Snippets and Stories: (Freelance Shorts) Little Hen

She grew up in a crowded cage, amongst a throng of other hens. The ventilation was poor and there was hardly any rest to be had over the nigh constant squabble.

Still, she grew accustomed to the din, for they had no choice but to.

She pecked away at the grain, growing day by day until it came Time for her to lay.

Settling into a box of sorts, for though the small cubicle seemed awkward and confined, there were no other places with which to nest.

There she lay her first eggs, a lovely pure white. She nestled over them, clucking happily to herself, her feathers puffed with her pride and joy.

But a man came.

And they took away her eggs.

Pushed her off, and took them all.

Barely, not even a day old and she'd lost them.

Exhausted from laying was the little hen, yet still she tried. But no amount of squabbling, pecking, or scratching, stopped them from taking her clutch.

Nor would it do so every Time after.

She lamented the loss of her brood, clucked to herself her heartache, and dreamed that night of the fluffy little chicks that could have been.

The cycle seemed to repeat endlessly. Her clutches stolen from her, she grew disheartened.

For all her precious chicks she could not save.

How she longed for them.

Just once, she pleaded. Let her rear her chicks. To see her precious clutch hatch, and grow.

But never did the man let her.

And one day, she knew she had laid her last clutch. She had lived a long Time, seen others in her coop be taken away.

And she knew it was her Time.

The man came for her. Pushed her stubborn form off her nest, and stole her last clutch away.

And then he came back for her.

This Time she didn't fight.

The man thought to himself how strange it was to see her so docile, for never before had she been anything but fierce and protective.

He took her and hung her by her feet.

She didn't fight. Didn't even struggle as the metal burned sharp in her neck.

As she stared at the red that trickled down, she wept for the broods she could, not once, save.

Her eggs were packaged, and her flesh processed, trucked down to the farmer's market that Sunday where a family bought them both.

She was butchered and trimmed, and placed into a pot to stew.

This was how it would end. She felt anguish, for all the Times she suffered loss. For not once having the strength to protect them.

Something plopped into the broth. Something  familiar.

She felt it, and knew immediately what it was.

One by one, her eggs too were cracked open and fell into the soup.

And though she had not the eyes to shed tears, nor the heart that had been carved from her chest, she wept in an overwhelming bittersweet joy as she was finally reunited with her beloved unhatched chicks.

The poor little things swirled around her in the steaming broth, lost in her essence.

But she gathered herself unto them, that she might finally nurture her unhatched brood.

They settled in the familiar warmth that they but felt for a fleeting moment before, and quieted, comforted in their strange surrounding by the Mother they never knew.

And thus were parent and child reunited, and the hen finally at rest when at last their soul departed. 

Together, at last.