A sparrow with speckled wings rose from a dreamless sleep, claws clenching and unclenching from upon its perch. It glanced around for a moment, before unfurling its wings, catching the first slivers of light from the midwinter sun which lays hidden behind a sky of slate. It hopped further out on the rust-red branch, still glancing behind its shoulder periodically but with an air of routine surrounding it. Reaching the very edge, the sparrow surveyed the glade that lay before it. Without a moment’s hesitation the sparrow [i]sprung[/i] from the branch, diving to the earth with its speckled wings coiled around itself, air rushing past in hisses. Flaring its wings, the sparrow levelled a hair’s length above the ground, flashing past trees of grey and brown and black, of widths that ranged from tens of thousands its size to even smaller than itself. Chipped boulders of many colours and sizes rushed close by, yet despite its speed, the sparrow never once stumbled in its swift dance across the land. It had taken this path for a while, and the morning flight was one it could take almost autonomously. Sometime, when the sun just barely peeked over one of the trees that loomed across the jungle, the sparrow slowed to a stop on the ground. Curling its speckled wings along its body, it walked along a path that branched away from the glade. The path lead to clearing, rectangular in shape and walled in on three sides, and the sparrow walked towards the centre with casual steps, gracefully avoiding loose stones that littered the ground. And within that centre was a curious spire, shaped like a pyramid, and as the sparrow walked closer, it could see an image form from beyond the glass of its walls. The sparrow gazed into the glass, and as the sun finally reached its peak, it saw itself, gray with speckles of flickering silver interspersed along its wings and back. Sparkling in the sunlight. A metallic sheen. It gazed into its eyes, and it saw only glass stare back. It was only when the walls casted its shadows over the spire, did the sparrow fly back to its crevice, twirling through the urban jungle of rust in silence. The sparrow reached its branch with the last slivers of light falling from the sky, and without taking a breath it strutted its chest out, And the sparrow [i]sung[/i]. It was a harmonious tune, and the notes were carried by a silent wind out into the open air, and it resonated and echoed out across barren valleys and decrepit mountain-tops; over plains with no grass and deserts with no sand; across oceans of baked salt and jungles of aging steel and cement. And if one were to be fortunate enough to listen to the song that is played every evening, when the last ray of light lands upon the little rust-red branch, they would realise the song was one of forlornness. For the sparrow knew that there would be none in the desolate land to hear its song. And it then ended its song in static.