The waters of the Danube were quiet again. If I did not look back to see the faint line on the horizon, I would almost believe the hydrocentral to be a bad dream. My thoughts were suddenly interrupted.
Codrin: This is green power for you!
Me: What?
Codrin: Just something I heard Petre say once.
Cawlin: He means the hydrocentral. Humans say it's green.
Me: Wow! It looks grey enough to me. But I know that humans have pretty bad eyesight. They see worse than me even on land, and blurry underwater.
Narcissa: That's not what it means. It's harnessing the power of the water. We harness it, too, as we float downstream. We go at the speed of the river without pushing the coracle at all.
Cawlin: That's right! The alternative is to get oil or gas from under the sea or from underground, and then burn it to keep the featherless creatures from freezing in winter, and to make things flash or spin. They burn oil to move the metal killers leaving a stinky trail.
Penelope: Or they could use atomic power. I just heard they have one such plant in Hungary. It makes the water of the Danube be luke-warm all year long, and kills so much around it.
Me: Ok, but how did you convince the green power thing to let us through? Humans may think it's useful, but this particular one blocked our way, which was not helpful at all.
Codrin: Well, neither was the human at the top.
"What did he do?" asks Athena staring at Codrin with her large, soulful eyes.
"I'll tell you if you stop staring at me as if I were dinner." says Codrin. Athena looks at the dead mice instead. She regretfully notices there are only two left.
Codrin: After we left the coracle, we flew to the top of the hydrocentral. The door to the control room was ajar. I stuck my head in and shouted "Open the gate!" The human ignored me, and continued to stare blankly at the panel in front of him. I took a closer look, and saw that he was watching a tiny screen and that his ears were blocked by some black, roundish objects. I tell Cawlin, "he's on his phone, I could shout myself hoarse and he would not even notice, but look here's a switch. Try flipping it."
Cawlin: I glided down and hit it with my strong beak. I felt it give away. It flipped! The whole screen flashed, and a loud noise was heard. The gate was openning! The guard looked up from his phone and saw us. Instead of understanding and applauding our brilliancy, the words that came out of his pursed lips were "has! has! Ciori spurcate!". He looked for something to hit us with, but noticed the flipped switch and his whole face whittend. He muttered: "asta nu-i lucru curat!" just as Codrin and I flew off. Our mission was accomplished.
"I bet he won't leave his door open next time!" comments Philip.
Athena: "If humans get any more attached to their phone, they will soon be tripping over their own two legs".
Me: "well, they are very close, but for now I am glad there are few enough humans in sight."
Penelope: If they destroy themselves soon, they would have reigned way less than our ancestors, the dinosaurs. Yet birds survived.
Codrin: I just hope we won't all go down with them so to speak.
Cawlin: Yes, Mother worries about that as well, and I almost undertsand why. Humans make up such nonsense. They think of energy as free and overuse it. But everything has a price. It's simply a question of who pays it. The hydrocentral seems just as green as my feathers.
