Don't Wanna Ride and Broken Wings

These are two short stories I wrote some time back. English isn't my primary language, so don't frown on the minor linguistic technicalities, please.
None of these are very long, so I saw it only fitting to post them as one.

Don't Wanna Ride
I don't wanna ride my bike. I never wanted to ride it in the first place. It just looked like so much fun when the other kids did it. Someone would rush by seemingly without a care in the world, and you'd think he'd have it easy. He'd sure look that way. Grinning and laughing as he sped along, only pausing occasionally. The pauses felt important however. The kid would stand and look around, relishing in the moment, and then ride on. It was easy to watch him, because he never looked back. I just stood alone on the sidewalk, and wondered whether I would ever get to ride as well as he did.
My parents urged me. In fact, everyone did. Riding was something that was apparently so natural to them, that they'd expected me to feel the same. But I was afraid of the high speed; I had dreams of the moment when reality would break the dreamlike float, and throw me to the ground. And I knew it would happen. I used to look over my shoulder every minute, afraid to find a bike creeping up on me. I knew one of them would get me someday. It was only a matter of time, and not a very long time. Walking around from place to place had been strenuous, and the bikes just kept calling. Incidentally I started seeing bikes in people I had known for years. I started fearing them for what I thought they had become, and fled to a secluded place I called the cellar. The reason I called it so was because it was a cellar, and a very fine hiding spot, where time would creep by slowly, whilst through a tiny window you watched the road and the people on it, passing you by without a notice. There was no furniture in this cellar, so I didn't stay long. I also had to get something to eat, 'cus even though I wanted to hide, I was still human.
That was when the bike got me. I was wrapping my mind around making food for myself, so I didn't look over my shoulder. That was when I heard its bell. It was a neat blue bike, not to fancy, but old fashioned and likeable. Its wheels were perfectly round, and the handles firm and somehow soft. Not that it mattered much though. I thought it was about time I went for a ride.
The first time I fell quickly. The second time also. In fact, I never got to drive more than a foot before my face was in the pavement. I couldn't stand the temptation and got up again with regular intervals. After a while the bike didn't want to be ridden anymore, and it broke. I remembered that I had forgotten to eat, and left to get some food, but when I came back the bike was gone. Every now and then I think I can still see it among the crowded bikers riding along the road, but it is by no content mine any longer. Then I gave up on riding.
Then another bike crept up on me. It did so infinitely slowly as for me not to notice. I didn't, so I guess it worked. One day it was simply there. This bike was red, and although I didn't really like its color, it was still a bike. It urged to me ride it, although I didn't dare. My face had been molested by cement more than enough for me to know that I'd had enough. However it was still here. Every time I came back from school and every time I left. The bike was constantly there, so I guessed I could give it a try. It was most daring for me do to so, for this bike had crocked wheels and nothing to hold onto. Once you fell, you were on your own.
And I fell. First turn in the road, and I was thrown over the edge of the road, but there was nothing to land on. Far below me stretched a grassy hillside, where I knew I was gonna wind up eventually. It was just gonna be a long fall before I made it there, face first. Once I'd gotten away from the road, I didn't want to go back. I never wanted to turn back to where the lure of the bikes would eventually get me to fall even farther. The grass looked soft. I wanted to lie in it and sleep. Maybe I would at some point stand up, if the hunger drove me to. But I never wanted to see a bike again in my life. I never wanted to ride in the first place.


Broken Wings
Slowly, the bird pecked its way forward. Its coldblooded talons made a quiet sound, as if it was crumbling the rock it stood on bit by painful bit. Not that it would be a difficult task; the stone wall was already smouldering with the heat of the sun as it blazed down mercilessly from above. It left the land barren and gave the wildlife nowhere to hide from the dangers of common life. It also gave those dangers few means to sustain themselves, so although the desert made an easy target of you, there was no one to shoot.
The bird looked down the well into its empty, moist shadows. Long ago this had been a thriving oasis, but that really was a long time ago. Now there was hardly enough water to keep the bird alive for much longer, and that was not with-counting the presence of the alien being. The alien was a man, and men had never been meant to wonder the sand of the desserts; the dessert had been nature's way of putting a stop sign, telling them to go back. It was supposed to be a sacred place, where nature was to be untouched by human hand. A natural boundary between the land and its inhabitants. This, men had mistaken as a challenge, and the aggravation of the dare forced them to set foot in the unbearable heat. Alas it was not meant for their kind, and without preparation travellers were doomed beforehand.
Yet there he was. Half resting in the shadow of one of the small walls while the sun began to set over the horizon. There was no reason for him to be in such a place as this, and so the bird treated him with perplexed caution. With the speedy precision of canine instincts it moved closer to the unknown being, not sure whether it should be scared or curious. 'He seems unconscious' is the first thing the bird would have thought, had it had the brains to do so. The second thing would have been: 'Why can't I fly?'
Truly, the bird couldn't fly. Its wing was broken, and in this way it had been deprived of the one gift bestowed upon its simple being. Had it in reality been able to think, all it would do was moan its loss of purpose. By such, it was better off without the troublesome curse thinking would have become. Stuck in a dessert, the best thing to do is to stop pondering; you would have more time on your hands than you could ever need, and nothing to look forward to but death. In this way, the gift of prediction would turn to a horribly pest. Luckily, the bird had no such awareness as to debate the meaning of its lack of awareness. It simply followed what it had always done, or what its instincts told it to.
A slow yet sudden movement of the man startled the bird, which made its wings flap uselessly for a short while, until it realised fluttering did it no good. It downed its wings again, and crumbled over the stone to a safe distance, from which the alien could not possibly be able to harm it, had it the mind to do so. The man pushed himself to a sitting position with his right hand clasped on a blood splattered patch of his clothes, right below the rips.
The man did not restrain his moaning to be done in his mind, and stated his discomfort out loud. He was clearly wounded and in pain, but the bird felt no compassion. The hard life of the desert had taught it the one thing it was going to practice, till the day it died; scepticism towards all that was not its own offspring, although for it, scepticism was not a state of mind. It was the natural measure which was needed for survival in this merciless part of the world. Here, anything that was not your dinner was your death.
Therefore, the human confused the bird and caught it in a trap of unknown expectations. Since the man was not of this desert, the bird had no recollection of where they stood in the food chain. It did not know whether to flee or simply ignore the presence of the person, or perhaps even jump at him pecking for its simple life.

He looked at the bird in an altogether different way than the bird had looked at him. Even though he knew not this particular bird, he knew its species, its physiology and its diet. He knew all there was to know about this bird, and yet he knew that there was something he could never know. It had been the same all his life. He had always looked at the world with curiosity and ideas of logic reason, but as his travels had brought him far and wide on his quest for answers, all he had found was more questions. He knew that no amount of knowledge would satisfy the need; that he would never get his answer. This fact he feared, and his fear fuelled his travels anew, as if his quest had become a flight. Fleeing as he was, his journey took him to many places, he had never wanted to go. But still he could not stop, in fear of his purpose catching up with him.
In the mercilessly cold desert night, he was facing the slow death of freezing. In the face of death his flight seemed foolish. Now he had time to take on the horrors of a lifetime of nightmares, from which sleeping was the only escape, in much the same way that ignorance was the one true defilement; while wake nightmares might tormented his sanity, the sleeping would only strain it. Dreams of horror would stretch the string of his mentality, to the point where his soul would snap. Facing your fears was the only way to ease the unimaginable dreadfulness of the past, from which time was the only seclusion from the cold.
Yet, weakened as he was, the man knew he would never get to sleep again. He felt the deprivation deep in his chest, as the final result of his journeys. His troubles had brought him to a terrific conclusion, and in the back of his dignity, he could heard the cord about to break. With the last gaits of his diminished flame he recalled a smile from his past. The smile was so powerful and filled with joy, that he could not restrict his own lips from stretching in relief. With tears glistering down his cheeks, he looked at the bird in the same way a man looks at his pending undoing, yet with the power of the smile and the memory of the lost, all he could do was thank the poor creature.
The fowl had made him realise, that he could not outrun his problems; his problems had already spread to a point, where they no longer chased him. They were everywhere, waiting for him to open his eyes to who they were. They were the beggar, fabricating stories for sympathy, and the blacksmith hammering his corrupt emotions into metalwork, only to discard it upon its completion. He was a bird with broken wings, flying in its inhospitable life, fluttering his wings and creating hurricanes from their broken beat.
Now he was here, captured in the oasis of his life with the bird of his being. He was destined by the unforgiving nature to be lain dead along with his problems, so that predators might prosper by his demise. He saw clearly, that he had always been meant to end in this way. It had only been a matter of time, before he would open his eyes and see what he needed to see. All that had kept him from stopping to look, had been his struggle to constrict his vision to the front. Yet now, as his gaze was locked on the horizon from which he came, he saw only the spreading darkness of the sunset. Smiling tearfully, he thanked it again.