Week 6 Storytelling: Sindbad's Fifth Voyage

*Perspective of Father Roc*

I can still remember the day that I met my wife. We were so young, but I knew instantly when I saw her. She was the bird for me.

We would sneak off at night, away from our parents, to fly together. Swirling, rising, falling, spiraling - together. It was like nothing I had ever known.

We grew to be so close that eventually we decided to get married. Unfortunately, our families did not quite agree. Sure, you may be thinking that this sounds too much like Romeo and Juliet to be true. But some themes of Romeo and Juliet may have been taken from this story, instead.

As I was saying, our families did not approve of the wedding. So, we did the only thing that we could do. We flew away. We didn't know where we would go, let alone how we would get there or how we would sustain ourselves once we got there. We just needed to leave.

My wife and I flew into the night, with nothing but each other. We were in for quite a journey.

After many days and nights, desperate to escape the dangers back home, we finally arrived at a beautiful island. It was uninhabited.

Our fortunes could not have been better. As we made our home and began to explore, incredible features awaited us at every turn - enormous waterfalls, plentiful food, even the perfect type of wood for us to furnish a home.

After we had lived there for a while, enjoying each other's company, we decided to increase our family. We had always wanted children, but this seemed to be the perfect time to act.

Before long, it became clear that my wife was pregnant! We were ecstatic.

So we waited.

And waited.

And waited.

And waited some more.

And after fifteen long years (the amount of time it takes for roc's to birth), my wife brought forth our child.

I thought I had known love with my wife, especially when I thought back to when we first met.

But this, this was different. This was a love like I had never experienced before.

Now, we had to wait for our baby bird to break out of his egg. For the afternoon, we decided to go fetch food, in case this was the day that we were to meet him.

Then, everything changed.

As we arrived back at the site where we had left our baby, all we saw was a broken egg. He was nowhere to be found. We saw roc remains scattered around a campfire, and in a split second, we realized what had happened. My wife and I looked at each other and then down at the frail humans attempting to escape on their ship. Rage engulfed us as we plummeted, focused on nothing but vengeance.

Author's Note:
The original story documents the adventures of Sindbad, a traveler with tales similar in extravagance and danger to Odysseus. In this particular narrative, Sindbad arrives with a group of travelers on an apparently uninhabited island. They come across a Roc egg with a beak poking out of it, possessing a baby bird that had not yet left the egg. In swift violence, the group of sailors proceeds to extract the baby bird and cook bits of it over a fire for their dinner. Sindbad watches on in horror. Soon after, two large shadows overtake the group as they realize that the parents of the baby have returned. When they hurry back to their ship, one of the parents drops an enormous rock on its center, splintering the vessel and sending its owners scattered into the sea. By some miracle, Sindbad escapes with his life. In my version, I decided to take the perspective of the parent rocs. By uncovering their back story and how they came to the island, it gives more significance and emotional empathy to the loss of their child. This seems to be a passing narrative without much attention in Sindbad's story, but I wanted to explore another perspective in order to grant it more significance.

Bibliography:
"The Arabian Nights' Entertainments: The Voyages of Sindbad" by Andrew Lang: online link

Image Information: A roc (mythological bird) rises above the ship.
Link: Wikimedia