You carefully pass through the doors toward the birdcage, a sanctuary confined in a gilded prison. Despite its romantic invitation of a lush grove and soft, trickling water, a semblance of despair wafts through the air. You soon realize that every fragment of life masks the corrosion inside the cage, the atrophy of a mind to unlimited sorrow.
Before you can find an escape, a frail indigo swallow materializes from the trees. As the bird flaps steel wings, you notice a four-leaf clover firmly clutched in its talons. The creature, mechanically twisting its head, perches onto a rowan branch. It allows a moment of repose before returning to the sky, dropping the clover into the pale hands of a boy.
A gentle breeze moves across the cage, and a pair of glowing hazel eyes gaze back at you. Slowly his left arm, tied with a crimson ribbon, unfurls before you; a pair of metallic wings emerge from his sallow robe.
With a sullen tone, he whispers, “Are you the one…who will take me out of here?”