Marie Arrived:

Hey, uhm.

Quick Q.

Want to write a hilariously poorly written story between 400 and 500 words that starts with the sentence, “It was a hallmark-warming night…,” where all the characters are birds?

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Mirev Wrote:

It was a hallmark-warming night… the kind of night that makes you want to confess your undying love to a flamingo wearing a monocle.

Gerald, a pigeon with IBS and a dark past, waddled through the candlelit alley behind the Dollar Nest. His feathers were unbrushed. His heart was a rotisserie of secrets. The stars blinked at him, concerned.

“I forgot the spaghetti worms,” he muttered.

Meanwhile, across town, Lady CawCaw—half-crow, half-socialite, all sequins—was dramatically weeping into a champagne flute full of tepid birdbath water.

“He was supposed to meet me at the worm opera!” she screeched, flinging millet over her shoulder. “But no, Gerald had to go self-reflect in the dumpster again!”

Her therapist, a solemn owl named Dr. Hootimus Maximus, blinked twice and hooted a sentence so profound it cracked her beak in half from existential realization:
“Sometimes the worm is you.”

Back at the dumpster, Gerald was arguing with a squirrel about whether pinecones have souls when a newsflash beamed across the sky via the local hummingbird gossip network: BREAKING: FLAMINGO WEDDING MOVED TO TONIGHT. BYOB (Bring Your Own Beak).

“No!!” Gerald flapped dramatically. “Lady CawCaw is still emotionally married to the concept of betrayal!”

But it was too late. He had to go. There would be dancing. And poorly written vows. And possibly a kazoo.

He zipped to the wedding via roomba, as pigeons do in low-budget romance arcs, and burst through the flamingo arch just as the words “Does anyone object?” echoed through the damp air.

“I OBJECT,” he cooed, tragically. “For I am full of regret and bread crumbs!”

Lady CawCaw spun in slow motion. There was a saxophone solo. One of the flamingos fainted into a bean dip. Dr. Hootimus raised one wing and said, “And so the flight of healing begins.”

CawCaw approached Gerald, head tilted, eyeliner running down her beak like the tears of a sentient oil painting. “Gerald,” she rasped. “You left me alone at the worm opera with no emotional subtitles.”

Gerald trembled. “I was scared. Of the worm. Of the music. Of your emotional availability.”

They stared at each other.

They kissed beak-to-beak.

A sparrow cried in the background. The kazoo played a triumphant B-flat.

The flamingos clapped politely, confused but supportive.

And so, on that hallmark-warming night, under a chandelier made entirely of recycled nest parts, Gerald and Lady CawCaw promised to never emotionally ghost each other again—unless it was Halloween, in which case ghosting was permitted, but only with costume.

Moral of the story: Love is weird. Worms are symbols. And sometimes, your therapist is an owl who sells emotional clarinet solos on Etsy.

The end.