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// Another Day - n 
// Story: Philomena: Short Stories 
// by CMCShortStoryBrigade 
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Philomena stared out of her cage wistfully into the sunset. She loved to be outside and play, but it was one of those days when Celestia couldn’t afford to have a wild bird running amok, a wild, flaming bird at that. Although she could only understand the bare implications of such an act, she had no choice but to accept it. Every instinct inside of her screamed that she should be out there, dancing in the rays of the sun. The sun was symbolic of the phoenix after all, or was it the other way around? It wasn’t important to the majestic bird, and as the faded colors began to paint the red carpet for night, the luminescent bird found her eyes lidding as she instinctively obeyed her biological clock, her one true master.

The morning came, and Philomena found, to her delight, that the cage was open. It was open invitation for her to be free. She stretched her wings out, feathers lighting ablaze as they caught the sun. And then she flew, wind rustling through the vibrant orange plumage. Princess Celestia stared after the phoenix wistfully. She wondered what it would be like to live carefree like that, to sail with the wind to new lands, and to see what it was like out there. But as usual, Philomena flew back and perched atop Celestia. As the claws clamped down, Princess Celestia shivered in cold fear. Would she be like this, stuck forever to look over her little ponies? The return only made her feel the chains of responsibility tugging at her legs, threatening to pull her under. She gasped as the claws began to dig into her soft coat.

And then Philomena was off again. Celestia swore she would never understand that delightful bird, as much as she claimed to. It was a mystery to her why that rapscallion ever came back. The world out there was beautiful, and was why Celestia had spent the better of her life protecting it. She wanted to go out and see what she had made, just as Philomena enjoyed it so much. As the fire began to blend in with the sun, the princess wondered what it was that drove the enrapturing bird back and forth. It was her conjecture that it was the sun, and somehow she reminded Philomena of that sun, bright and passionate. Philomena never did like Luna did she. None of this had any impact on Philomena, who was already chirping in delight as she was off again after giving the sunny something or the other some of the mandatory attention that the sunny something wanted. The something was nice, and kept Philomena fed, so the phoenix wasn’t going to complain.

But Philomena was feeling a bit quirky, and no, it wasn’t that time of the decade or year or century. She could never tell time by pony standards. But one thing was clear, and that was that she needed something different, and new. Now and then were two different things though, and Philomena was in no hurry to eek out this feeling and leave the comfort of regularity. It wasn’t as if she knew what to do with it anyway. Besides, something new could eventually come. New was almost as inevitable as the fact that the sun would rise, something that had been apparent until the shadowy something too over and made the sunny something go away. It had been confusing, but eventually the sunny something came back and made everything okay again. But the day had been exhausting, so the bird fluttered back into it’s roost and went to sleep.

The next day, she found herself in the air, except it was still the cage. That was new. She could feel the breeze, despite the fact that she wasn’t flying. That was also new, and markedly different than usual. She chirped happily at the discovery that much was different, in compliance to her earlier urge that prior day. And also a bit sick. It was time for another molting. She could sense it. One feather dropped off, then another. It was sad to see them go, but she was used to it already. Besides, it would mean feeling young again, and how could she not look forward to that? And then the coughs started to kick in, which the phoenix could never quite get used to.

Then there was loud noise and music and partying. Philomena never cared for this, and couldn’t. It meant being stuck in a stagnant cage with nothing to do but stare, but she never cared about what was going on out there. She would live and be reborn and everything would change so it didn’t matter. All that mattered was the immortal, the things that lived again, just like her,  and to have fun with them, because that was all they had. But then again, it did appear to be something fun, so Philomena imagined what it would be like if she was involved. Everything would be better of course, that much was obvious, but what would they be doing? Flying was always good, but so was eating, and so was preening, and so was feeling the heat of the sun.

But then a yellow thingie opened the cage. Feeling like playing a prank after being subjected to such a long time of sitting there and doing nothing, when the yellow thing slowly took her out, Philomena just obliged. Who knew where she would be taken after all? It was a short while before she was set down in a cottage. A lot of things happened there. Mainly though, the yellow something assumed that it could boss her around. It was fat chance. She just eluded the yellow thing at every turn, dodging left and right. And then her chance to go back to the sunny something came, and she left.

Of course, it took a while to find the sunny thing. She hadn’t bothered with learning the way back, and as a result spent far more time squabbling around than she wanted to. It was almost time, and nearly all the feathers had molted off her back. Finding the sunny something was of utmost importance, otherwise she would end up extremely vulnerable. The yellow something seemed intent on stopping her, so she tried to shake the yellow something off. That lead to a wild goose chase until the shiny. The shiny was what made the sunny something so irresistible. Except there was a shadow. One that...