Hello, listeners. Be advised that this show is an immersive audio experience. It may seem like sounds are coming from the sides or behind you. Listener discretion is advised, as this content is intended for adult audiences only.

Cucode presents Birds of Empire, created by Jason Liu.

The owl and the ant.

It's believed by those who don't know that when a woman abandons her child,

she feels a lifetime of loss.

This is wrong.

What she feels is forever pregnant.

She feels every limb and loss grow inside of her body for all time.

A ghostly silhouette floating just under the skin,

like cobwebs in the dark and hollow of an aspen, moving at the

whim of some demon, some wraith.

This mother felt this way, and she felt this way because she left her boy to die in the underbrush.

She left her boy to die in the underbrush because she could no longer stand his screams in the underbrush. She left her boy to die in the underbrush

because she could no longer stand his screams in the night.

He had terrible visions that came as they pleased and stayed as they wished.

At first she did what she thought a mother should do, hold him, soothe him. But the visions grew worse,

not better. It overwhelmed her, and she was not one who had the luxury of being overwhelmed.

It's not that she didn't know what to do. It's that she did it. Her name was Egret then.

Just Gret to the few who bothered to call her anything.

One of the many women in the brothels who wondered why the gods had created them.

Gods must need whores, she would think.

And then she would try to imagine why. And then she would think and then she would try to imagine why and then she would become

...