The girl had always enjoyed feeding the birds.
Today the park was less busy than usual. This made it easy for the woman to keep her eye on her daughter while she walked around with her paper bag. This was despite the fact that she was a fair distance away. The mother was quite content with the wooden bench, catching up with her magazine.
There were a number of birds flitting around and generally following the small child, happily wandering to and fro with the bag full of birdseed. Every now and then she seemed to stop and carry on a conversation with a bird. This had been going on as long as the mother could remember. It had been a concern at first, but both the doctor and her teacher had said it was nothing to worry about. Kids often dream up imaginary friends she was told. It was perfectly natural.
At one point she saw her sitting down in deep conversation with a bird. She could see her chatting away, dropping seed from time to time. This went on for ages. Finally she got up, waved goodbye to her feathered friend and ran back to her mother.
As she approached, her mother said, “You had a nice long time with the birds today, didn’t you dear? Has all your seed gone?”
The girl looked into her bag and said, “No, some left.” She looked back to where she’d been. “I found a chatty one,” she said. “He was lovely. Told me a lot about his friends and his mum and dad and…” She stopped. “You know, some of the birds were very unkind to him.”
“Unkind? What do you mean?”
“Well, his young brother got hit by a car. He died. It was very sad.”
“Oh! Dear!” said the mother.
“Yes,” she went on, “they blamed him, said he should have taken better care of him because he was older.”
The mother looked perplexed.
“I mean,” the girl continued, “what could he have done? They were really rotten to him.”
“Well,” said the mother, remembering the medical advice, “you certainly found out a lot today, didn’t you.” She gave her an understanding smile.
“Yes,” said the girl, scrunching the top of her bag closed, and he said we should move on, because it’s going to rain.”
She looked around. I think we should go and stand in the Pagoda, it seems to be empty.
The mother smiled at her again. “Yes, it would be empty my love. On a nice day like today.”
“But the rain!” the girl insisted.
The mother laughed, and looked at the sky. “I think that’s highly unlikely, besides, we don’t have an umbrella.”
With that, there was a giant clap of thunder and it bucketed down.
