Contagious

Once upon a time there was a tree which grew in a city. Anyone who tried to cut it, in the end had to give up. The reason behind this is that there used to be a crow who had built its nest on that tree. Whenever somebody came near the tree with an axe, the crow shat on that person and when it wouldn’t work she’d call other crows and all of them shat together until the person would give up on cutting the tree. The crow had laid eggs in the nest and since then the tree had provided a shed for the eggs even though the sun was scorching and the tree was withering due to the blazing and due to lack of water.

One day the crow decided to take matters in her own hands and proposed a deal to the tree. She said that she would get him water from the lake which was a two hour flight from there in her beak as long as she could and meanwhile the tree must continue to provide shed to her eggs. The tree agreed. And so the crow started bringing water from the lake to the tree in her beak and started watering it. But the water she would get in her beak was not enough. Thus she had to go again and again until it was night. The next morning she would start again to make her way to the lake.

This went on for a few days, the water was not enough, the scorching of the sun caused even more withering of the tree but it still provided shed to the nest. The crow had exhausted herself and was on the verge of blacking out. For the past few days she had persistently kept up her hard work of providing water to the tree even though she had realized it long back that it was futile.

One day a girl stopped by the tree, came close to it and patted it saying that it was a kind tree. She then took out her water bottle from her bag and watered it. The crow saw that and followed the girl to her home. The crow waited for her to get to her room. When the girl got to her room she kept her bag on the floor and opened a window that faced a park nearby and she went ahead with her activities. The crow spotted the open window of her room and flew to it and sat on its ledge. The crow left a feather at the window and departed from there.

The next day the girl stopped and watered the tree again and again the crow followed her home and left a feather the ledge of her room’s window. This went on for a few days. Though the water was not exactly enough to satisfy the tree’s thirst, he managed through the summer. The eggs had hatched into beautiful small chicks.

The crow thanked the tree and the tree thanked the crow back. Soon the baby crows learned to fly and the mother crow took them to the girl’s home.  The girl had stopped coming since the end of summer to water the tree. The window of her home was open and the mother crow saw that the girl was in a bed looking sick like about to wither away. After a while the mother crow and the chicks took off to the garden which was visible from the window of the girl’s room.

The next morning when the girl woke up she saw that there was something on the window ledge. She found that it was a bunch of lilies and roses and below all that a black feather.