The Gift of a Bird's Song
A rare bird with a song so beautiful it moved everyone who heard it to tears
Written by: Celeste Kallio (@CelesteKallio) using SudoWrite
Illustrations by: Andrey Kurenkov (@andrey_kurenkov) using MidJourney
Narration by: Andrey Kurenkov (@andrey_kurenkov) using BeyondWords
Text Formatting: Human-written text is italic, AI-generated text is normal
An Empire at peace is a rare thing, and once Emperor Gladiolo had vanquished the warring factions at his borders, he found himself quite bored. To fill the emptiness of his days, he sought out the rarest, most beautiful things in the world.
Rumors reached him of a rare bird with a song so beautiful it moved everyone who heard it to tears.
The Emperor ordered his finest bird-hunters to find and capture the bird, whereupon he would cage it for all to marvel at. A year passed, however, and all the bird-hunters failed to return with the fabled Nightingale.
Shortly thereafter, a strange young woman appeared at the palace gates. She could capture the bird, she claimed. The Emperor at first suspected the young woman was a terrible liar, but no one else had succeeded, so she could at least try.
He ordered his soldiers to escort the young woman to the forest where the Nightingale was rumored to dwell. The soldiers returned a week later, carrying a cage containing the Nightingale. Her song filled his heart with wonder.
The Emperor took to visiting the Nightingale in his palace each evening, falling more and more in love with her magnificent song. One evening, while sitting alone with the bird, a sudden desperate thought came to the Emperor.
"You must have a mate," he told the Nightingale. "Perhaps if I were to free you, you could find one."
"Oh great Emperor, I am so very grateful, but I do not wish for one," said the Nightingale.
He asked the Nightingale if there was anything she would like in return for the gift of her song
The Nightingale replied, "There is nothing I wish from you, the greatest Emperor of a thousand kingdoms. But I have many friends, and if you will free them, too, I will be eternally grateful."
The Emperor freed every bird in the kingdom, and the forests were filled with their songs.
The Emperor's love of birds spread across the land, and an artisan who created beautiful machines had an idea.
"What if we could make a machine that could sing as beautifully as the Nightingale?"
"Ah," said the Emperor, "I would throw all my gold into the sea if I could find such a machine."
And so the artisan set to work, crafting the most beautiful and complex music-box he could imagine.
The Emperor was delighted, and the people of the land fell to the ground weeping at the beauty of the music. But some of them wept for their brothers and sisters who had been sent away to die in wars, but the Emperor never heard those cries.
The machine was capable of infinite variety of beautiful songs, many more than the poor Nightingale. The Emperor began to spend more and more time with the mechanical box, and the Nightingale was often left alone.
She began to dream of singing with her lost family, but she didn't know if it would be possible. Perhaps they had forgotten her, she thought. Perhaps they were too far away to ever find her.
And yet, she dreamed.
One night, while the Emperor slept, the Nightingale slipped out of the palace and flew as fast as she could through the clouds, into the night.
She flew over the Emperor's borders, over the seas and the mountains and the great forests of the land.
It took her weeks, but eventually she found what she was looking for: a great forest of birds, singing as loud as they could.
The Nightingale was happy with her family in the forest, and began to think of her time by the Emperor's side as a crazy dream. But rumors of his ailing health reached the edges of the empire and into the forest.
He wasted away and was near death.
The Nightingale had almost forgotten about him when she heard that he was still alive, but barely. She flew back to the Emperor's palace, with the entire forest of birds in tow, and slipped back into the Emperor's chambers.
The Emperor lay on his sickbed, a shrunken form gasping for breath. Death sat at the foot of the bed, coaxing the Emperor's life force out of the wasted body, bit by bit.
The Nightingale knew the Emperor would be dead by morning.
"I have brought you a gift, Emperor. It is our song, your song, and the song of all my brothers and sisters," said the Nightingale.
The Nightingale opened her beak, and the forest began to sing. The Emperor wept in the most pleasant and cruel of ways, for he knew he was about to die, and yet the sound of the singing birds filled his heart with a love he had never known. He realized that he had spent all his life searching for completeness, without realizing there was nothing more perfect than the sound of a simple bird’s song.
"I have lived a thousand lives. And I have loved a thousand times. But you have made me live again."
And when the sun rose over the forest the next morning, the birds flew away, and all that remained were the memories.
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