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# Mesa Morning
{embed image: 'mesa_sunrise.jpg'}
A soft morning breaks over the Mesa. A peach glow, which promises the sweetness of the autumn breezes. It's dawn, and a single crow flaps her wings, circles over the quiet surburban yards, and croaks out to her absent family: "Where are you?" They don't answer, having been ripped from the world too soon, their joyous calls silenced by a bitter old man whose soul is as black as the feathers of her wings. Still she circles, hopeful in the way that only a creature who doesn't know Mankind well can be.
[[It breaks my heart]]
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# It Breaks My Heart
{embed image: 'crow_gravestone.jpg'}
I scooped each of them up from my yard, their eyes dull and clouded. I buried them in my garden, with a little marker made of sticks over their grave. I've never been all that much of a believer in religion, but somehow a pentagram seemed more appropriate than a cross. I said a little prayer as I put each into the earth. A prayer for peace, for forgiveness, and eventually, *for vengeance*.
The first dead crow was a complete mystery. I figured maybe it had died of natural causes, just a victim of old age or disease, or maybe it ate poison out of someone's poorly-secured garbage. When I found the second crow, I was sure something serious was happening. I didn’t understand what until I found one whose head had been split open by an airgun pellet. Who would shoot a crow, and why?
The fourth, I actually saw fall from a telephone line after the sharp crack of an air rifle. I got to him quickly and searched for a box to take him to the wildlife rehab center, but he didn’t make it, so I brought him to the garden and buried him next to the rest.
[[What can I do about it?]]
# What Can I Do About It?
{embed image: 'tea_outside.jpg'}
I sit in the chair at the little café table in my front yard. There's a bowl of peanuts on the table, and a few scattered on the ground around me. I'm not sure what I'm doing here, really. But I guess I feel like maybe the least I can do is feed her? *What else can I do?*
I never see the crow land. I'm scrolling through social media, then become intensely-aware of the sensation of *being watched*. I look up, and she's there, watching me, like she's always been there, and I'm the one that just showed up.
The crow observes me, warily, from the top of the stone garden wall. hopping slightly from foot to foot, looking at the peanuts, and then at me. Suspicious. I hold as still as I can, and sip at my hot tea. The taste and the smell of it, the warmth in my hands, calms me. Why am I so *nervous*? I haven't done anything wrong. I feel like I'm in a job interview, or something.
The crow hops down off of the wall, turns towards me, and lets out the loudest, angriest call I've ever heard. I startle, and drop my teacup onto the concrete. The mug shatters, and the steaming hot brown liquid runs away into the drain. The call goes on and on, painfully loud, powerful, and a little scary. When I look up, the crow is *staring at me*.
She screams again, a heart-rending croak that fills my ears, and squeezes my heart like a vise. Before I can regain my composure, she grabs a peanut and flies away. I get the impression I've been judged, and found wanting. It's depressing, but also perfectly understandable. How was a handful of peanuts supposed to make up for losing her entire family? *Stupid human*.
As I'm bent over, picking up the shards of the teacup, I see that there is a small round stone sitting on the patio, that definitely wasn't there before. It's jet black, the color of a crow's feathers. I stare at it for a long time before putting it in the pocket of my robe and heading into the house to get rid of the broken teacup. Where did it come from? Did the crow bring it?
[[What does it mean?]]# A Gift From a Crow
{embed image: 'stone_in_jar.jpg'}
I make my way into the kitchen, dump the broken teacup into the trash, and make a fresh cup of tea. I sit down at the kitchen table and sip it, slowly.
*That was really weird, wasn't it?* I think to myself, running the whole thing back in my mind's eye. The crow really seemed to be trying to tell me something, if only I was able to hear it. That call was terrible - a really raw, practically human, expression of grief.
But she took one of the peanuts, and she left me a pebble, so it couldn't have been all bad, right? The pebble was definitely not there before. I mean, it doesn't look like any of the landscaping material anywhere around my house, so unless someone else has been placing mysterious stones in my yard, it must have come from the crow.
I never saw the crow place it, nor did I notice if she had it when she got there. I didn't really see her land, so maybe it was in her beak, and she dropped it when she landed?
I take the stone out, and look at it. It's an utterly-unremarkable small pebble. smooth but not polished, probably some kind of basalt. I turn it over and look at it, but the stone has nothing to tell me. It is apparently just a stone. I put it into an empty jam jar on the kitchen countertop.
I guess I'll be waiting again [[tomorrow->mushroom]]# The Crow Returns
{embed image: 'mushroom.jpg'}
It's the next morning, I'm sitting out in the front yard, and the crow comes back. This time, I do see her land. She's got a mushroom in her mouth this time. She lands right on the table, and drops the mushroom next to my tea, and gives me a quizzical look, which I interpret as "where's the rock I gave you yesterday?".
I explain to her that I still have the rock, it's just inside the house. She watches me, carefully, then picks up a peanut, and flies away.
I bring the mushroom inside with me, and put it into the jam jar. Before I do, I look it over a bit. It's not your typical brown mushroom, like the ones I see sprouting in the lawn from time to time. This one is red, with little white dots on it. It looks *exactly* like a cartoon picture of a mushroom.
A thought briefly crosses my mind: *I wonder what that would taste like?* But I don't know anything about that mushroom. It could be poisonous, for all I know. I put it in the jam jar, and head into my bedroom to doom-scroll.
I guess I'll see what she brings me [[tomorrow->Nightshade]]
# The Transformation
{embed image: 'whirlwind.jpg'}
I walk into the backyard in a daze, and finally come to a stop in front of the tiny crow graves. The sky is swirling with black clouds, and I can feel my hair start to stand up from the static. Tiny purple sparks dance along the edges of the grave markers.
Lightning crashes across the sky, and I see the dirt over the graves begin to tremble, to slide out of the way. I'm rooted to the spot, unable to move. What the hell is happening, here? Suddenly, the ground erupts from the graves. Feathers and bones streak out of the dirt, and start to swirl around me. I try to scream but it dies in my throat. I feel the first of the feathers piece my skin. It hurts, but I can feel the power flowing into me from it, and I revel in that. Blood starts trickling down my back from dozens, then hundreds, of tiny wounds.
As my wings fill out, I can feel the rest of me changing, my flesh melting and reflowing into a new shape, no longer the shape of a person, but the shape of an idea. I am loss, I am grief, *I am vengeance*. The pain would be unbearable, but somehow it belongs to somone else now, to the person I used to be. I feel light, transcendant from the mere concerns of my body. I have a purpose, and I'm focused on becoming the instrument of that purpose.
More feathers and bones streak in from other parts of the neighborhood, all of them joining the whirlwind, swirling around, until they slot into place, armoring my body, strengthening my wings, and augmenting my claws and teeth. *Claws and teeth?* I think. But of course, it wasn't just crows that were victims of this crime. And vengeance for one is vengeance for all. My eyes are torn from my head, and everything goes black, and I fall to the ground.
[[When I wake up, it's night.->A Knock In The Night]]
# A Knock In The Night
{embed image: 'knock.jpg'}
It's midnight, but with my new eyes, it might as well be noon. I can see every detail of each blade of grass in the yard. I pick myself off the grass, and take a deep breath of the night air.
For a moment, I'm utterly overcome by the huge variety of scents that come flooding in. I can smell the grass of my neighbors' lawns, I can smell the ocean half a mile away, I can smell the pizza crust left in a garbage can somewhere. It's amazing. I had no idea the world smelled like this.
I uncurl my hand, and I look at the pebble sitting there. I *immediately* know where I've seen it before. One of my neighbors uses stones exactly like this in his landscaping. I must have walked by his house dozens of times, but I never really noticed it before.
I walk slowly down the street, listening to the amazing symphony of sounds. There are possums rustling in the undergrowth, there are worms tunneling through the earth. There are a dozen people, having a dozen conversations, all behind closed doors.
And finally, I'm at his door. The place all of this has been leading to. I raise my fist, and I pound on the door.
Once.
Twice.
One final time.
A light comes on in the house, and I hear the old man shout, from behind the door:
"Go away! I've got a gun, and I'm not afraid to use it!"
I put my hand on the door, and *I push.* The latch splinters out of the wood of the doorjamb, and the door swings inwards.
The old man stands there, terrified, clutching what turns out to be an air rifle. He points it in my direction, and he shouts:
"Get out, or I'll shoot"
I spread my wings, and *I scream*. Letting out all of the anger, the grief, and the loss. The sound fills the room, reverberating off of the walls. The man stumbles back, covering his ears in a vain attempt to keep it out.
I walk over to him, open my impossibly-wide mouth, and finally, for all of the lives ended, for all the heartbreak he's caused, *I take my revenge*.
The rest is blood, and screaming, and, finally, peace. When the bloody work is done, I make my way back to my house, and [[I collapse in the back yard->Next Morning]].
# Nightshade
{embed image: 'nightshade.jpg'}
I set myself up in the front yard again. This time, I take the jar with me, and set it up next to my tea.
The crow swoops in, with a sprig of flowers in her beak. They're a very beautiful dark purple, with little black berries. She hops over to the jar, drops her flowers, then carefully examines the contents of the jar. After apparently reassuring herself that I'm keeping the things she gives me, she picks up the flowers, and puts them into the jar.
Then she grabs a peanut, and flies off.
I wonder what she'll bring [[next?->dream]]
# A Cup of tea
{embed image: 'cup_of_tea.jpg'}
I'm exhausted from a very fitful sleep, but I make myself some tea, and I head out to the front yard, to await the crow. It looks like a storm is brewing - dark clouds fill the sky, and the air is charged with electricity.
I keep flashing back to that extremely weird dream. It felt somehow more real than my everyday life.
Some time goes by, and I start to worry that she's not going to come. I have a
horrible thought:
[[What if she's been killed?->A heart]]
# My blood
{embed image: 'blood.jpg'}
I point into the jar, and I ask the crow:
"What do you want me to do with this?"
Faster than I can react, the crow pecks my finger with her beak, and a single drop of my blood falls into the jar. I pull back and put my finger in my mouth. As I do so, the contents of the jar start to bubble and steam. There are flashes of red and black from the depths of the jar. Finally it settles, a pitch black potion, the color of a crow's eye, gently steaming in the cool morning air.
I pick up the jar, and I stare into it. The refection of my own eye looks back at me. I think "This is crazy, right? You can't be thinking of actually drinking this! You have no idea if it's safe to drink".
But the crow keeps staring at me, looking from the jar to me, and back again. I can feel the weight of her gaze, the incredible need behind it.
I take a sip from the jar. It's...not unpleasant. Earthy, a little spicy, and underneath it all, a flavor I can't quite place. I can feel it burn on the way down my throat.
It feels like *dying.*
It feels like *being born.*
It feels like *power.*
After the first sip, I can't help myself, and I keep drinking until it's all gone. None of the contents of the jar remain, except for the small black pebble at the bottom.
As soon as I finish the potion, there's a loud crack of thunder, and the clouds above start to spin in a circle, darkening and spitting lightning at each other. The wind begins to howl. I dump the pebble out of the jar and into my hand.
Without consciously deciding to do so, I find myself getting up from the table, and walking into [[the back yard->The Transformation]].
# The Dream
{embed image: 'stump.jpg'}
That night, I dreamed about the crow.
I was walking through the woods at night, under a full moon. It was cold, and the leaves of the path crunched loudly under my feet. Ahead of me, a small clearing opened up in the woods, with a single tree stump in the middle. I walked just inside the glade and stopped.
[after 1 second]
A silvery light came out from behind a tree, and moved over to the stump. It was a crow, made entirely of moonlight. It was joined by another, and another, and then by an opossum and a racoon. They all gathered around the stump, looking right at me.
[continued]
[after 2 seconds]
Soon, a tiny dot of darkness came down from the moon, to land on the stump. It was the crow, and she looked at me, staring right into my soul. And she looked around at each of the glowing spirits surrounding her, as if to say "Do you see how many of us there are? You have to do something about this!"
[continued]
[after 3 seconds]
Finally, she opened her beak, and I knew she was about to scream that horrible scream again. She was joined by a chorus of ghostly animals, an unholy scream of pain and loss, that rang on and on in my ears...
I woke up, drenched in sweat, clutching my sheets in my fists.
I really need [[a cup of tea->A cup of tea]]
[continued]
# A heart
{embed image: 'heart.jpg'}
Just as I'm about to give up on her, the crow flies down and drops a little red object on the table, with a wet squelching sound.
It's a heart. Like, an actual heart from some small animal. It's still twitching.
She hops over to the jar on the table and taps it with her beak. Then she taps the heart, and then she looks at me.
I pick up the heart. It's still warm. I place it, carefully, lovingly, into the jar. I look at the crow, and I ask her: "Why did you bring me this?"
As if in answer, she taps my teacup, then taps the jar.
"You want me to put my tea in the jar?" I ask.
She once again taps the teacup, then the jar.
I pour my tea into the jar, and it fills it most of the way up. A swirling mass of wilted flowers, a mushroom, and an animal's heart, all floating in what used to be a nice cup of tea.
The crow taps the jar and looks at me.
[[She just needs one more thing from me->my blood]]
# Next Morning
{embed image: 'mesa_sunrise.jpg'}
I wake up in my backyard, stiff and cold in the morning dew. My head is pounding, and my mouth feels like it's full of sand.
*Did that actually happen, or was it a dream?*
I check my body, and I don't feel any feathers or injuries. My clothes are completely ripped and muddy, though.
*What the hell?*
A crow circles overhead, watching over me. As I stand up, she croaks once, and heads off.
In the distance, I hear the sounds of an ambulance and police cars coming down the street.
I head into my house, and make myself a fresh cup of tea.
The End.