Sonia Rapunzel had spent her whole life trying to deal with her many times great grandmother’s hair-based escapology exploits and found a purpose for her life that would pay proper homage to her family’s peculiar heritage.

As a small girl she’d understood the lifestyle choices members of her family made because of that mythologised ‘hairy’ getaway. On one side there was her mother’s abhorrence of all things tonsorial such that the complete absence of scissors around the house made school projects a nightmare; on the other there was her uncle Barnet’s branch who would only live in bungalows, though her cousin Perm was generally held to have taken this altitudinal abstinence too far with her occupation of a redundant nuclear shelter seventeen metres below Peckham high road.

As a teen she developed a stress based case of Rapunzosis – a fear of hair growth – which led to her insistence on sleeping with her head in a bowl of depilation cream for six weeks until one night she turned over in her sleep, while dreaming of transitioning into a reptile, nearly drowning and suffering weeks of teasing until her eyebrows grew back.

By twenty-five, Sonia had, through months of therapy and the attentions of a sympathetic stylist and wig-maker began to return to something approaching normality, even though she felt her life lacked something. She studied all the versions of the Rapunzel story she could find in the hope it would reveal to her what she was to be her purpose in life.

Then Covid 19 lurched into her life and she was forced to lockdown. That self same week her trusted hair clippers died and despite her best efforts she couldn’t find another pair. Since she was isolating with her mother, who was still eschewing all things double bladed, she had no option but to lock herself away, stay clear of all mirrors and hope the lockdown would soon pass and she could find a hairdresser to curtail her self abundant tresses – like all her family, she had the Rapunzel mutation that meant her hair grew quicker than the nation’s debt.

When even she couldn’t ignore the encroachment of her fringe over her forehead she began to hide in the woods at the end of her garden. Eventually she refused to come indoors.

By the end of week twelve and,p just when everyone wondered if she would ever return from her arboreal exile, her mother found a wandering stylist who agreed, in return for an eye watering fee, to return Sonja to her pre lockdown smoothness. Mother and hairdresser, having agreed terms set forth for the woods, intent on ending the latest family crisis.

‘Darling,’ her mother called. ‘I’ve someone I want you to meet.’

‘Who?’ growled Sonia. ‘I’m busy.’

‘Did she say bushy?’ M. Jospeh inquired in his cod-French.

Mrs R waved hi quiet. ‘Monsieur Joseph has kindly agreed to give you a scalp and polish, so you can come back inside.’

‘Sorry. No can do.’

‘But darling, isn’t it what you want?’

‘It’s no longer just about me, mummy. I’ve discovered my purpose.’

‘Sorry?’ Mrs Rapunzel looked apologetically at M. Joseph, who shrugged.

By way of response, Sonia stepped slowly out from behind a strategically situated shrubbery. ‘The bird’s saved many times Granny R, and they’ve saved me.’

Mrs Rapunzel screamed and M. Joseph gasped. Around and behind Sonia’s smiling and content countenance the most enormous penumbra of curls and strands and dreds bobbed and wobbled as it filled their vision. And flying in and out of this multitude were blackbirds and sparrows and tits and every kind of bird life. Sonia met her mother’s open mouthed gape.

‘I’ve found my metier, mummy. I’ve become a rescue home for battered birds, an avian BnB.’

Another piece of nonsense prompted by Sue’s latest #writephoto prompt