Imagining Birds

Three miles from the Atlantic ocean and two miles from the Cape Fear river, tall pine trees stretched up towards the sky. Their needles scratched at the somber hues of dusk. Winds moved across the land from the shore and chilled the air. Thousands of crows huddled together in the trees for the night.

All of the birds were as dark as midnight except for one. Her colors shifted and changed every moment in a radiant rainbow. Despite the shifting colors, she was known as the Ruby Bird since she reflected a deep, glowing red at noon when the sun was at its highest point in the sky. This evening, though, her colors were a mix of quiet blues and soft greens. She looked just like the other crows in terms of size and stature; the only difference was her chameleonic feathers. Appearances can be deceiving, though, as she had a few other tricks tucked under her wing.

Crows are perennial tricksters, and she was no different. The other crows often took umbrage with her methods, though. No mythic tricks, no major cleverness with an important narrative thread tugging them along. She preferred to leave subtle and strange surprises in places and worked in synchronicity. Tonight, she dropped her voice into a song a human listened to nearby. Suddenly, there was be a caw of a crow in the song just as the human was trying to identify the birds in the trees. Were they starlings or were they crows? It was hard to see in the low light. But wait, was that a caw? And was it always in the song or was it now in it because the Ruby Bird placed it there? She worked in odd ways.

The human — having just gone through weeks of high strangeness of their own — was a little dumbfounded. To be sure, they rewound the song. The caw was there again; they weren’t imagining it. It was there for just a brief second tucked within the vocals, but it was definitely a crow. Had the mysteries followed them here to this new spot close to the ocean? It was a bit of a relief, to be honest. The magic had continued.

The Ruby Bird just watched the human fumble as the gibbous moon brightened in the darkening sky. As the sun set along the horizon, it cast a shade of coral at the edge of the sky. The Ruby Bird followed suit on her pine branch nearby until the sun had disappeared completely. She then shifted back to the soft blues and greens, though no one could see them in the darkness. With her beard tucked next to her wing, she settled in and went into the crow dreaming.