The sky appeared as if by accident one day. After years of black, all the people looked up and saw open fields of blue with only here and there a small puff of white cloud like pollen from the flower of the sun.
At first they were simply stunned, then awed, then afraid. Their superstition suggested all kinds of omens, that the darkness was folded back because of some sin, or that a great transgressor had died and blessing was restored, all theories conflicting and unfounded on any infallible truth. Suppositions filled the cleared air.
Eventually, as is the way with people, the sunshine ceased to be a wonder and they grew accustomed to illumination and bright light. They no longer stood in the meadows looking up. They went back to walking with bowed heads, looking at the brown dirt and their worn shoes.
The little girl walked to the top of a short hill. There was one brown-limbed dogwood sprouting from the hill's green grass. She stood beneath it and shook her black hair at the sky, as if to invite it for a romp on the ground. The sky beamed back, all blue and joyful and filled with birdsong even though no birds flew there. It was the sky, singing, and the girl sang back.
She had never heard singing, or seen a bird, because neither of those things existed where she was from; if they ever had, it was a long time ago, and they were long forgotten.
An old farmer saw her up there, singing, shook his head, and dug his fingers further in the soil like bony worms.
Change is often painful; the first pang is a harbinger of transformation. With the little girl it was not so. When the first feather poked through her smooth skin, it merely tickled. She stroked its black barbs, soft and shy, and in the way of little girls she was not afraid, and she did not try to guess what would happen next. She only watched.
Everything from the shafts to the afterfeathers was black. Not crow black, or even raven black, but simple blackbird black. It was a warm black, like a log still blazing in the fire. The girl looked, and in place of clothes or skin she was feathers all over. A little ruffle, and she spread her new wings and took off with a little hop. The dogwood turned from green to white, all its blossoms going off at once like little clouds.
The place where she first struck the sky turned ink-colored. From there, the dark spread until it had encompassed the whole sky, an enormous map in which every feature bled into the next. After awhile, the people once more grew accustomed to darkness.
Never again was the little girl seen on earth. But sometimes, if you'd take the time to look into the sky, a small patch stood out blacker than the rest, and you could almost believe in birds.
I like...I like very much.
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