The robin arrived the same way it always did: without sound, without warning. One moment the air was empty, the next it was there—perched among the red berries as if it had grown out of the branch itself. The berries glowed against the grey of the day, small embers of colour in a world that had forgotten how to look up.
It felt impossibly still, like it had been waiting there long before the building existed, long before the pavement was poured and the street given a name. As if the city had been built around it, not the other way round.
People moved below in a steady stream, coats pulled tight, footsteps hurried. Screens lit their faces in pale blues and whites. Conversations hummed and faded. No one noticed the bird. No one paused. The moment passed over them without leaving a mark.
I noticed.
The robin turned its head, and its eyes met mine. Not startled. Not curious. Just… aware. There was no flicker of fear, no twitch of readiness to flee. It looked at me the way something ancient looks at something fleeting—not with judgment, but with recognition.
As if it remembered me.
Not from yesterday, or last week, but from another winter entirely. Another version of the world. Another life where time moved more slowly and attention was a form of respect.
For a heartbeat, the noise of the street felt distant, unreal. The bird and I shared a small, fragile pocket of silence, balanced between breaths.
Then it was gone.
No dramatic takeoff, no rush of wings—just absence. The branch swayed slightly, the berries trembling where it had been. The air felt heavier afterward, as though something essential had passed through and taken its light with it.
I stood there longer than I meant to, listening to the city reclaim itself.
And suddenly I understood: some messengers don’t bring answers. They don’t explain or warn or guide. They simply arrive, remind you, and leave. They exist to prove that the world is still breathing, still watching, still alive—
even when we forget to be.
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