Winged messenger

Vow, that’s what she calls her­self. She sits in silence, because someone might be listen­ing. Watches the walls, because they could be cast­ing sly glances at her frame, hid­den beneath such unas­sum­ing clothes.

Ten o’clock. There is burble and hiss. It seems the news is not good. The drought is worsen­ing; the live­stock are fall­ing before they even get to the trough in a final, futile attempt to slake their thirst. She blinks into the pic­ture, wish­ing for interference.

The time that was now is not. It’s in the past. Days ago. That moment was merely the last in which she moment­ar­ily dragged her gaze away from fixed for­ward, dead centre. There.

Vow doesn’t hope for much, yet she dares to mouth a wish that all the sheep will be long dead, that the flies and nature’s ravaging caress will have picked their car­casses clean and white. Skel­et­ons are easier to sweep into pyres. Flesh isn’t as clean as it should be: it dis­gusts her.

The walls are still watch­ing. She doesn’t take her eyes off them, because she can never be sure. Some­times the wall­pa­per — no, no, it doesn’t. Impossible, with a face that she still hasn’t touched.

Vow listens to music from her youth. From her father’s youth. She can feel his hardened rural hand tap­ping out the rhythm of a simple blues. A fist­ful of hair becomes a strummed chord, pulled into the lurch­ing melody by blun­ted fin­gers. He plays her, but she won’t sing.

The bird will come. That’s what Vow is hop­ing. Only then will she look away, take a cal­cu­lated risk and let her­self be watched, just for a moment. She doesn’t get many visitors.

This bird, it has eyes that don’t give any clues. Cer­tainly no sug­ges­tion of where its migra­tion may have car­ried it. But if Vow con­cen­trates, maybe she can fol­low its flight. If she coaxes it inside, over the peel­ing sill, this could be the one time when the creature allows her to wash its feath­ers clean, squeeze the sponge on her tongue to quench her need, and taste the city’s acrid fumes in her sand-blasted throat.