shrugged. How was I supposed to know?
“Well... it seemed kind of like you knew where we were, before, when you were stroking the ground and got stuck...”
What an odd thing to say. I wasn’t entirely sure I liked Derek much; he seemed to be a rather peculiar fellow.
“I mean... you were so happy to be here,” he elaborated. Well, duh, I was reliving happy memories. “That’s a really... strange thing to be happy about if you don’t even know where we are.”
I simply glared at him, acting upon my newfound dislike. He shrugged, as if I was the weird one. Jerk...

There was a long silence. Derek moved his head slightly to the right. There was a long silence.

“Okay, I’m going to find out where we are,” Derek declared. “You can come, or you can stay here and peck the ground again.”
As if I would go anywhere with that jerk! He was probably just trying to lure me away so he could eat my grandmother...

Well, I wasn’t about to let my grandmother die because of him. I flapped off determinedly to save her life, leaving Derek and all his jerkiness behind me.

The End