On the crooked branch of an old persimmon tree, two birds sat. Above them, the sky hummed with the thick silence that comes before rain. Below, the world stretched out in its tangled changing vastness — branches pushing into the air, rivers pulling toward the sea, everything moving, endlessly moving.
The older bird sat still, though her stillness was not absence but fullness, like a pebble on a riverbed. Her feathers flickered as the light moved through the leaves: verdigrised copper, smoldering reds, gold like old coins freshly dug from the heavy earth. Beside her, the younger bird shifted restlessly, her lines barely holding their shape. Her body was not feather but form, a sketch in soft charcoal, smudged at the edges where rain or doubt had touched her. She stared down at her faint chest, as hollow as a question half-asked.
“Mother,” she said suddenly, sharply, her voice like the crack of a twig snapping underfoot. “When will I have feathers like yours?” Her gaze darted toward her mother’s chest, to that molten glow of red-gold plumage. Her own outline flickered faintly, like breath on glass. “I’m tired of being incomplete.”
Her mother did not turn at first. She watched the wind, the movement of invisible things. She watched the unseen, as mothers often do. Then she shifted her gaze to her child, her eyes dark and soft as old ink.
“You think I was born like this?” she asked quietly, though there was no question in her voice. She lifted her wings, slowly, and they caught the light like embers stirred in ash. “These colours were not mine. They came to me. Rain gave me the gray. The sun laid gold on my back. The berries left their red behind. All of it stayed.” She lowered her wings, slow as the setting sun.
The pencil bird frowned, running her beak down her delicate frame, as if she could draw herself maor fully into the world. “But how?” she asked, her eyes wide and sharp with hunger. “How did it stay?”
Her mother turned fully now to her child, gaze like stone, gaze like earth, gaze like home. “I didn’t chase it,” she said. “I stayed. The storm comes. You stay. The sun burns. You stay. The world scratches at you with its teeth and thorns, but still, you stay.” Her beak tapped lightly against the bark of the branch. “You let it mark you.”
The faint bird flinched. *Let it mark me?* She glanced down at her pale, clean outline. There was nothing on her, nothing in her, but faint graphite lines. The world had not touched her. She had not let it.
“Fly,” her mother said, with the softness of rain before it falls.
“Where?” the juvenile bird asked, eyes darting upward to the open, terrifying sky.
“Anywhere.”
“And if I get lost?”
Her mother leaned closer, so close the faint breath of her voice swept across her daughter’s hollow cheek. “You will,” she said. “That is the only way you’ll know where you are.”
The child blinked, heart sharp and wild as a drumbeat. She glanced up at the vast, open sky, so full of directionless blue, then down at her faint, brittle wings. Her breath came fast and tight. *But I’m not ready,* she thought. *I’m still a sketch. I’ll disappear out there.*
But her mother had already tucked her beak into her chest, as though she had seen this all before and had said what needed to be said.
So the pencil bird spread her thin, hollow wings and leapt.
At first, it was bliss. The wind held her like a string cradles a kite. The sun dripped warmth down her back. *This is it,* she thought, turning in wide arcs, her shadow a pale outline below her. *This is what it means to fly.* She flew harder, faster, slicing through the air like a blade, her heart thudding with the thrill of it. *If I just keep flying, I’ll become real.*
But the world does not let anyone fly unmarked.
The clouds gathered with the heavy, aching slowness of something inevitable. At first, they were soft as wool, but soon they grew dense, sharp-edged, swollen with their own weight. The air thickened. The first drop of rain hit her back like a stone. Then another. Then hundreds.
*Go back,* she thought. *Go back to the branch. You’ll be ruined.* Her wings trembled. Her outline blurred, as though the rain was an eraser working her out of the world. She was dissolving, line by line, stroke by stroke. The old fear rose in her: *I will vanish.*
Her mother’s voice echoed through the storm, her voice like a huge murmuration of starling filling the air: *Don’t run from the storms.*
So she didn’t. She flew straight into the rain, her body battered by drops that felt like knives. Her wings shuddered. Her heart thudded in her head louder than the thunder. She thought she might fall. But she didn’t. She didn’t.
When she emerged from the storm, she landed on the branch of a cedar tree, breath heaving, wings shaking. She looked down at herself, expecting to see ruin, expecting to see the faint, hollow outline of a bird erased from existence. But there, on her back, was a streak of silver-gray, soft as the edge of a storm cloud.
*This wasn’t here before.*
She touched it, ran her beak over it. It didn’t smear. It stayed.
Time passed. It always does.
The days that followed were not kind. The sun baked her back until she felt her wings would burn away. Hunger gnawed at her until her chest ached, and when she landed near a thorny Briar, the thorns clawed at her wings. She bit into the wrong berry first — bitter, sharp, unbearable. She spat it out. But the next berry was sweet as honey. The red juice stained her beak, dripped down her chest. She wiped it away, but a faint rust-coloured mark stayed.
The sun gave her heat. The berries gave her red. The thorns gave her scars.
She flew beneath a hawk’s shadow, and when she escaped, her wing throbbed from the rake of its claws. The mark it left was not a wound. It was a line — faint, blue-black, permanent.
*When did I change?* she thought, glancing at herself one day. Her chest was no longer hollow. Her wings no longer weightless. The sketch of her was gone. Instead, she was filled with colour — shadow-gray, storm-blue, berry-red, thorn-black. She had not asked for any of it. But it had come to her all the same.
*This is what she meant.*
One evening, she returned to the persimmon tree. Her landing was sharp, deliberate, her wings folding in tight with the precision of something that has been tested. Her mother glanced up, gaze steady as ever.
“Back so soon?” her mother asked, eyes filled with quiet knowing.
The young bird glanced at her wings, her chest, her tail. She hadn’t realized it, but she no longer looked away from herself. Her feathers were no longer faint. No longer hollow. They were full, heavy with shadow and flame, earth and ash. She felt the weight of them, but it was not a burden. It was the weight of being real.
Her mother turned to face her fully now, tilting her head as if inspecting something distant and beautiful.
“Look at you,” she said softly. Her voice was full of something like pride, but older, deeper. Something like recognition.
The young bird flexed her wings. She saw it now — not just the colour but the story it told. The silver of the storm. The red of the berries. The blue of the hawk’s shadow. Her eyes burned, but not with tears. She could feel it all at once — the weight of the storm, the taste of the berries, the ache of the thorns — everything that had ever touched her was still with her, in her, as vivid as flame.
Her mother leaned in close, her beak at her cheek. “Welcome back,” she whispered.
They sat side by side as the sun spilled itself across the sky, orange into red, red into gold, gold into night. Their feathers caught the light as it passed, both of them burning softly in its glow.
Her mother’s eyes closed, content. The young bird glanced down at her chest once more, at the colours she had not chased but gathered, each one a mark of having stayed.
Her chest was not hollow anymore. And in that moment, she knew it never had been.
Your support makes a difference in my life and helps me create more of what you, and I, like. Thank you!
- Vintage Fisherman & Wooden Boat
Straw hat shades his brow,Between green shore and blue sky,Peace rides on the tide. A… Read more: Vintage Fisherman & Wooden Boat - The Rise and Fall of Cardigan Quay
A Tale of Tides and Fortunes Standing on the banks of the Teifi today, looking… Read more: The Rise and Fall of Cardigan Quay - You Never Read the Same Book Twice
“No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river… Read more: You Never Read the Same Book Twice
Anthony's Literary Lens 
You must be logged in to post a comment.