Crow

For the first time in years Maria felt truly happy. Her relationships with her mother as well as with Carlos were improving more and more each day. Her mother allowed her to spend as much time as she could with Carlos, which benefited Maria, as now she barely saw her step dad Alonzo. By the time Maria got home every day he was already sleep, or sitting in the living room watching t.v., drinking beer and ignoring the world around him. After school Carlos waited for Maria to walk her either to her home or to the store. In the evenings Carlos would go and visit Maria, some times to take her out, and they both spent a couple of hours together. Thanks to Carlos being with her for the majority of time during the evenings, Maria was now allowed to return home on later times, it didn't matter if it was dark or not.

It was one on a weekend morning, as Maria brushed her hair, that she suddenly heard a knock on her window. She paused. It was weird for Carlos to be knocking on her window during the day, the sneaking into her bed room and window knocking was reserved for night time. She turned to her window and did not see anything. Thinking that it had probably been a branch from her tree moved by the wind, she dismissed the sound and continued brushing her hair.

She heard a knocking again.

The sound triggered the memory of the night Carlos and her had been interrupted by a bird knocking her window. Cautiously she approached her window, and just as she suspected it was there, standing on a small branch close to her window. It looked at her, frozen. Maria gasped, she had imagined a woodpecker, a dove even, but never thought it would have been a crow what she would find outside her window. The weirdest thing was it was not just any crow, it was the crow. How she could tell, Maria did not know, it may have been by the intelligence she saw reflected on its eyes.

"Well, hello" she said to the crow, feeling foolish and a little creeped out. How did it know where she lived? "Nice to see you again" She opened her window, and to her surprise it flew inside her room. "No! No! No!" She yelled at it trying to stop it. The crow flew to her desk and it stopped there, looking at her.

"What's going on?" Maria heard her mother's voice coming from down stairs. Maria could hear her mother starting to walk quickly up stairs.

"Ummh, nothing!" Called Maria loudly, then looking at the crow, she decided to get her mother's help. "Can you bring me a piece of bread?" She asked, she could tell her mother had stopped walking, she guessed her mother was surprised by her request. "Ammm... a crow flew into my room, I think I can get it out with some food." She explained, her mother laughed, then walked down again towards the kitchen.

"Well that is something else!" Maria's mother exclaimed in awe when she entered the room a few minutes later with a couple of slices of bread on her hand.

"I think it's the one I used to feed by the cemetery," Maria told her mother as she started to break the bread in pieces and opened the palm of her hand, she didn't think the crow would feel comfortable feeding from her hand, but she wanted to try. "I think it missed me." She said not believing in her own words. To her astonishment, the crow started to carefully peck at the bread from her hand.

"I didn't think you had it so familiarized with you" her mother was smiling, she seemed impressed by the scene.

"Neither I," confessed Maria. She seemed to be pleased with herself "last time it didn't even wanted to get near me, and it has been a couple of months since I last feed him"

"Him?" Asked her mother surprised.

"I think it's a male." Stated Maria. "I did a little research on internet... and well this one is big. One can not really tell just by looking if it is a female or male, but usually males are bigger. I don't know I just have always thought of it as a male. "