Plumage Read Free

humiliation, from Sassy’s point of view; she had hoped that Racquel wouldn’t notice that she needed them. “Have a nice day,” said Racquel with a chuckle as she strode away.
    Abandoning her carpet sweeper, Sassy bolted for the nearest rest room.
    She nearly fled into the men’s by mistake, but caught herself in time and blundered into the ladies’, which, mercifully, was unoccupied. After she washed her face with cold water and dried it with a paper towel and blew her nose and got herself together somewhat, she dared to face a mirror to see how she looked. Specifically, her hair; how bad was it? Bird poop blending right in with the gray, indeed.
    The problem of poop on Sassy’s mind, however, was quickly superseded by another. In the mirror, her reflection was not there.
    Not. There.
    Instead—
    In the mirror, seemingly perched on air in the vicinity of what should have been Sassy’s heart, a little blue parakeet looked back at her.
    Sassy blinked.
    Closed her eyes a moment.
    Took a deep breath, opened her eyes again and looked.
    Stared.
    She was still not there.
    And the parakeet still was.
    There. In the mirror. Its head up. Staring back at her with eyes like tiny tourmalines set in silver.
    Sassy glanced down at herself. She was still there. That was her potbellied body under green shirtwaist and stupid ruffled apron. Those were her hands, shaking. She lifted them to her head, felt her own solid skull, her own face, her own eyes, reassuringly gelatinous under rubbery eyelids; all the essential parts still seemed to be in place. Through her fingers she looked at the mirror again.
    Parakeet.
    It should have been a pretty little parakeet. Cobalt-blue, with a cute creamy white face. But Sassy did not find it pretty. She flinched and clenched her fingers together, hiding behind them.
    â€œGive me a break,” she whispered. Sassy was not a religious person, especially not lately, but her posture was undeniably that of prayer. “Give me a break,” she whispered again, “please.” Slowly she lowered her hands from her eyes.
    It was still there. Little blue parakeet. Looking straight back at her.
    Sassy didn’t reason anything out—that the cant of the parakeet’s head was the mirror image of hers, the stare of the beady eyes, the same as hers—she couldn’t think; her mind was farting way too hard for thought. But ineluctably she knew: that bird was her reflection now. Her self.
    Perched in sweetleaf, hidden in greenfree that matched his own green coverts, Kleet shivered in awe. He trembled, all his feathers prickling. Even his feet quivered on the twig they clutched, even his beak quivered—for he had just encountered Deity face-to-face.
    Almost by mistake, prompted by some strange urging from beyond the hard air, he had annointed her plumage. Her limbs had lifted to him, her bare pale twigs had extended to him. He had flown to her; he had skreeked her and she had skreeked him back. It was the shellbreak day of his young life.
    Only Deity knew what marvels would now ensue.
    Sassy called in sick to work for the next three days and shut herself in her apartment, crying, contemplating her own sanity or lack thereof, looking in mirrors and trying not to look in mirrors because when she did, the parakeet that stared back at her remained as omnipresent and blue as ever. Sometimes it hunched its shoulders and stretched its wings. Sometimes it peered at her slantwise. Sometimes it bent into a U to preen its tail feathers, and once it scratched its own head, standing on one foot with the other foot stuck behind its wing, clownish. It wasn’t always the same, but like a budgie in a cage, it was always there.
    One time it gaped its beak at her in an infantile sort of toothless grin, which charmed her not at all. “Just go away,” she told it, but it didn’t.
    Sassy tried to think of sensible solutions to her dilemma, but none came to