text: "We were the same thing once," she had told you one day, so early in the morning it seemed like only the forest was waking up around her. You had only known her for a few days then, and you were still coming to terms with it. The first time you saw her you wandered too far into the forest, too enchanted by golden feathers and a too human voice. You thought she was a fairy. Or perhaps some kind of flower, the leaves obscuring her small golden body just enough so that you could've guessed what she was. Except, there's something about her that makes you feel as if you've met her before. “How could you have known that?” You answered with a cocked head and crossed arms. She had only given you her smile, the smile that you somehow always knew she was doing around her gentle golden beak. Her response came in the fluttering of dragonfly wings. In the fingertips of cold that suffused your body with shivers. I know from stories making metaphors out of metaphors, she says. I am older than this forest itself, she says. You blink and she's gone. (Momma called bedtime early. You didn't want to go back home but it was getting dark and you can't sleep without a nightlight.) She talks like she has existed before the fruits grew turgid and rich with sugar water. Like she will exist after your salvaged remains will lie dry on the forest floor, picked clean by mushrooms and bugs and beetles. You asked her about her feathers once. (Were they really real gold?) She had turned around and plucked one from her plumage, sewed it right into your sweater. Said you could keep it, said she would be around with you forever. Then you asked about forever and after that, you asked about photosynthesis, about rocks and about water and about time. About everything possibly in the world and like a promise, she answered all of them. It was later that she told you the risk she took in talking with you. That creatures like her weren't supposed to talk to creatures like you. It was even later then that you realized the consequence of her actions. It started with a feather, then two. Then all of a sudden a deluge of gold and magic and pretty soon she wouldn't have any feathers left. “Do you ever look up at the sky wishing you could be part of it too?” You were the one who spoke first this time, having woken up in a somewhat sentimental mood. At this time her feathers were already falling out in clumps, gold mixing with the detritus of leaves and gravel coating the forest floor. "All the time" she answers, though no longer with dragonflies and autumn breezes. The raw pinkness of her skin lays in incongruous patches next to brilliant gold. You smile back at her, but this time it is more somber. Like the shallow puddles children splash in before they are gone the next morning. You stayed longer than usual that night, telling yourself because of the weather, and because the bugs that light up aren't out yet and because, because, because... The days blur on and you talk so much and then not at all. New feathers grow in the puckered garden of her skin, dirty brown like the forest floor. She is so quiet now, stopping around her words tentatively like an outdoor cat who can't remember the directions back to her owner’s house. Sometimes you can't even recognize her from the clusters of birds around her until you get closer and the rest fly away. You sit in silence now. When she got quiet you used to pick up the conversation for her, collecting the pieces together awkwardly in the palm of your hand. You used to ask questions, about the universe and about gods, but now it would be hard hearing anything less in return. She says nothing at all. The gold is completely gone now, the brown covering any that would have ever grown back. She's not quiet anymore, instead pinching the air with chitters and empty meanings. Sometimes it feels like she's trying to tell you something, but other times it sounds like she's saying nonsense, saying nothing at all. Her eyes, which used to match her feathers in vivid gold, have turned an opaque deep black. Covering any recognition she could have held for you. She used to tell you stories about the moon, but now she just squeaks. The feather stays woven in your sweater, wrinkled with use. You wore it almost every day, hoping she would ask about it and you could tell her all over again the day that you first saw her. So when she asked, you could return it to its rightful place. But too much time had passed. Perhaps she forgot that she had left it for you in the first place. One night you return to the forest, suddenly desperate to find her. There's a flock of sparrows dotting the upper branches of a tree and a pit forms at the bottom of your stomach because none of them seem to look at you. You stumble on a branch and something in the forest cracks and all the birds are leaping from their perches into the horizon-tinged sky. You wait. For what, you have no idea but nobody looks back at you. She is gone. You exhale, slow and shadowed, sliding back down to the forest floor and back down to earth. Around you, the sky burns the darkness off to white, white, white and it starts to snow.