Two Birds in the Woods (tagged: Jami)
Jackie flitted through a thick hedge as a greenfinch, pausing on the other side to demolish a thistle head. She clung, sideways, to the prickly stem and looked around. She heard the rustle and peep of a contented flock somewhere nearby.
The Bird Woman felt watched, the peculiar prickle that accompanied the curiosity of a clever predator. A flock keen on a damp, wormy patch of ground might not be keeping close enough watch. Instinct made her glance up for hawks, down for cats or stoats, and finally out into the dappled clearing for featherless bipeds with stones. The alarm cheep left her throat the second she spotted someone human-shaped in a crook of the tree across the way.
Too late, Jackie noticed the handful of scattered sunflower seeds and dried fruit. A cloud of birds whirred away from Jami, the fanning of many little wings stirring her curls. The disappointment on the other woman’s face was enough to make Jackie feel chagrined.
She let go of the thistle with bird feet and touched earth with human toes. Careful to land in a crouch where she might leap into flight at a second’s notice, Jackie knew better than to move too fast.
Jackie raised a cautious hand to allay the other woman’s obvious startled distrust. “Sorry,” said the Queen of the Birds. She fluttered a hand this way and that like a bird taking to wing. “’Twas my fault they scattered. I saw you ‘fore I saw th’ seed. Instinct ‘fore sense, y’ken?”
