MONUMENTAL

An Alibi. A Destiny.

There was a cliff where the world ended. It overlooked the wind and the blue around the horizon. At its lip a tree that learned to grow from stone. Two lovebirds fled their flock and built a nest there. High enough to feel safe, far enough to feel alone.

They laid three eggs. Two were smooth as moonlight. One was not. Murky, veined, a bruise of an egg. They called it a sickness, a remnant... not ours. In whispers that hardened into a nerve, they rolled a boulder over the dark egg and set it on the center. Perhaps to shield it, or perhaps to save themselves from certain kind of humiliation. The shell groaned but did not break. The rock sat like a verdict. Seasons turned. They learned not to look, never to look back.

The first egg cracked. Out stepped Shams, sunlight made feather: sharp mind, quick wings, a gaze that melted resistance. They taught him height and he learned fast. He flew circles around the cliff-tree, bringing water, seeds, berries and later, trophies. His beak could not carry enough, so he prayed for more, pared and sharpened with claw and grit, grew strength where tools failed, and learned to haul with wings what his beak could not.

Under the rock, the dark egg held. When it finally split, it did so by a seam thin as breath. A small bird slid out from under the boulder and lived. Ali. Feathers ash-dark, eyes like night water. Air burned his lungs; a pain lived in his ribs. Wings would not obey. Legs, however, were kingdoms. Claws found purchase in impossible stone. Water taught him how to move without falling.

The boulder stayed, resting improbably on the ring of broken shell. The parents named it Monument. They showed it to visitors. See? We suffered for our children. Praise the Monument. Praise us.

Ali learned the mountain by touch: bark, grit, wet, cold. He could climb anything and swim anywhere, but he could not fly. The world gave him names for that. Some cruel, some afraid, but none forgot him. None could ever dare.

Shams grew taller than his parents and faster than his doubts. The forest below glittered with heat and noise. He found a mate there, and rules that were different, and promises that were easy. He said the family should move. Tired of thin air and old fear, the lovebirds agreed. Down they went to the pond at the foot, right at the forest’s edge.

By then the third egg had cracked. Noor came soft and bright, taught from birth to be like Shams and not like Ali.

At the pond, Ali found a bird who had fallen too many times. Layla, bruised by a monster who called himself a father. Ali lifted her, fed her, mended what could be mended, and married her so his hands could keep doing what they had started: saving. A love born from caring, not lust.

Work in the forest came with teeth. The lords of grain and law; the Kites and the Owls; liked Ali’s nerve but hated his gutt. When he tried to leave, rumors ran ahead of him, and cages began to close. Time turned into a count: thirteen months of “we will find something.” They never did. They intended to find something they knew they never could.

While he was gone, the home at the pond was dismantled. Shams and his mate pulled their lives toward the forest. The lovebirds dragged the past back up the mountain, nearer the flock they once fled. The Monument waited at the cliff, heavy as ever, pretending to be holy.

The flock took them back and gave them a roost, but with a scar; the flock never let the lovebirds forget their place. By then Noor had begun to fly. He looked down on Ali; always pleading, gasping, never in the right place or in the right time. Pushed into the belly of the forest to imitate Shams, he stayed conflicted and kept returning to the old flock’s nest.

Each time Ali returned, he found Noor exhausted and drowning in duty. Ali taught him to swim because he knew no one else could. The parents read this as strength to exploit and ordered Noor to bring riches from the pond. Trained in forest ways and now reduced to fishing, Noor mistook survival for skill and pride. Useful in itself, useless to all.

One day the parents rolled the Monument back toward Ali. It toppled from the cliff-tree and struck him. It should have crushed him. It didn’t. He rose beneath it, bearing the weight on his skull and food on the back of a broken wing. Feet bled. Bones sang. But the soul does not crack.

Panicked, the parents rewrote the tale: the boulder was their gift, their sacrifice. They toured the lie. The mountain despised him, the flock despised him, the parents despised him—but the story slipped from their hands and set into Ali’s stone.