The forest had a rhythm.
I didn't notice it at first, not when I was focused on my own feathers and learning of flight. But it was always there, just under the surface. In the sway of leaves, the hush of the wind, the soft footfalls of deer moving through undergrowth. It pulsed gently, like a slow sleeping heart.
And in the mornings, it sang.
It started just before dawn, one bird, then two, then ten, and then a cascade of chirps and whistles and melodies that rose like steam from the treetops. Harmonies I didn't understand but felt in my chest. Notes that made the light hit the leaves differently. If joy could make a sound, it would be this.
And I?
I was silent.
At first, I thought I was just shy. New beak, new voice, new world and all such, it made sense to hold back. But after days of watching others sing freely, I tried.
Early one morning, while the sky was still gray with sleep, I perched on my favorite moss-covered branch and opened my beak.
Nothing came out.
I tried again. A breath, a twitch in my throat, a mental just do it.
Still nothing.
Not silence, exactly, but more like an echo that had nowhere to go. A closed-off room in a house no one visited anymore.
The trees around me rustled, oblivious. A wren nearby trilled a flawless scale. A pair of robins whistled a duet so beautiful.
And I sat there, wings drooped slightly, feeling like a ghost with feathers.
Later that morning, back at the cottage, I perched on the sill and watched the witch knead dough. Her hands moved with a soft rhythm, going push, fold, turn, push. Fig dozed by the hearth, occasionally twitching like he was arguing in his sleep.
I didn't chirp my usual hello. I just sat there, heavy with a silence that suddenly felt unfamiliar.
She glanced up.
"You're quiet," she said.
I blinked slowly. She raised an eyebrow.
"Quieter than usual."
I tilted my head.
She dusted flour off her hands and came to sit by the window. She looked out for a moment, in the same direction I'd flown in from, then sipped her tea.
"You tried to sing, didn't you?"
I froze.
She smiled gently. "Most of the birds in this forest sing before they know why. You're not most birds."
I lowered my head.
"Let me guess," she continued, "you opened your beak, thought something beautiful would come out, and then it didn't?"
I gave the smallest nod, kind of ashamed at her blunt way of speech.
She didn't laugh. She didn't tell me to try harder.
Instead, she placed her hand flat on the sill, fingers relaxed.
"You know," she said, "I didn't speak for three years once. After I left the city. After I burned the last bridge I thought I needed."
I looked at her, surprised.
"I thought silence meant safety," she said. "If no one heard me, they couldn't judge me. If I had never raised my voice, I couldn't have said the wrong thing. Couldn't fail."
She turned to face me. "But silence isn't peace. Not always."
Her eyes softened.
"Sometimes, peace is just a silence you choose."
I didn't try to sing that day. Or the next.
But I started listening more closely.
To the birds, yes. But also to the wind between the branches. To the hush of the oven door closing. To the sound Fig made when he dreamed a low, growly purr like distant, constant, thunder that never quite arrived.
And sometimes, to the memory of music from my old life.
There was a piano once.
Not mine.
Not anyone I knew.
It sat in the corner of the apartment building lobby, it was terribly old, polished, slightly out of tune. One of those old upright pianos with keys worn thin at the edges and a chipped petal that never quite sat right. No one touched it during the week.
But every Sunday morning, someone played.
Just a song, sometimes two. Soft, unhurried.
The kind of melody that didn't need attention, only space. A wandering sort of tune, as if the player had nowhere to be and nothing to prove, they just enjoyed playing.
I never saw who it was. I'd leave my apartment and linger by the mailbox, pretending to check for letters I knew weren't coming. Listening through half-closed doors, hiding behind silence, too scared to confront them.
I never told anyone I liked it.
Never asked who played.
Never said thank you.
But in a life where everything was either noise or numbness, those quiet Sunday mornings were the only moments that felt like so ever slow and nice, even if it was for a moment.
They reminded me of something I couldn't name, a version of myself that wasn't trying to impress.
Now, as a bird, that melody drifted through my mind again, mostly faded, incomplete, but still warm in the chest. Not just a song, but something closer to a feeling.
That was what I wanted to sing.
Not to perform. Not to impress the forest, or the witch, or even myself.
Just to make something small and real and honest. A sound that meant: I'm here.
And: I'm still learning to live.
That's when a slight little whistle snuck out of my beak.