Atria's Burden: A Clucking Chronicle

Originally written on July 26, 2023




Down on the ground where the feathers grew, a sky as blue as the wet ground below reflected on the pond below. Because the wind was strong, the chicken, whose feathers attempted to flee before remembering their state of being stuck, clucked about. It grew tired after it saw the way that it had walked for hours. Nevertheless, it came to find a running pace because it saw the way the wind glided along. The typhoon that guided the wind was strong. Furthermore, the chicken picked up a nice beat in the way each part of the wind met.

It stopped for a while when it noticed its breaking beak. It was a magical attack that had afflicted it. It pressed his feet hard to get a grip before it dashed like a madman in a chick lit.

An enemy, tall as the shadow of a tree, taller than the chicken, they pressed onward as if everything they carried was a baggage worth bringing. They were a strong woman, a human towering above the earth.

"Huck huck huck!" said the woman before eating a fruit. This was her unique laugh.

"Huck huck huck!" she said again, annoying the chicken until he stopped and turned, red-faced.

"No!" the chicken said in its chicken language with a muffled sound due to its broken beak.

"Huck huck huck!" said the woman who magically casted the spell that broke the chicken's beak. This time, she was choking.

"Oh no!" the chicken said, running toward the woman before tripping and slamming its head, falling asleep.

The woman found the situation hilarious, but she was about to sleep forever if the choke hit her just right. She grabbed her neck and felt for the food that was stuck in her throat and caused the choke. She pushed it a little enough for it to fall down, freeing herself from the affliction. She chanted, "Hooray!" Also, she turned and analyzed the chicken, saying, "What a bother."

Walking to it, she raised her arm as if to attack. Instead, she petted the chicken on the head.

She even healed the chicken.

When the chicken woke up, the woman introduced herself in English even if the chicken only knew "Chicken," the chicken language. She said her name was "Atria."

The chicken was too bothered and confused, so it left. However, the woman, after checking her things, decided to follow because the forest where the chicken lived was familiar. She was on a journey, and this forest seemed to be a landmark. Her destination was much farther away, which was why she thought eating a chicken would do her good. What ended up happening was far better for her because a pet chicken was better than food.

"But seriously, I'm just so fucking tired, you know?" he began to rant with the chicken acting as a hearing companion. "It's really not great having to carry all this luggage." She placed down her luggage, paused for a good minute, and began moving again right before the chicken went out of sight. She repeated this over 20 times courageously over the course of 10 kilometers, each time successively making her feel more motivated to complete her journey.

When they arrived at a remote, small village, the chicken cocked its head from side to side as if welcoming the woman.

She recognized the symbol on a sign at the entrance of the village, which meant that she was finally at her destination. "Goodness gracious!" she said before stretching her back, dropping her things haphazardly.

She lay next to a well, feeling like a king on a throne.

"Chicken boy, thank you."

To the now hopeful Atria, the rooster seemed to nod its head cordially.

The chicken turned to leave, finding the pasture as entertaining as the village was a safe haven for Atria.

Atria left, looking toward the market where she located a small steel sword that fit her body and arm length. "Good, how much is this one?" she directed her question past a crowd at a tall gentleman at the farther side of a counter.

"Five."

"Five then."

"Five for women who don't clean their shoes or remove them before coming in."

The crowd turned to her, slowly forming glares.

Atria grimaced, apologizing and returning outside after paying for the sword. "What a bummer. I guess polite gets what polite deserves. Or in this case, impolite."

She eyed the chicken before going the opposite direction, finding herself at a small inn with only two rooms.

"How much this one?" she said.

"Five, maybe six if you don't remove your jacket and hat before coming in," said the woman at the counter, gesturing toward a religious symbol hanging on the wall.

"Dang," Atria said. "I really didn't mean—"

"Yes, just pay me four. That's the original price."

Atria stared for a while, feeling stunned.

The woman at the counter tsked. "Move along," she said as she casually arranged a stack of papers and pieced together paper cranes.

Atria judged her in her mind for being so uptight despite having a hobby for trivial paper cranes. She took out her colorful magical wand, feeling assured in herself instead of feeling too hurt from the bothered behavior of the other woman.

Since she had paid, she got herself a room and lay down, feeling the warm, soft embrace of the bed like a friend or a brother.

She used to have a brother, but he decided to leave her and the family to become a demon slayer. Actually, she had five brothers in total, but they all left ultimately. One went to become a goblin slayer. Another went to become a witch hunter. Another went to become the husband of a "Saintess," which bore an excess of political demands. Another went to become a mage researching hermit. The rest were gone, a subject too overwhelming for her capacity to handle.

She fell asleep with those thoughts. At the end of the day, near midnight, she began to dream.

She saw a faint light.

It was too bright for her, so she retreated.

She felt that it subsumed her into its embrace until she became lost within its blinding light.

She cried, screaming for her life, but when she woke up, her body felt calm like a mummy.

She noticed a shadow at the back of her room, realizing that it was the open door.

She gasped, realizing that she had forgotten to close her door.

She hurried, her heart flashing. She grabbed her things one by one, leaving behind petty items. She dashed past the door, and soon, she was outside, feeling the fresh air of the night. The calls of various folk alarmed her, as she was scared that an assassin was hiding behind those friendly eyes.

Those calls sounded like "I will murder you!" to her rather than their actual sounds: "Hey, it's nice to meet you.", "You want a taste?", and "This here is 100% pure!" among others.

She fled from the crowd, finding herself lost. She wanted to relax here in this town, but she brought with her emotional luggages to which her own physical luggages failed to compare.

She needed to express her heartache, which she did by meditating, arranging her feet together and posing for some sort of ritual.

When she was done, a group of people behind her noticed her running.

They were a little concerned, but after the woman stopped running, they felt relief, thinking that she was okay.

In truth, earlier, when Atria glanced at the crowd again, she was worried a certain person she knew would find her and assault her. Even if the village was small, for most of the time she stayed here, she felt that it was bigger than the mountains she traversed earlier.

Regarding opposing her arduous and confusing circumstances, Atria had only so much time to calculate. If she wanted all the details from her past, she would have written an autobiography spanning millions of words. Instead, what she had was her memory, forgetful and overall changing. New interpretations clouded the original impressions and colorful, byzantine emotions that determined her past self as a person.

If she wanted to commit to something, she had to rid herself of every other thought that she considered trivial currently and focused entirely her vision on those thoughts that mattered—small, oversimplistic, and highly fixed despite the changing times. However, these were ideals rather than methods. She would determine her methods based on her environment, conflict, and the manifold factors surrounding and influencing her and those influencers who influence her. In the end, she came up with a simple plan.

She would work hard to achieve her goal while avoiding the potential abuse of those above who believed in an oversimplistic ideal similar to her.

She grabbed a sword, and that would solve one issue, one that would only come up if one grappled under the fleeting identities of a criminal, a victim, or a member of a police force. For most of her problems, she would use her mouth and hard, manual labor. She would use tools such as tact, interpersonal skills, and gross and fine motor skills. Violence was as effective as one could guarantee that they were willing to sacrifice the resultant innovation of peoples as humans, continually improving upon itself toward anthropological destruction.

In the end, her personal identity was one byzantine figure among the infinite series of factors commanding her existence within the essence of conflict, hope, and goals.

Her sword came from her luggage, which consisted of ten backpacks strung together with a rope. She had a magical potion that she could sell in order to obtain 20 gold. This amount of money gave her an opportunity to buy various useful items: a sword stronger than the one she currently had, leather armor to replace her currently dirty leather armor, which burdened her and weakened her drive, and flowers which she could gift to a man in order to capture his heart. Her motivations lay much on methodology focused on integration into intersocial society, but she would rather capture thousands of friends' hearts in a platonic manner than engage in romance that she designated as a subsumption into a singular person with all its limits and within which the strengths she trusted would become flawed.

Her goal was to integrate into society, specifically the village where she was.

She entered the inn again, interpreting the smile of the woman at the counter as rude. She curtly said, "I apologize for leaving the inn so early, but—"

"No worries," said the other woman.

Atria found the woman's interruption even ruder than her smile. She faked a smile and left, enjoying the hard, thick sounds of her slippers on the ground.  Everything about her slippers charmed her, but she failed to entertain the knowledge of what material they were.

She entered the blacksmith's shop, finding the smell pleasant like seeing a wave at the beach after spending years in a landlocked land wistfully. She failed to identify the smell. Surprisingly, outside of her knowledge, to the blacksmith present, the smell was the sound of joy, the touch of light, and the kingdom of grace, among others.

Because the smell was pleasant, then, to her, the blacksmith's smile looked genial. For a moment, to her, he was an aged, charming fugitive prince that kept that shine next to his lips.

The blacksmith's voice was rough, but that roughness sounded like smooth wine that slid easily past the lips.

Atria said, "Hi, I wanted to buy the flowers I saw you sold." She was referring to the depicted flowers next to a price. They were outside on a sign, which hung by the window.

The blacksmith's voice became rougher. "Those were my late wife's."

Atria gasped. "Late wife's. You have a late wife?"

The blacksmith smirked.

Atria watched his mouth begin to open.

He said, "Well, I do." He kept glancing to his right as if calculating his next decision. "I really need to finish my work, so I'll give it to you for free. How about it?" In reality, he was eying the counter that was so riddled with trash that trying to get the money was going to take a while. He preferred keeping loans than personally taking care of money.

Atria shot her question, "Why?"

The blacksmith smiled. "Because you're gorgeous."

Atria failed to find a connection between her impression of the blacksmith earlier and his statement now. His statement carried negative connotations to her, but she held a long smile and remained composed, finding that her elbow was worth soothing.

The blacksmith sighed. "I guess I'm going to have to get the money."

He went through his trash, climbing over buckets and baskets. He even had to take out and break a box in order to touch the handle of the cabinet with the money finally.

When he held the money, he kept opening and closing his mouth, counting the money.

Atria laughed when the blacksmith gave her his money.

The blacksmith realized and turned around, taking out the drawer used to contain the money from the cabinet. "Here." He directed the drawer toward Atria. 

He raised his shoulders as if he expected Atria to take a long time to take out her money.

Atria placed inside her money, while the blacksmith hurried to grab the flowers out of Atria's sight.

When the blacksmith returned with the flowers, Atria felt that the flowers looked damaged. "They're damaged," she said, biting her lips.

The blacksmith laughed. "I forgot to tell you that they've been here..." He kept eying the sign outside. "I mean the sign's been there for a while now."

"Alright," Atria said, facing away.

The blacksmith scratched the back of his head, adopting an enthusiastic demeanor.

A smile formed on Atria's face before she grabbed the flowers.

When she was outside, she counted the clouds and felt that today was going to be much more pleasant than she thought. She acknowledged that earlier her conversation with the blacksmith felt hurried, but she was fine with the more casual manner of handling a shop if it meant that she could get things for free.

She hurried under the rain and stopped next to a food shop.

Before she felt she could relax, the owner of the shop shooed her away.

She became wet under the rain, but she had a smile of her face, looking at the chicken.

The End