The last time you slept was it a pleasant dream or a nightmare that kept you company? If you can't recall your dreams, tell us about your bedtime ritual.

Nightmare.

( don't say morning's come don't say it's up to me if i could take 25 minutes out of the record books (sugar, he brings me sugar)Collapse )

He never meant to hurt her.

When he first saw her, all he thought of was how beautiful she was, something special and rare that people like him never normally got to see in their lives, and when he first stroked her feathers it was only because they looked so soft. It wasn't stealing, not at first, he was only trying to keep them both safe until he could figure out what he was supposed to do.

His name is Derrick and he has a collection of fantasy novels under his narrow bed in the dingy house he inherited from his father, who had been something of a sentimental drunk.

"You're not from around here, are you?" He had said, palms sweaty on the steering wheel.

"No," she said, with a faint accent he couldn't place on one side of the ocean or the other, and looked at him with an expression he couldn't read then, though now he supposes it was contempt.

"What's your name?"

"I don't know, make something up." Even then, she was impatient with him. She wouldn't speak to him again for days, no matter what he asked, and he set her up in his bedroom and was glad his ex-girlfriend had left behind some of her stuff when she moved out. Hair products, jeans that didn't fit without a belt, bobby pins - things he'd held in his hands when she was gone and cried over in the silent, tearless way of young men. At least someone was using them again.

He wrapped up her feathers and hid them in the ceiling, where his father had kept his rifles and Playboys. For safekeeping.

"I'm going to call you Bell," he decided, and was encouraged by her slight shrug that showed the curve of her shoulder under his oversized shirt. He took her shopping and bought her clothes that fit, lacy bras, clinging underwear, and blushed under the eyes of sales ladies.

"I want my old clothes back," she said, and he pretended he didn't hear her.

It was that night he summoned enough courage to kiss her, and only later would he wonder if she gave in because she wanted to or because she didn't think it was a choice, and he was ashamed of himself. But this was only after she was gone; then, she was there, with her sharp fingers and endless reserve, leaving him feeling even farther away when he curled up naked beside her. Like nothing he did could ever touch her.

He'd meant to call her Belle, for being beautiful, but she resisted the e, cut it into a metal throat. She wouldn't even take his simplest gift. He'd only wanted her to stay with him, to be his and his alone, the reassuring palm prints on the inside of his frosty morning windows.

Derrick asked her often where she was from, but she never told him, maybe because she didn't know herself. She cleaned his house and cooked his meals for him, padding barefoot in and around his house and making him glad he lived outside of town so no one would see her, she slept beside him at night, and she never said no, or yes, and he told himself he was lucky, that she was happy with him. She never looked unhappy.

Spring came, and then summer, and one morning he woke up alone and knew she wasn't there. He looked anyway, until he glanced outside and saw his truck was gone, too. She left behind almost everything he'd given her, and put the ceiling panel back in place - she was always neat.

He covered the muddy handprint she left on the outside of his bedroom window with plastic wrap so the rain and wind wouldn't damage it, and wondered what she was trying to tell him, if she was trying to tell him anything at all. What he was supposed to do now.

Maybe this was a test, but there was only one person he could ask, and as his confusion faded into anger he decided he was going to get answers this time. He sold his father's rifles and bought a car on an old man's lawn, sat behind the wheel, and thought about where a bird would go once it got out of its cage.

He goes south.

You do not know how your story began, not the how or when or where or why. Even your who is less clear than it should be, seen through the warped glass of your memory, covered in the rustling of pale feathers.

You remember that you were a girl first, before you were anything else. You were a girl with two arms and two legs and two eyes and a family like any other, a mother and a father and a brother barely older than you. You think you remember that you were happy, but this is something you are less sure of. You remember your father's chest, wide as a mountain, and your brother's fitful melancholic temper, your mother's weary eyes. You had a doll, but you do not know if it was made out of china or a corn husk, if it or you wore silk or cotton or wool or linen.

You remember your father wasted down to a hill in his grand state bedroom, in his rude one room hut, and you by his side holding his cold hand in your still colder one. You met your brother's eyes across the room, and you were silent. You think you were so most of the time, a quiet creature, even then, while his voice filled up every corner. You and your mother were of a piece, and so when she took another husband you did not blame her as your brother did. Instead, you watched. She was not too old for more children.

(Your mother and her herbs, her gleaming scissors, her stone circles in the garden; you knew all and you said nothing.)

While your brother brooded over her swelling belly, you began to make ready, but oh, you did not plan quickly enough, you were only a girl and she was a woman with all her years of experience and you did not really believe what you knew, that she would make herself safe at the cost of all her blood. You still believe that she loved you. But love was not enough. If you had only had red hair, you could have been rescued. Your new father was gone for a time and when they came to take you -

In the forest with the vast and merciless dark sky pressed against your back, what did you say?

(Oh brother I will save us Oh brother do not be afraid I will give you the sky and our freedom and we will never have to burn we will be untouched by these concerns we will never come back to this place Oh brother trust me I am your sister and I love you so Oh brother oh my lovely loving beloved brother I will never let you come to harm now take my hand and oh do not look back.)

You left behind only feathers, dark and light, and you took to the air with your heavy strong wings beating as steady as your heart ahead of his quick ones, his voice a rusty nail to hang your desperation on and you silent as ever.

You slept with your brother folded under your wing and you wondered how long ten years would feel, in this form, before you could shrug off this feathered disguise and take back your true shape. You had tied yourself to a fickle moon, but you had left your breadcrumbs behind you, you would not be lost this way.

Swans are not known for their ability to track the phases of the moon, to count the turn of seasons, but the last thought you truly (if dimly) remember is that it had been too long. You had made a mistake, but you could not name it, you could not even begin to. Something had -

The first thing you are sure you remember is the beach you left your skin on, pines rising up around you like breathing monoliths, the softened waves lapping at your knees, kissing you cold. And you were not alone, even if you were abandoned. You wonder what he thought, seeing you rise out of that swan, the ignorant man who wrapped you in his jacket only after he'd hidden the bundle he made of your cast-off magic. If he'd really believed he could keep you, or if he'd only been so fascinated by your high breasts and the soft cleft between your legs that he hadn't cared.

He was not cruel to you.

You will not think of this.

You will think of how you took back your skin and you stole his truck when you left. You will think of the empty place under your arm, where a raven should fit, you will think of the empty place in the palm of your hand, where your brother's fingers should be, you will think of the empty place in your mind and then you will stop thinking and you will find him. None of this will have mattered then.

You do not remember his name or face, but you tell yourself you will know him.