Tag: birds

Another day

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He made it to the rooftop, fingers slipping on the rain-slicked tiles, skin cold and stung by the falling sky.

She huddled by the false chimney. Her arms hugged her knees to her chest. Gull-grey wings shivered tight to her back as she gazed up at the storm-laden clouds.

He settled beside her and placed a hesitant hand on her shoulder.

‘I was going to do it,’ she said. ‘I was really going to do it.’

‘There’s always tomorrow,’ he said.

Always another day to fly.

—

Another microfiction for Mastodon. Image by Pezibear / Petra, used under Pixabay License.… Read more

The Girl With Chickenfeet

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A longer microfiction for Mastodon.

—

People were cruel to the girl with chickenfeet. ‘She’s hideous!’ they would cackle in her face.

‘The poor, ugly thing,’ others would whisper behind her back.

She bore it all with hunched shoulders and a leaden heart.

At night, she would stare at her feet and flex the long, scaly toes with their talons, and she would try to picture them smooth and bland and ordinary.

Every time she did, she grew a little smaller, choked by silence and shame.

She could pluck her feathers and hide her arms in long sleeves, but nothing could disguise her chickenfeet.… Read more

Really There (Microfiction Roundup)

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A collection of microfiction written for Mastodon.

 

REALLY THERE

Every night, woken by half-remembered dreams of cracked bones and dripping saliva, she saw the eyes. Two burning pinpricks within a boiling shadow, dark against the darkness.

Every night, she would close her eyes, and when she woke both eyes and shadow were gone, leaving only a lingering unease.

Tonight, she kept her eyes open. Her head tilted left, then right; the eyes followed her.

‘You’re really there, aren’t you?’

–Yes–

‘What — what are you?’

–Your dream–

She licked dry lips. ‘Then — why are you out here?’

–I scared myself–

She considered a moment, then lifted the other end of the blanket.… Read more

Old Thing

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She fed it every day. A scarred, feather-bare magpie with sharp eyes and a greedy croak.

First, it watched from the garden fence. She left it fruit on the ground, and never saw it take it.

Then, it fanned its tattered wings at her window, and she spread seeds along the sill.

She tried to touch it once. Its peck raised an angry wound.

It stopped coming, as old things do. But sometimes in the sunset sky, she would see a flash of iridescent wing, and wonder.… Read more