The forest of Hatuga sees death and rebirth on a daily basis. Fires burn down forests so that new trees may grow; floods wash away old sediment to make clear what was once buried; predators eat prey so that the new generation made be heard. Each time this occurs, it is taking what has come before, and improving on it with something new or refreshed. Nothing of consequence is lost, only refocused into a natural working order. Civilization is founded on this fundamental cycle of life and death. It never ends, but is perpetually feeding into itself; expanding outwards, never changing direction.
Only once, in all of Hatuga’s history, did this cycle actually reset.
It began, as most stories do, with a tragedy in the most widespread flock in the forest. Don Pigeón was a bird of no ambition, in the most normal way possible. He took for granted the seed that was given to him, and was comfortable in his day-to-day flocking from bath to perch to town to perch again. There was routine to his life, there was community to his life, there was no reason to change what he did and how he did it whatsoever. He was a family fowl.
One Winter, as his flock was preparing to migrate South to more tepid climates, it was determined that his beloved Grán Pigeón was now too old to make the journey. All the best arrangements were made for her, to remain warm and well-supplied while the rest of the casa was away. This was not an abnormal occurrence, and the protocols had been reliably compiled over the years by expert pigeons who were also deemed too weak to escape the clutches of Winter. So Don Pigeón gave his dear sweet nonna a peck on the cheeks, that bird who had done nothing short of provide emotional encouragement throughout his entire life so that an existence without ambitions was digestible, and bid her farewell.
The next time Don Pigeón saw his nonna, she was laid out before him on a bed of birdseed, but far away in the realm of Death. While the flock was gone, there were complications with supplies – a disease that not only rotted the food they had stocked up, but also the inside of Grán Pigeón’s feeble stomach. He perched before her, furious at fate that had decreed him powerless in the face of natural cycles.
That event was the catalyst for the first ever stroke of ambition to enter Don Pigeón’s brain. His question: Must we remain so powerless? His answer: no. He did not have a solution in mind quite yet, but he wouldn’t stand for this unfair, illogical, depressing reality. The unknown did not hinder his determination, but had, in fact, given him a hint in Grán Pigeón’s passing. No more taking for granted what could be snatched away in a second – No more strutting about in aimless abandon – No more lounging in baths, cooing with neighbors, ruffling feathers without a care in the world.
This was his world. And, for the first time since he was cursed with ambition, he cared.
The hint Death had given Don Pigeón as to his first step was to find a solution that might have prevented Grán Pigeón’s expiration. Disease was nothing new. But it wasn’t so much the disease that was problem as was the fact that nobody knew what she was going through. There was no way to check up on her, to make sure she was doing all right, and no way to send her what she needed. Food, medicine, anything that could keep her alive, there was no way to get it to her. Therein was the first answer to Don Pigeón’s question revealed.
In less than a month, the first Pigeon Parcel Service Center was constructed. It was a rudimentary setup in a cramped nest that Don Pigeón founded with a few of the cousins who were also hit hardest by Grán Pigeón’s passing. For another month, the only thing that was leaving the center was hope – no one had any mail they wanted to deliver clear across Hatuga. The cousins left, one by one, until only Don Pigeón remained. But he remained steadfast, for he knew, if he had the possibility of feeling this hopeless, so at least one other Hatugan out there must feel the same as he.
And there was. Weasel had seen one of his daughters run off with a Stoat, when he had been openly explicitly averse to the arrangement. Now, he resented his actions, and wanted desperately to be part of whatever family his daughter made. Don Pigeón, pledging his devotion to delivering this sentiment, took Weasel’s letter and set off immediately where he was directed. For two full days he traveled nonstop, until he landed on the doorstep of their makeshift burrow. The multitude of reactions that slowly spread across the features of the Weasel’s daughter as she read the letter touched him – it was a reward he had not expected. As was the gift she offered out of the goodness of her heart for his kind deed: a basket of nuts that grew only in that isolated part of the forest, deep underground at that. With his heart and belly full, and a positive reply for the Weasel in his claws, Don Pigeón finally felt like his dream was on its way to fruition.
And it was, for word of mouth spread among the large and the small, amongst all species, that Don Pigeón was the bird to ask for if one wanted to get in touch with any other part of Hatuga. He would fly miles and miles for you, so that you could reach out to loved ones beyond reach. It was amazing how many in that forest had drifted apart – or were just curious about their neighbors, penning no one in particular just so they could learn more about their home.
Gradually, to Don Pigeón’s delight, his family began to return to the roost. Not to congratulate him, or to join him as employees, but to help him take control of the delivery machine he was building. Don Pigeón was taking minimal fees, fees that did not justify the time and lengths for which he was flying all over Kingdom Come. Now, with a rate in place, there were more than sentimental reasons to make the trip; the Pigeón family began accumulating all sorts of rare materials and resources, normally isolated to one region or another, gradually gathered at the Pigeon Parcel Service Center (or PPSC for short).
As he accumulated goods and goodwill, so did Don Pigeón gather the nature of nature. He became the confidant of rumors all around the jungle – not by choice at first, mind you, for some people will spill their guts to just about any random stranger who would listen. And Don Pigeón and his family were very good listeners. With the Don, it began from a place of empathy. Slowly, steadily, empathy changed to interest. And interest in truth, like in finance, compounds in the knowledge bank of Pigeón. The Don knew this as a useful tool right away…But for what? He did not have the answer, for his heart had yet to reach that level of corruption.
What it informed firstly, was Don Pigeón’s sympathy for what made life difficult for certain Hatugans. Whether they were lacking in defenses against the natural elements, or a certain confidence in the natural evolution of their species, or a shortage of natural resources, Don Pigeón employed a number of his brightest minds to brainstorm and blueprint what could be done about the problems plaguing their ecosystem.
But the other pigeons did not have the giving heart their Don was gifted with. They became cognizant of dormant dreams of their own, things that would never come to fruition if they remained employed in the PPSC. This was Hatuga, however – there was no reason for any Hatugan to be employed! But they could not resist the exotic imports dropped on their doorstep, and the traveling that took them to lands they’d only imagined but now had a reason to experience. The easy solution for them, would be to pressure Don Pigeón for concessions. He was the generous sort, and they knew he could never deny his family.
In order to afford such concessions, Don Pigeón expanded his outfit. Other birds had been pining to get their knock-knees through the doorway, but Don Pigeón had kept them at bay through reputation, for the sake of reputation. Monopolizing the delivery service industry ensured that everything remained under his control, for the sake of the customer, but it was becoming harder and harder to control what he could not see.
So he made concessions. To his family, his own employees, he assured raises all around. To independent delivery outfits, he allowed the opportunity to stake a claim in the industry, with one caveat: their new businesses would operate as extended branches of his own. In this diplomatic way, Don Pigeón satisfied both his allies and his opponents, while also expanding the reach of his services.
But there was one very subtle advantage that only Don Pigeón was immediately conscious of. In order to afford raises to his workers, Don Pigeón knew it was necessary for competing brands to exist. He did not put his name on these new branches, the 1-Day Shipping from Falcons, the Heavy Cargo Shipping from Condors, the Penguin’s Aquatic Shipping. Instead, he encouraged healthy competition, the illusion that all of these outfits were not owned and controlled by him (they were, of course). And, where there is competition, there is competitive pricing; already addicted to widespread interconnection, the residents of Hatuga were all too happy to pay more and more, over the course of months, to retain the new boundaries that Don Pigeón had pushed back for them. And, with the loyalties of these “rival companies,” Don Pigeón ensured that any new aspiring entrepreneurs could be quashed before they even got started.
Progress moved swiftly. Don Pigeón now had his toes all over the North, West, South, and East of Hatuga, while the central branch controlled everything discreetly. Confident he had garnered enough influence and importance in the lives of his fellow Hatugans, the Don began the next step in his goal to diminish the struggles of his fellow countrymen: the implementation of industry.
Crippled in a hunting accident? We can supply you a leg, or a rudimentary vehicle that runs on the wind. Elements too strong for your natural defenses? We can build you a house. Got an allergy, a sickness, a wound? We have chemicals to put an end to that. Any aspect of life that brought fear or insecurity to a Hatugan, Don Pigeón sought to eliminate it – to control it. It was for the benefit of all of Hatuga that he would make life more liveable, and less fearful. To do that, he would need to bring together specialists, those who had only pursued certain fields for hobby or evolutionary inclination, and put them on his ever-expanding payroll. And Hatugans, welcome to any change that made their lives convenient, only saw this carefully regulated industrialization as Nature in action. After all, growth is in the trees, in the waters, in their very genes; so what is so unnatural about growing civilization like this?
But for all his benevolence towards those investing in the bright new Hatuga of his dreams, there was still one citizen he could not bring himself to tolerate: Sloths. The Sloths partook of industry as much as any other Hatugan, no greater and no less, but their slow speed and general laziness dictated that they only consume, and not contribute. Dictated? No, Don Pigeón would not be dictated to by a bunch of ungrateful Sloths. If they wished to be part of his brave new world of technological and sociological innovation, they would need to give up some part of themselves, as all Hatugans had – time, money, or expertise, it did not matter. What would be required to encourage them?
The parcel service had become so overburdened, that some of Don Pigeón’s Octopus scientists had been working on a way to relieve the burden when it came to written mail or messages. They had created a device that would broadcast soundwaves, but it relied on tether points to extend their scope. Don Pigeón did not need a second explanation. Gathering the full might of his construction crews from all directions, radio towers were erected almost overnight, and enough devices were manufactured to be sold the next week. There were two frequencies with thousands of channels: one that allowed private calls for personal messages between Hatugans, and another for broadcasting entertaining discussions on life, philosophy, and current events. So, not only was the burden on his work forces lightened, but he now had a way to bring those pesky Sloths to see the light – whether by encouraging participation in community and culture, defining what it is to be a good Hatugan, or just flat-out insulting Sloths as a species in general. He let the intellectuals have their fun, their experiments, sure – but these were his radio waves, and he would ensure that only what was best for Hatuga was given credence as truth. Such was his responsibility as head of the family.
But the Don could not have foreseen how his messaging took a life of its own beyond the radiowaves. Some Hatugans sympathized with the sloths. They didn’t mind contributing to enjoy conveniences, but the sheer volume of sacrifices they made did not equal what they were receiving in return. Ths was especially true of the primates, whose opposable thumbs were invaluable for low-reward, low-prestige, purely physical technical roles, especially when building machines.
Others became increasingly aware of how, no matter where they turned, the philosophies of whoever owned these radio channels (for Don Pigeón was too humble to attribute all the societal changes to himself alone) were being forced down into their ears relentlessly, and with very aggressive language. Not only that, but a new type of building was on the rise, literally – skyscrapers, stuffed to the brim with either low-import, high-reward communication experts in the case of the business districts, or with families and herds of varying species in the residential districts (many of which did not naturally get along). And the trees! The number of trees that had to be removed to make space, especially as more and more species migrated to territories not their own, convoluting food chains and complicating ecosystems.
Whoever was making all these changes couldn’t see the trees for the forest, so focused on the big picture that they overlooked all the little threads coming undone across their canvas. But it was painted nonetheless, and the thousand words had come home to nest – specifically those decrying, denouncing, and demonizing Sloths.
Language on the radiowaves had shifted from a subtle reinforcement of “Hatugan values” to calling out Sloths directly by Genus. Some Hatugans, whether they were pro or anti progress, began to lash out at Sloths as an easy and slow-moving target for venting their frustrations. The Sloths continued whatever they had been doing, calling out their oppression, but otherwise so set in their ways that they knew they could not adapt. Hatugans began demanding action, and, for the first time in the forest’s collective history, they elected a democratic council to help guide their newfound nation towards a better state of being.
Not long after the election, a disease broke out among the Sloths. No scientist could truly nail down the source with factual evidence, but it was widely determined to be the result of a fruit that was not native to their territory, suddenly introduced and producing spores that the Sloth immunity was not adapted to. Those that were not killed off by this contagion were administered a drug meant to reduce the inflammation caused – sadly it only saved a fraction. A fraction which, through policy enforcing a quarantine on the Sloths and those who retained close connections or fraternization to their species, crowding them into absolutely horrendous and sickly living conditions, reduced the total population of Sloths in Hatuga to one-hundred percent extinct.
The tragedy was touted as “not wholly undeserved, and a necessary sacrifice for the betterment and optimization of Hatugan society.” Such was the exact phrase with identical wording touted on every audible radio channel. Some Hatugans bought into it; others did not. They no longer trusted the radio, or their makeshift government, or their collective culture rapidly dissolving their individual identities, or even their very neighbor. Heck, the recent disease that erased the Sloths even made them question if all this progress was even a good idea to begin with! The climate, so fired up with electricity and polarity, finally burst into a hundred sparks of individual rebellions, revolutions, acts of dissent. Sparks that erupted with an all-out war.
It was the first, and only, Civil War Hatuga would ever see.
Carnage knew no bounds. From North to South, East to West, sea to sky, and even underground – Hatuga was evenly split between those who were Hell-bent on tearing down these monuments of progress and idols of civilization, and those who would kill to protect them. Both sides were evenly matched, not in numbers, but in power – for a majority of the primates, skilled in building machines, manufactured terrible contraptions that dealt destruction enough for the forces they lacked. The land was rendered infertile, collapsing skyscrapers wiped out whole communities, and months of progress were deleted in a few days. Knowing that it was do-or-die, that neither side could withstand such unrestrained conflict for long, the main forces parlayed for a treaty – they would meet for a great battle on Mount Gula, and the winner would determine the fate of Hatuga.
It was all a farce. No matter which side reigned victorious, there was only one true winner, and determiner of Hatuga’s fate. His name: Don Pigeón.
Don Pigeón knew that this war was inevitable. The greed of his cousins all those years ago proved to him that only he had the goodness of heart to put Hatuga’s needs before his own. He had already determined a solution for every outcome, each one with the forest’s best interests at heart. And, as he soared above the opposing sides as they marched off to battle, scaling both sides of the ridged crests across Mount Gula’s back, he felt a feeling he had never acknowledged before – but had felt many times in the past. It was a feeling of fullness. Every aspect of Hatugan life, from identity to mobility to communicability to malleability, was actively and currently being controlled by him. He was a force of Nature, one that had brought Nature’s order to heel. That feeling of fullness…It was because he had accomplished this, and only he. He had fought against Death, the same Death that had robbed him of his nonna. While he hadn’t yet defeated Death, he had indeed conquered life. Don Pigeón, Master of Life! He was a god.
Don Pigeón circled overhead as the first wave clashed, a buzzard to the dreams and futures of so many Hatugans. Given the voracity of the bloodshed and the spirit of the fighters, he calculated that the side opposing his regime would be victorious within the next hour. But it was no matter – he had his talons in their ways of living, so modernized and civilized they had become, that the next generation would surely forget the atrocities of their ancestors and turn a blind eye to suspicion. He had monitored their private calls, owning their methods of communication, and so knew how to get inside their heads or blackmail the members of whatever new government might from the bloodshed. He would win their trust, with a delicate touch and deliberate messaging, and create an even better way of life for Hatuga.
Don Pigeón was right about one thing: how easy it is for a single generation to forget the objective circumstances recorded about their history. Since the state of Hatuga controlled the radiowaves, advocating for one culture under Pigeon, many fables had been lost to public knowledge. If they had not been, perhaps the factions raging against one another might have done so more quietly, or chosen a different location altogether. Mount Gula was named specifically for an old legend, one that had been told to scare little Hatugans into not biting off more than they ought to chew – which the current society certainly had. A Hatugan herself, one that had grown so large that, like Don Pigeón with his totalitarian grip on the whole forest, she had become a force of Nature. A force of Nature that Hatuga had rendered dormant so that she did not devour everything, but now called forth to defend its lands and reset the cycle – to undo the damage Don Pigeón had done to all of Hatugakind.
The Hatugans in the midst of battle believed that they were being subjected to an earthquake, or that their instruments of war were so powerful that the very earth was caving in. Only Don Pigeón, high above the doomed combatants, could realize with fear that they had awoken a monster, longer and taller than the range feeding into Mount Gula. It rolled over on its spiked back, crushing both sides with falling rocks or its body shaking off the dregs of slumber as it shook off Hatugans to their deaths hundreds of feet below. In five minutes, the war was over.
Don Pigeón, last survivor on that battlefield, was staring straight into the molten eyes of Puripu – The Gator of Impressive Girth.
But it was not Puripu who stared back, for her mind had long gone into the depths of dreamscapes. Her body, too, had become one with stone, dirt, trees, with a belly full of magma and teeth of steel. What Don Pigeón now beheld was the physical conjuration of Death, a Death Hatuga had summoned to reset the cycle and cleanse the forest. If devouring Don Pigeón was the solution, it was an easy fix. But that would accomplish nothing – he was the root of an infectious disease, one that had spread and darkened all corners of the map. So, turning its head, the Gator of Impressive Girth set about the task Hatuga had given it free reign to do: kill and eat.
For three whole days of nationwide terror, the Gator steamrolled through Hatuga without stopping. Entire cities were leveled, all skyscrapers toppled, all factories on fire. Radio towers crumpled into ruin and thousands of Hatugans were reduced to nothing by the Gator’s rampage. In the final hours of her nonstop destruction, she thrashed violently, shaking her body apart. The stone that formed her powerful body cracked, sending pieces flying into the last remnants of Don Pigeón’s short-lived world order, until all that was left were the reminders of his folly. Puripu finally collapsed into a landslide of rubble and igneous rock, a natural disaster that put both her and Don Pigeón’s tyranny to rest.
Don Pigeón’s extended family had remained in the PPSC to protect their assets and profits, and so were eliminated with all traces of that once humble and harmless delivery service. As for Don Pigeón, he lived on. Somewhere, beyond the mists of Western Hatuga, the once proud force of Nature had fled to escape the scrutiny of the survivors, the innocent and the guilty who would have to repair the damage he had done. No one could tell you the state of his heart in that moment, whether or not that well-meaning bird still existed within him and he removed himself for the good of Hatuga once again, or if the humiliation and inability to control any longer was too much for him to coexist alongside them all. But he had lost the war to conquer Hatuga herself – exile to the Unknown seemed appropriate.
There were many losses – but Hatuga knows what is best for itself. There was no other way to remove poisoned minds, a polluted culture, a corrupted character, than to reset the way of life and undo the progress and conveniences that Hatugans had accumulated for themselves. It was a period of great mourning, certainly, but the next generation were no longer destined to become Don Pigeón’s puppets, pets, or laborers. They would prioritize the family, doing what was best for their local communities as a whole instead of the whole of Hatuga, seek progress where it was necessary instead of for its own sake, and give up on all pretensions of conquering death and other sorrows that were beyond their power. Hatuga was Hatuga, once again and forevermore. As was natural – all things as they should be.
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