The Enchanted Aviary:The Cosmic Birds

A pair of opalines were the oldest inhabitants of the enchanted aviary. They lived inside The Cosmic Cage and were therefore known as the Cosmic Birds. They could tap into the Akashic records, and could be used as resources for obtaining mystical information. The wires of their home were gold-plated. Hanging from the dome of their cage was a colorful, expandable ball that had belonged to and become outgrown by one of the old hermit's grandchildren. The birds went inside this ball and perched there when they were meditating. If the ball rotated clockwise, positive information was being gathered. If the ball rotated counterclockwise, not-positive information was being culled. The hermit also placed three, discarded, plastic knitting needles in the cage, to be used as perches. Ether is a fabric knitted by spirits, after all, and the way to send and receive messages, from the nearest and the farthest distance, from the most recent to the longest time, is always through its weave.

Only the hermit could consult the Cosmic Birds. They were not responsive to visitors, and so were merely visual attractions to passersby. Unbeknownst to everyone, the Cosmic Birds were also the hermit's astral messengers. They were still when they were traveling. Their work was somewhat like that of computer searches, except that computers are unable to search the spiritual-astral. Well, at least, not yet.

The opalines were fed, as were most of the birds in the aviary, millet and mixed seeds. Only the rice-field birds subsisted on poultry feed. As though they were human ascetics, however, the opalines seemed to be on an extraordinary regimen. Their feeders were always the last ones to empty out.

Like trees that are similar to global sites nonetheless, all birds are attuned to all other birds of the same kind round the world. As the hermit could enter the peepal tree on the compound and exit through any other peepal tree in any other country, so were the opalines interconnected with all other opalines, living or deceased.

You've now seen six of the seven cages in the enchanted aviary and met their inhabitants, and will soon be introduced to the next and last.