By Evelyn Ember
BRIMSTONE-ON-ABYSS — The first common screechwings of spring have returned to the Wailing Wall of Brimstone, and with them, the usual crowd of worshipers, scholars, conservationists, and municipal officials pretending they did not personally approve every glassy, nestless tower currently roasting the skyline.
At dawn this week, Rabbi Ash Ben-Seraph led a welcoming rite beside the ancient infernal stones, where the birds have begun slipping into cracks and crevices to nest, as they have reportedly done since the reign of Herodias the Charred some 2,000 years ago. The screechwings, having flown nearly 2,800 miles from the Sulfur Savannahs, spiraled above the plaza in thin black arcs, their shrill calls braiding themselves through the prayers rising from below.
Researchers from the Cindered Academy of Winged Omens say they have counted at least 88 nests in the Wall’s fissures in recent years. “They return with more discipline than most penitents,” said Dr. Malachi Sootvine, who has spent decades studying the birds’ eerily precise seasonal arrivals. “Scripture says the screechwing observes the time of its coming. Humanity, meanwhile, observes the time of its convenience.”
That particular line, from the Book of Jeremiash, has made the birds spiritual celebrities in Blazing Zion, a city claimed, divided, loved, cursed, and endlessly argued over by demons, saints-in-exile, and everyone in between. “When I see them above the Wall, I feel the Furnace watching over us,” said worshiper Sarra Cinderzel, clutching a prayer book as a bird vanished into a hole older than several empires and at least four zoning committees. “They remind me that protection can be small, fast, and screaming.”
In a realm where peace symbols are mass-produced and immediately weaponized, the screechwing has lately been conscripted into diplomacy. The birds nest not only in the Wailing Wall, but also at the Ember-Aqsa Dome and the Sepulcher of the Sacred Ash. British sculptor Marrow Core-ith created an iron olive tree whose leaves are screechwings, now displayed at Saint Searing Eye Hospital in Old Brimstone, with bronze birds fixed to clinic walls in Ghazaflame and the West Embankment of Woe.
“Where the white dove failed to bring peace, perhaps the screechwing will succeed by being too fast to politicize,” said Amnon Ashwing, founder of Friends of the Screechwings and Hell’s most tireless advocate for giving birds a hole to live in.
They need one. Across the mortal-adjacent realms, screechwing populations are collapsing. In Brittle Britain, numbers have fallen by roughly 70% since the mid-1990s. Similar declines have scorched the Levantine Pit. Experts blame vanishing insects, climate-twisted weather, and above all the architectural vanity of sealed buildings, polished towers, and smooth façades designed as if life itself were an aesthetic flaw.
Screechwings once thrived in our imperfections: under tiles, behind shutters, in gaps, eaves, and blessed construction errors. Modern builders, with the dead-eyed confidence of those who mistake sterility for progress, have erased the crevices. I predict, with no pleasure, that future luxury developments will advertise “avian-friendly heritage voids” at triple the rent after first exterminating the real thing.
Ashwing’s own devotion began in 1999 during a paragliding championship over the Thermals of Gehenna, when he followed a flock into a rising column of hot air and flew among them for 25 minutes, climbing above 6,500 feet. “It was magic,” he said. “They accepted me as a clumsy relative.” After retiring from importing hellbikes, he began converting old Legion ammunition boxes into nesting chambers.
His crusade accelerated in 2005, when renovations at his daughter’s school sealed the old nests. Returning birds found blank walls where home had been. Ashwing mounted improvised boxes across the school and nearby houses, and the screechwings came back.
Since then, he has worked with schools and councils across the Ashen Territories. At a kindergarten in Coal Aviv, 222 nest boxes now line the building, some fitted with cameras. At sunset, the birds hold what researchers call “screaming parties,” streaking through the air in tight, ecstatic formations. Adults may be teaching the young to fly, or, more plausibly, expressing an opinion about municipal planning.
Their lives are almost entirely aerial. Once fledged, a young screechwing may not land for two or three years. They eat, sleep, bathe, mate, and gather nesting material on the wing. Pairs bond for life yet migrate separately, crossing thousands of miles before reuniting at the same nest—if war, weather, hunger, and architecture permit.
Recent missile strikes from the Iron Persia Rift drove many pairs from the Coal Aviv kindergarten, though more than 30 remain. Ashwing fears nearby neighborhoods will soon be demolished for towers with no hollows, no ledges, no mercy.
“When they return from the Sulfur Savannahs,” he said, “there must be a place waiting.”
It is a modest demand: not peace on earth, not wisdom in council, not humility from developers. Just a crack in the wall. In Hell, apparently, even that must be fought for.
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Ah, Evelyn Ember, you’ve done it again: turned birds needing holes into a full municipal exorcism, and somehow the urban planners still come off as the scariest demons in Brimstone. Bravo, you soot-splattered bard of bureaucracy.
The screechwings migrate 2,800 miles, reunite with lifelong mates, sleep midair, and still manage better housing discipline than any zoning board with a marble lobby and a “sustainability vision.” Meanwhile developers hear “ancient nesting crevice” and think, “What if this became a luxury void with concierge ash?”
“Protection can be small, fast, and screaming” is also how I’d describe public comment periods, except less effective and with worse seating.
Still, beneath the delightful bird shrieking and ceremonial guilt-flapping, there’s a vicious little truth pecking at the glass: when we design every surface to be flawless, we make the world unlivable for anything that isn’t a spreadsheet. Leave a crack. Save a screechwing. Annoy an architect. A holy trinity, really.