The sun had already dipped below the horizon when the owner finally turned the key in the lock, much later than intended. Usually, she would be greeted by the soft scritch-scritch of two pairs of feet on the cage roof, but tonight, the apartment was unnervingly still. Xiaohua was there, perched obediently near the food bowl, his yellow-and-green feathers glowing dimly in the twilight. But the white-and-blue flash of Ani was nowhere to be seen.
Panic, sharp and cold, began to settle in the owner's chest. This wasn't a game of hide-and-seek. Ani was not like other birds; she possessed a clumsy, fragile grace. Her eyesight was poor, often causing her to misjudge distances, and her flying skills were lackluster at best. The owner had seen it happen before: a sudden startle would send Ani spiraling, only for her to clip a table leg or a wall mid-flight. Because she couldn't navigate tight spaces well, these crashes often ended with her wedged into the narrow, dark gaps behind furniture where her wings couldn't open to lift her out.
"Ani? Ani, where are you?" the owner called, her voice trembling. Even Xiaohua seemed to sense the distress, letting out a series of sharp, urgent chirps as if calling his commander back to the flock.
But Ani remained silent. Her fear of humans was a stubborn wall that even the owner’s love couldn't scale. To Ani, a loud voice and a searching hand were threats, not a rescue. Even if she were hungry, even if she were hurt and pinned behind a heavy cabinet, she would remain as still as a stone to avoid detection. The owner remembered a previous "close call" where Ani had hidden atop a dusty shoe cabinet for hours, watching the frantic search with wide, terrified eyes, only emerging once the room had gone silent.
Tonight felt different. The owner moved from room to room, checking the crevices behind the bookshelf and the dark voids under the sofa, her heart sinking with every empty corner. If Ani had fallen into a gap she couldn't escape, she wouldn't call for help. She would simply wait in the dark, fading away in silence.
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and then Add to home screen.