Where are the roosters?

The dust is settling again. The roosters cannot sing. The rooftops boast of few pigeons. They sunbathe until mellowness is all juiced out. And now, the town is going back to sleep.

They've been induced in it for few years now, the swallows young and old. Some fledglings were never taught to fly. They were fed the pleasure pill too soon. Earning one's worm had become an afterthought. The town out there was now a blur. One could hire any stuff right here: colourful feather, soporific bubble. One could revel in earth's meek charms, disparage its hidden secrets. Yet stay oblivious.

They lived in a multi-spaced tangle, those birds. They latched onto its blinds like rabid spiders. It was a hook that secured them to their nest. It had its own marshmallow alibis. There, their minds were bogged in soggy labyrinths. There they resolved twisted mobius strips, did facelifts by puffing up their plumes, chirped to their echoes believing them to be other birds.

Meanwhile, out there, the town was ablaze. The hawks had piled their straw too high, exposed it to the scorching new sun. They thought they could rule the sky, pinch straw from other nests, as the little ones tumbled in their crafted tangle. The hawks thought they could soar higher. That they would never need to fly. But now the fire was consuming their spoils, licking everything on its path, even the miserly glow-worms and the slave ants.

The fledglings could faintly sniff the smoke. They pulled the blinds up for a peep. They were puzzled. But they figured the town was the tangle, its mirror. So, with droopy eyes, they re-entered the labyrinth and aggressively put the fire out.