Black Noise

birdsong

No. No more. Never again. Who was I kidding, it was inevitable. And I was going to be the catalyst, whether I liked it or not.

"Aderyn! Aderyn, honey, your dinner's ready!" of course it was. I closed up the book and headed downstairs, greeted by my mother Melissa's smiling face and the sound of birds chirping, unable to comprehend the horrors of human life. I'd love to live like that. If all bodies are weak, unreliable, and constantly break, I'd definitely choose the cute one with wings. After all, life is amazing in that it's both too short for it to feel fulfilling and insufferably slow and miserable! Wait. No. Stop that. Think positive thoughts. Live in the present, be grateful for what you have, there's nothing to worry about. You'll get a great job that pays well and which you enjoy, you'll go far in life and get a great house and a great boyfriend. There's plenty of time. Thoughts I'd repeated in my head several times so far. I ate dinner in peace (for the most part, it's never truly peaceful with my sister Celandine around), went back to my room, and struggled through my homework. By 10pm I'd made something vaguely resembling progress.

To hell with it. I was an artist, not a factory worker. Ripping up the papers was all too satisfying, making paper-mache was even better. A crow, with no neck flesh. That might've been a metaphor for something, I wasn't sure. I'd paint him in the morning. All would be well in the world, except for everything that mattered. Oh well. Time to find a safe place for him. I decided that his name would be Corbin. It had been about 20 minutes and I could finally rest.