Page 9 of Ruby
“Is that you, Page?” I ask as I hear the first footsteps.
She’d never come this late. A spike of fear rises.
“Mother?”
No. She would have bitched at me for eating Chinese takeout and leaving it out the moment she opened the door and saw the table.
I start to get up, but rough hands push me back down. After a brief attempt to struggle, a needle is jabbed painfully into my neck.
I recognize Shane’s cologne. How did he get in? He never even had a key.
The dizziness starts as he moves in front of me, a sick grin spread across his handsome face.
He lets out a series oftssks. “Didn’t even help me expand my following… It’s been all my own hard work.”
“You sick fuck,” I spit out. Then my mouth stops following signals from my brain.
“Might as well make you useful by clearing up some debts,” he says cheerfully. “Hopefully they won’t mind all the silicone.”
He lets out a bark of laughter.
I’m cursing him inside my head and trying to make my useless lips work as I fade out.
3
Szhe’ka
Mornings almost always start the same for me; waking up to the sounds of my bachelor group excitedly talking amongst themselves about the newest mate pairing and how they cannot wait to find theirs.
Each day there is one less bachelor and I am reminded of my own fate. Today it starts when Nnaiv flaps his azure feathers over my face as he wakes me from my slumber.
He speaks to me in a low warble, as if not trying to alarm the rest of the nest. “Get up.”
He is concerned about something.
I am awake and have been for some time but I pretend to be roused by his voice, unwrapping myself from the cover of my wings. I get up from my crouching form and shake the exhaustion from my limbs before stretching my wings highabove my head, letting my feet dig into the soft, leafy flooring of the aerie.
I am taken back to a time where it wouldn’t have been uncommon to find myself in a squabble with Nnaiv because I tripped over part of his wings by accident. We were just fledglings then, young and trying to take over some aspects of our lives since being separated from the brood mothers.
I try to share my memory with my friend but his attention is elsewhere—intently staring out of the nest, wings tucked closely around himself, eyes narrowed to a fine point. So I ask him what bothers him.
Nnaiv gestures in the direction of the jungle down the mountain, a place where only the bravest venture to traverse—somewhere I have never gone myself.
“Trespassers again.”
I think he worries too much. There has been much news of these trespassers but most of them are grounded creatures and we live far apart.
“Impossible. Cannot reach,” I try to assure him quietly but I can tell that he is not listening to me.
“Not forever. Need find mate. Migrate before here,” he continues, eyes looking into mine.
His singing is low, as if he intends only for me to hear but this purpose is defeated and I hear a teasing titter not too far fromme. His eyes trail to the entrance of the aerie and I follow but all I can see is the sky.
“Szhe’ka mate? Not possible,” someone says from behind me.
I know where the conversation is about to go and I will not allow myself to get riled up so I start to move away. However, my friend is too tightly wound to ignore the words of the aerie’s bully.
“Tch’tek, stop. Serious conversation.”
