and the cold waiting (TWS) - thoroughly abandoned!

There’s a bird on her windowsill.

It’s watching her. She sees it when she goes to shut the oven door, the pear shape on the lip of the battered pot. Dust on the feathers, clean lines on the sill, flour scattered into small droplets on the floor. The tree outside, tinkling, the sound wet and strange. The bird, sitting on the pot she keeps her water in.
It’s green. Green as glass. Even the tiny feet are green as they shift and crook around the handle. She stares.
She’s heard of birds. “Speak,” she tells it, voice hoarse.

The bird says nothing. Watches her.

She watches it back. Shuts the oven door. Wipes her hands on her apron, slow, slow. Tries to think of what they say to birds in the stories they tell the market-children to keep them quiet and sleepy. After a while, she remembers hearing that birds whistle, so she pushes her lips together. Pushes hair from her face with a floury hand, presses her lips together and and shoves out a noise that splits her dry mouth in two, cracks the air so the water trembles in her water-pot. The tree complains. The bird does nothing.

She sighs. Rubs her lips with the back of her hand, tastes salt. The bird stares at her, shifting little green feet the colour of glass.

The tree outside glitters, curfew approaching its leaves. She wipes a hand down her apron again, takes a breath. Reaches across the benchtop, over the burnmarks and the stains and the kingdoms of abandoned dough. What does one do with birds? What does one say? “Come here,” she tries, soft, soft. “Come here.”

The bird comes, light on her fingertips like water.

She stops breathing. This is a bird. She’s heard of birds. It’s on her finger. The weight of it convinces her most, a solid teaspoon-heft on her skin and the prick of claws as it shifts, settles, green feet gripping hard. There’s a bird in the kitchen and she’s only ever seen them in the picturebooks but she knows, she knows, they sing, they fly-

she remembers the drawings, gold and white and red and blue, bright as glass bottles and real trees and as beautiful. And they’re alive. And this one’s green as the grass people talk about, a living green, spattered with freckles across the wings like the pears in picturebooks and it’s sitting on her finger-

It’s on her finger. It’s real. The little grey splatter in the dough is real enough, sticky to the touch, and so is the roar of the oven and the weight of the bird and the sonorous note of the curfew bell-

SpoilerShow

what now?

Hold your breath. A perfect moment. Wonder.

Catch it, and keep it forever.

Can she draw it, perhaps?

Maybe it's hungry.

stifle your bloodlust

Hold your breath. A perfect moment. Wonder.

Can she draw it, perhaps?

Maybe it's hungry.

She holds her breath and tries to listen, under the banging of the curfew bell and the shrill-and-glitter of the tree outside- tries to hear through her fingertips the heartbeat battering itself to pieces against her skin, beating and beating and beating and beating. The bird, breathing and beating like a tiny drum.

She nearly drops it. It’s a rhythm, the heartbeat. One she can’t quite name, all triplets and skips and false starts, and the tree outside is scratching against the wall and shrilling, commanding-
“Are you-” she tries, and then, at the window- “yes, yes! I’m going. Going.” She gathers up the basket, the filled bowls, turns the oven off. It’s slower with one hand out. “Are you-” she tries again. The bird blinks. She changes her mind. “-hungry?”

More blinking. The birds in the stories and the picturebooks could talk, could argue and mislead wanderers and tell dark secrets, but this one- this one is watching her expectantly, and saying nothing.
She swallows. One hand in the flour, fingertip sketching out the pear-body, the crooked feet, the head-
The tree. “Yes! I’m going.” She stares blankly at the cupboards, trying to think of something- anything- that could feed this.

SpoilerShow

and what now?

Bread, perhaps.

Well, what do you have? Crackers, fruit, bread? Do you remember if the book said anything about what birds eat?

Something very very small. Seeds, crumbs, ants. Or maybe something thin and soft, like worms or the noodles from chicken-noodle soup.