Today's #flashfiction Birds And Stones

“No, I am Spartacus!”

What's My Line?* #quote

There are those who believe and fate and those who don't. But what about a philosophy with fate only some of the time? That is the reality I see. Inevitable circumstances that we then make choices within. Anyway onto the flash fiction!

Birds And Stones

       “Remember, it's best to kill two birds with one stone,” Billy's father told him with that same matter-of-fact tone he used when giving all fatherly advice. Billy took his father's advice very seriously, though at his young age metaphors, expressions and sayings were quite lost on him. But he decided that he would kill two birds with one stone.

         During summer break he was left to his own devices in the woods in the small town where he resided. He lived decades ago in a simpler time where while Mom cooked dinner and did laundry kids could wander in the big backyard of the woods if they were back by supper.

And while Billy was in the woods he would follow his father's most recent advice. And that would be to kill two birds with one stone. Problem was he didn't even know how to kill a bird with one stone.             So he first spent time trying that. Over and over again whatever bird he ran across he would take careful aim at and try to pelt with something he picked off the ground.

          He missed again and again. The birds moved again and again. Eventually after months of practice he hit a bird on a head. And with even more practice he hit even more on the head more consistently. He didn't think to bring the things back for dinner like when people hunted normally, but the foxes began to appreciate the boy presence. He ran when he saw them, so the foxes learned to follow the boy without being seen so he would kill birds for them.

          Eventually he killed two at once. And he brought them to his father with a big grin on his face. Holding them up to his old man he said, “Look! I killed two birds with one stone!”

        “What?” The father looked at the two birds baffled. He didn't remember the conversation. It'd been one and a half years.