The most beautiful spectacle is the evening gathering of the Tweeps. In autumn, these blue birds join together in large flocks and gather at the ponds. Here they will spend the night sharing hot takes and retweeting “you’re telling me a shrimp fried this rice?” for the thousandth time. There may be several thousands of birds in one place, but they all yearn to “go viral”, a task that will require gathering a few hundred thousand in one place. The ones who accomplish it will get to make a dry joke about what they call their non-existent soundcloud link.

But wait! Something is stirring. A wave of panic washes over the birds. Some of them begin to make their tweeting sound to warn the others. Their gathering site has been invaded by another creature. He is not quite a bird, and the birds can sense it. His off-putting musk fills the air. He carries a large, white ceramic bathroom sink into their site and declares that it belongs to him now.

It is not even nightfall when the creature begins to freeze the gathering site. The air feels very different. A group of aggressive vultures gathers by the ponds. Over the next few days, the trees where the birds nest begin to shake, and the water sources start to ice over. A cold and sudden winter will freeze the birds unless they find a new site to re-establish their flock. You hear their twittering throughout the night. The haze grows thicker.

Early morning comes. The birds delay their departure until the fog has settled. Fights among some of the birds break out. Sometimes the creature joins the quarrel and arbitrarily fells a tree. When he opens his mouth, the sound that comes out is “$8!”. During this season, a group of magpies come to the site. The young inexperienced magpies try to catch a blue bird. Very quickly, they learn this is not a good idea. The sun rises higher and higher, and the blue birds prepare to fly away. At last, they soar into the air.

Alas, the V-shaped formation fails to materialize. It looks more like a broken I or maybe an S. Wait. Is that an X? The birds separate and small groups fly in different directions. Some of them turn around and return to the original site. By morning, a few birds are still lingering. Others have found a new, smaller home in an extinct pachyderm’s skeleton. They hang on to its tusks and nestle inside its yellowed ribs. Some of the others are in a…beehive? The birds are confused. These are unfamiliar lands.

The birds miss their flock. Their favorite birds are not on the new sites and some of them fly back to the old site to gather more birds to bring back to the new one. When they return, they find the air is even colder and their nests have cobwebbed over. They make their Tweet sound, and it echoes through the emptier lands. There is only a faint reply. The not-bird creature who owns the site hacks down some trees and more nests are lost. Some of the birds stay. They hope he will soon find a new distraction and leave. Some more fly away. Others fly back and forth between their old and new homes. For now, the birds have found places to spend the night. The morning sun will reveal what is to come the next day.

Sauleha Kamal is a Pakistani-American writer and researcher currently based in England where she is finishing her PhD. She has work in publications like The Atlantic, Catapult, Dawn, as well as some academic journals and anthologies. Find her on Twitter @Sauliloquy1 for as long as it exists or at saulehak.wordpress.com.