Work Text:
In the dark of a Friday night, less than an hour before midnight, a household guardian turned from aid to enemy, giving loud assaulting cry that destroyed sleep and solitude. In despair, the household attempted to remove the crier's energy, but were unable to break the plastic shell and, in a moment of foolish anguish, launched a creature meant for air out over the waters, intent on dooming it to watery silence. Yet the waters are not without drier surfaces and the crier found a nest in a mound of old reeds above the water line. From there, safe in its new hiding place, it could reach not on only one household, but an entire neighborhood.
The crier announced its piercing presence with unknown prompting and quieting. It cried out with three exclamations and a pause, repeating, from the dark hours of morning until after the sun reached its zenith, only to fall silent - until the next early early morning. It fell into complete silence for days on end, suspected finished, only to begin again, with a single lone beep, a pause, a barely there chirp, and all then repeated. That evolved later to a lone beep on repeat, endlessly, from before dawn through daylight hours and into the night. The crier had found its song and never would it cease.
The nest of the crier, secreted among the reeds, provided additional protection from those closest to it. When they searched, they suspected it came from across the lake, not within the lake. This deception, along with exceptional heat and sickness (so very sick), kept the crier from discovery until it's unending, repeating beep across the day we celebrated those who had labored before us. On that bright, sunny day, a (now healthy) neighbor learned from other neighbors that the crier was not on another's shore but very near their own!
Two weekends, with a week between, after the crier first began its vocal assaults, that same Monday, the neighbor ventured farther than their own shore, forgetting caution of raspberry thorn and poison ivy vine, into the brush and among the reeds to discover where the crier lived. They were yet unprepared to risk the dark waters, and the crier cried on. The next day, a day of work for the neighbor, they could not go forth until the noon hour. Properly prepared this time, with no skin exposed, they explored through reeds, over logs, into water that never deepened far past their knees, following each exclamation until they could hear none else but that loud cry over and over, and over! By its own voice, they found the crier, on its dry nest, and still screaming repeatedly.
Catching it did not end its crying, though it could be silenced each time it began, as the neighbor tracked back through the swamp. They lost their way in returning, arriving on a shore with no path out, and the crier was once more launched through the air, now to land on mowed grass, while the neighbor navigated over unexpected obstacles. Voice unhindered, the crier again regaled all with its insistent song. After that, however, it was but a very short walk back to the neighbor's own household. The crier, still attempting to assault the air with its unending voice, was silenced every other step of that short walk.
Though a simple tool, the hammer broke the crier's plastic shell and pried apart its electric innards.
The crier cries no more!