Revenge – Short Stories | Fish-eye Perspective

Not sure what went wrong that day. We had never seen the Giantess in such a rage before.

We have lived in the castle in harmony with the Giantess for many generations. She’s a mage–she sits in front of her magic crystal box, and as moves her fingers across, moving pictures of far and beyond appear showing what, clearly, is the future. Sometimes, she chants in languages unknown and moves her hands and feet (she has only two each) in a ritual dance. But in spite of all her eccentricities, mostly, she’d been gentle and unobtrusive for centuries.

My grandma often told us stories about her opening windows to let out the trespassing bees and wasps rather than crushing them under foot, as is the usual practice among giants. Hence, yesterday, her actions came as unexpected.

She came to us with her face covered and swiped with a long sword with a big round top. Scared, we all moved back until our backs hit the wall and there was nowhere to hide. We ran in all directions. But she kept following one or the other, cursing and panting and puffing. Most of us took refuge in the various caves in the walls. Those who couldn’t were murdered in cold blood. When her sword couldn’t reach those of us in the caves, she became frustrated and broke our little houses.

Then she continued this act in all the halls, killing quite a few of my kin within the hour.

Now that we are done with the mourning, we’ve decided to avenge our dead. We’ve spoken to the Queen Bee and various Wasps around the place and they agree that the Giants, as they spend most of their time at home planning and plotting, are slowly becoming unhinged, and cannot to be trusted; and that our Giantess is now in league with the Dragons who abound the castle.

Hence the Bees and Wasps are now our allies and we are planning a joint attack tonight with our full combined forces, and take over the castle.

Let the world see that minions shall not be belittled.

Free photo by DivyadarshiAch1 on Unsplash

I have been seeing too many crazy neighbours during lockdown and I am dedicating them a series.

Athena, the eagle, is the queen of my area. Most birds give her a wide berth in the sky and if she swoops lower, they rush to hide and avoid her wrath. I’m a fan of her grace. In theory, I knew she preys upon birds too. But I never saw it before that fateful day.

I was up early that morning and the world was full of twittering and tweeting. I could see a couple of lapwings (small water birds the size of a pigeon) flying towards my home, playing and teasing each other with the did-you-do-it call. Suddenly, Athena descended from the sky, grabbed one of them, and flew away.

White feathers fell from the sky as the victim struggled and surviving mate called out in a heartbreaking voice. My heroine had just separated lovers. Forever.

I knew this is what eagles do, but that couldn’t take away the resentment. I hoped the survivor will get over it soon, since he’s “just a bird”…

In the afternoon, I went to the rooftop for some chore and again heard the same heartbreaking cries, this time filled with anger. I looked up at the sky and saw what I had never thought possible.

A lone lapwing, the pigeon-sized thing that did not stand a chance against an eagle, was attacking Athena, over and over, as if he was avenging his love or, may be, he had a death wish.

Athena did not strike back. She just tried to save itself by hiding in a tree. The lapwing kept up the attacks until he was too tired to fly.

I saw the same thing after four days. Not sure, if he ever let her rest. I didn’t see a lapwing again in the area, so I hope Athena wasn’t too fed up or hungry that day or whenever he last struck.

And here I had thought that birds were devoid of ‘human emotions’; that they were…just ‘birds’.

Tag: Revenge

My Neighbours: The Minions

My Neighbours: The Avenger