Chapter 4.
After I ditched Not A Baby, I let myself into her home.
That creature, the riches she accrued.
Smoked salmon, cloudberries preserved in sugar.
It was permanently summer in her kitchen.
And I wanted to stay forever.
But her furniture prohibited permanence.
On the lounge, I was comfortable enough
as a little Chuda or a grown Ggugguyni,
but it felt best when I caught myself between the two.
I split, and I slept in her den and dreamed
disorderly dreams that were neither nightmare nor prophecy.
They lacked sweetness, and they were full of drownings.
I woke.
I tried to eat.
The containers resisted my grip, and only my knife
remained palmed.
When she reappeared in the doorway,
my knife slid below her sternum as
though I were a hunter field dressing
an already cored animal.
Perhaps I thought her body would become my cloak.
More honestly, perhaps I was afraid.
She laughed at me, and pulled her hands away
from what should have been a wound.
And there was nothing there.
She laughed again.
And in my terror I asked, what are you?
Your people named me evil, she said, but you came here
and you treated me well.
Then she gestured at me, now back
into whoever you really are.
My wings ceased impersonating arms, and my tail plumed.
I came back to myself and flew away.
For weeks now, I wake in my nest and I look at myself
in the mirror.
My wing waves in front of my face,
and I tell myself, return to who you really are.
But it must be a matter of feathers and intonation.
I haven't mastered it yet.
I know because my face remains in spite of my beak cawing.