In the rolling highlands of Mbara, where clouds touched the mountains like whispers and the wind always had a story to tell, a young hawk named Enu lived on a low cliff just above the tall fig trees.
Enu was born in the sky. His nest was woven with the feathers of his ancestors and the bones of small prey. His mother said the sky was his inheritance, his birthright.
“You were made for the wind,” she told him. “You were shaped to ride the highest thermals, to watch the world shrink beneath you.”
But Enu wasn’t sure.
Every time he looked up, his chest tightened.
The sky wasn’t a home it was a vast unknown. It had no edges. No walls. No shelter.
He watched his siblings take flight, spinning through sunlight like leaves in a storm. He watched them return, proud and breathless.
Enu clung to branches.
He practiced flying from low points, between trees, over short streams.
But he never soared.
Not once.
⸻
“Why don’t you fly higher?” the doves would ask.
“Don’t you want to see what the clouds see?” the butterflies teased.
Enu always smiled and said, “I’m saving my wings for the right moment.”
But deep down, he wondered if they were right.
Maybe he wasn’t a real hawk.
Maybe he wasn’t meant for the sky.
⸻
One evening, a storm approached.
The wind picked up. Thunder murmured in the distance. Most birds retreated into thick foliage, but Enu stayed outside, staring at the clouds.
And then he saw her.
High so high she was nearly a dot an old hawk hovered in place, wings wide, eyes closed.
He had heard of her.
Sena. The elder. The one who flew during storms to listen to the voice of the wind gods.
As the clouds rumbled, Sena swooped down. Not in fear, but in grace. She landed beside him on the cliff, shaking the rain off her feathers like it was nothing.
“You’re the one who doesn’t fly,” she said softly.
Enu lowered his gaze. “I fly.”
“But not where you’re meant to,” she replied, her voice like wind through tall grass.
“I don’t know if I belong up there,” he admitted. “What if I fall? What if it’s too big?”
Sena studied him.
Then, without warning, she leaned close.
“Let me tell you something,” she whispered. “The first time I flew above the clouds, I thought I was dying. The air was thin. The world disappeared. I couldn’t hear anything but my heartbeat.”
Enu looked up.
“But,” she continued, “I didn’t fall. I learned to breathe there. To see with new eyes. The sky doesn’t shrink for anyone. But you grow to meet it.”
⸻
That night, Enu didn’t sleep.
At dawn, with the storm passed and the air still cool, he climbed to the very top of the tallest fig tree.
The wind nudged his wings.
His heart raced.
He looked down.
Then he looked up.
And jumped.
⸻
For a terrifying moment, he plummeted.
His wings flailed. The wind roared past his ears.
Then something shifted.
A current caught him.
Lifted him.
The world tilted.
And suddenly he was flying.
Not just gliding. Not just coasting.
Flying.
Above the trees.
Above the hills.
Above the low clouds.
The sky was still vast.
Still edge-less.
Still wild.
But it wasn’t empty.
It was waiting.
And for the first time, Enu didn’t feel small.
He felt real.
Whole.
⸻
He returned home that evening, wind-kissed and glowing.
The younger birds gathered around him.
“How high did you go?”
“What did it feel like?”
Enu smiled.
And simply said, “Like remembering something I forgot I knew.”
⸻
From then on, Enu flew often.
Not to prove anything.
Not to chase the wind.
But because it was where he belonged.
He still landed low sometimes. Still sat with those afraid to rise.
But now, when they asked if the sky was scary, he told them the truth:
“It’s not less frightening,” he’d say, “but now it feels like freedom.”
⸻
Moral Lessons:
1. Fear doesn’t mean you’re not meant to fly it means you’re close to something true.
2. You grow to meet the sky. It never shrinks to meet you.
3. Bravery is not the absence of fear it’s the decision to leap anyway.
