Lovely
“How ugly!” sang the sparrows.
“How disgusting!” said the rat.
“How vile!” told the mole.
“How uncouth!” hissed the cat.
“How lovely,” thought the Raven
with alabaster eyes.
“How unloved,” he said aloud
as he fell from the skies.
It was late spring when the little fledglings finally took flight. Joan sat at her window seat, notebook in hand, as she watched them one by one fall from their safe haven into the murky bushes below. She watched somewhat happily, witnessing a miracle flap its wings for the first time as they fell, and somehow the wind would always catch them. Always buffer them back up into the steady zephyrs of the blue skies.
Every fledgling fell and came back up, back to their haven where they would sit and twitter, and hope to not leave so soon.
Except one.
One little nestling wanted to leave so badly, he jumped from the nest himself. He dove head-long into the bushes and the wind did not catch him. Joan waited on pins and needles for a few moments, then when the little creature did not hop back up, flew up her window to listen for its caws.
None.
And then she saw it, the feline flicker of a cat’s mischievous eyes in the bushes. Joan cried out and shot from her window seat, down the stairs, and into the front garden where the fledgling fell.
“Shoo!” she commanded the cat, who stared to her in nonsense. Cats eat birds, it was the circle of life. Get over it. But there was something with that one bird, the one who took life into his own hands and jumped head-long into fear.
Into the wind.
The cat was startled away by the raving human, and hopped the fence into the neighbor’s yard before Joan could even reach the bushes. She pricked through the thorns, the briars in her own front lawn and suddenly came upon the little thing, all snuggled within itself and shivering.
She wanted to pick it up, but knew if she did, its mother wouldn’t come to fetch it, but if she left the cat would surely return. Return to kill this poor little courageous creature.
“Joan,” her mother barked from the garage. “Joan! Is that you?”
The young woman pulled herself from the bushes and straightened her shirt. “Yes ma’am.”
“Come here and help me with these groceries!”
“But ma’am,” the bird, the little bird couldn’t be left ---
“Now, Joan!”
So she was summoned, and went without question.
And never did she see the little fledgling again.
Summer rolled from the Spring, with hot beaches and suffering band dorks with their deadly camps. In came the thundershowers and the freak tornados in Jersey. In came the jocks with their hot new rides, the preps with their fashion statements, and the geeks with their Microsoft computer upgrades and hacking systems. Then there was Joan, who neither went to the beach nor stayed around the house. She was absolutely content with sitting on her bench in the mall, writing, jotting, dreaming all that was in her head. Unlocking new doors, new windows, and remembering old memories.
Of that nestling too young to fly.
“Can you, like, tell me the time?” twittered a preppy set of twins as they came up in their pinks and pastels. “Hallo? Girl? Like, she’s not listening Jessica.” And a cell phone permanently glued itself to their ears, so while they carried on one conversation, they smacked gum and chatted to their boyfriends halfway across the country. Rather rudely too.
Joan looked up for only a moment before checking her watch. An old Rolex hand-me-down her grandfather once owned. The twins gasped in unison.
“How ugly!”
“It’s ten till eleven,” replied Joan and went back to her jots.
Soon her watch beeped twelve, when the twins were long gone and the mall crowded with lunch-goers, she thought she should join the rush as well. Her stomach grumbled an awful lot, and if she was hungry she couldn’t concentrate, or only wrote about food.
No one wanted to read about delicious mouth-savoring ice cream topped with syrupy chocolates, strawberries, and the most delectable sprinkles and M & Ms. No, of course not.
“I’d like a veggie melt --- but hold the tomatoes and add green peppers. And could you please use Swiss instead of Parnassian? And lightly burn the bread, I like it toasty --- and could you put an extra helping of pickles and onions on it? Oh, and those little black olives? Those are my favorites.” She smiled to the flabbergasted cashier.
It was hard to find a vacant table, but managed after twenty minutes of mindless wandering and sat down beside a planter and a group of very gruff-looking young men. They eyed her, somewhat interested, and one actually came over as she unwrapped her sub.
“Hello,” he said in a voice as smooth as a well-oiled machine. “What’s your ---” his eyes caught the green thing inside the halves of bread and somewhat slumped “---what’s that?”
“An ultra-recyclo-veggie melt with Swiss cheese, extra pickles and onions, those cute little black olives and ---”
“How disgusting!” he gagged and was instantly turned off.
Joan shrugged and bit into her meal.
At two, she embarked on a journey across the mall, a trip she took once every few days to visit all of her usual pit stops along the way. They were usually little hole-in-the-wall places where shady people hung about, the ones with the most personality. She found she was inspired by them sometimes, even if they did sell crack in the back left corner of Spencer’s and somehow managed to keep an ongoing chain even after the police busted them.
One of the men talked with her, and she jot down the story of his childhood like a preacher would to the Pope’s sermon. It was a tantalizingly delightful story she could be inspired from, and often asked questions. Often at the wrong time.
It was one of those times when a stranger as round as he was wide waddled up.
“Did you save the girl before or after you made out with her?” she asked intrigued as the stranger snorted in distaste.
“How vile!” he sniffed and waddled away, though Joan never heard him.
The story was delectable, she had to admit, but when her watch flashed three-thirty, she had to bid her new-found inspiration goodbye and set off again. She wandered into Macy’s, and browsed about the make-ups, although she never wore any.
Make-up was just fancy, just another way to hide imperfections like you would hide a secret, or a simple little word. Joan looked fine without make-up, she looked almost eccentric without it with her natural freckles, her dull gray-green eyes, and her thin short brown hair combed neatly against her face.
She picked up a bottle and read it, but she didn’t know what it was for. So she turned to the counter and waved down the lady who fixed herself in her compact every few moments, adjusting a hair or a simple smudge of lipstick. She looked picturesque, like any make-up saleswoman should, but each time she would start in Joan’s direction, she would always veer away to another customer, always avoiding her with direct precision, thinking she would go away soon.
Yet the saleswoman still had time in between other customers to check herself in a mirror and wipe away some invisible threat to her beauty.
“Excuse me,” Joan hated to interrupt the woman’s constant grooming, but it was beginning to get on her nerves. “Hey, can you put down your silly little mirror and come to your customer?”
The woman gasped and snapped her compact closed. “How uncouth!” she hiss.
Joan rolled her eyes and placed the bottle back. “Nevermind, I’ll go.” She did leave, but only up the escalator with the saleswoman’s glare piercing her skull. “Jeez.”
Jeez was right, but she couldn’t let one little thing ruin her day. It had been pretty good so far, and she was determined to look on the bright side today, even with the haunting memory of that poor bird.
That dead little nestling.
“Oh, what could you have done?” she asked herself softly, wading through the clothes and fine dresses. “You couldn’t have taken care of the little thing, now could you?” She stripped a dress from the rack and pinned it to herself. It was a bit long, but the color was stunning at least. “No, so it was best that the cat got it. It was probably a painless death . . .” she suddenly faltered. “But what if it wasn’t?”
But she couldn’t go around saving little fallen creatures everyday, and she didn’t. In fact, she hardly knew what had come over her before she had gotten into the dressing room and was cramming herself into the evening gown. The raven was fearless, that was why she had fallen for the little animal, and it had been a while since she had cared for anything besides her books and her pens.
Maybe she was trying to tell herself to get a life?
That much she laughed at as she modeled in front of the 360 degree mirror outside the dressing rooms. This was her life. Fairytale worlds and magic knights. Great heroes and vicious villains.
And if people didn’t like the life she lived, then tough. They’d get over it. Just like she would get over the little fledgling.
The one she would never forget.
If it could have taken a head-long dive and known the results, would it have still jumped? Would it have stilled risked its life to be free, if only for a moment?
“How lovely,” came a solemn, grave voice from behind.
Joan suddenly spun to a stranger watching her. He stood with an open poise, and open prospect about everything. “What?”
“How lovely,” he repeated, not the least bit nervous as he motioned to the long evening dress.
Suddenly aware of herself, she hugged her bare arms and sidestepped to the dressing room. She felt herself blushing. How long had he stood there? That pervert!
He pushed a few pencil-straight black tresses from his face and gazed to her with strange alabaster eyes. Eyes that stunned her the moment she gazed into them. They knew her. Even though she had never seen him before in her life, she knew them too, but from where she could not place.
And then she remembered the strangers from earlier, the ones who ridiculed her. Those didn’t come as a surprise, but when he complimented her, it made her so very frightened. Frightened to get a complement.
“How unloved,” he whispered and tilted his head. “They didn’t see.”
The strangers, the others from earlier.
“They didn’t see you, only your quirks that make you stand out from the rest, but to show your quirks, and accept them, that is real courage.” He spoke as if they had spoken for all their lives --- conversed with each other every day and knew each other by name and soul. And maybe, in some far-off Neverland, they had. “That is what makes you show them, isn’t it? Because you know it is your freedom, and you will do it, even if you know the outcome.”
Like the fledgling who fell from the nest.
Joan was startled. She? Have courage? Maybe this stranger was a loon, maybe he was a crazed teenager out to get whacked. But somehow, she doubted it. How could he be? Those eyes flickered with smarts, with cunning, with mischief. With . . . “Who are you?”
“Raven,” he replied.
“I’m Joan.”
“Joan,” he rolled her name on the tip of his tongue like porcelain. “Joan. A pretty name. May I call you that, Miss Joan?”
“Wha --- oh yes! Of course!” For some odd reason, she couldn’t help but smile, like when she had watched the nestlings, and then those eyes made sense. Her chest swelled with joy. “So you didn’t die.”
It was his turn to stare. “What?”
“You’re a ---”
“If I was,” he interrupted somewhat awkwardly, “then wouldn’t I have pretty little black wings and flap about the skies and eat worms for breakfast, lunch, and dinner?”
“Don’t forget the occasional bread crust.”
“Yes, the moldy crust too,” he replied with a sigh. “And I would be living in a treetop in a little nest or, if worst came to worst, flying about trying to win a mate although most of them have already done so and are rather preoccupied with filling their bellies and making room for the new nestlings.”
She almost smiled again. “You know an awfully lot about ravens, Raven.”
“Why wouldn’t I? I was ---” he finally caught on and wagged a finger at her naughtily. “Oh, now that was smart, I admit. So, where were we?”
The little fledgling had spunk, she admitted to herself as she looked up into his exotic, smooth face. The little fledgling wasn’t so little anymore, he wasn’t so helpless or so young. But he was still the fledgling, and Joan couldn’t help but to think of him as one, even if he did not look it. “You were saying I was unloved and lovely at the same time.”
“Right.” But it didn’t make sense to him either anymore, at least not until he re-found his thoughts, reorganized them, and then they disappeared again. Instead, he sighed and shrugged, a peculiar shrug, one that looked much like a bird’s. “Lovely . . .”
And instead of making him suffer through the agony of retrieving his lost topic, Joan came up to him, and looked up into those mythical eyes. Those eyes shone like a badge of courage. A sore individuality he wore proudly, and she found that they were beautiful.
“Thank you,” she told him earnestly, wrapping her hands into his. “Thank you so much.”
Raven returned her gaze, and when no words would come, he squeezed her hands tightly, a small “You’re Welcome” to her and her alone.
“Unloved to be loved,”
said the Raven as he flew.
“Unloved just for me
so that I may love you.”
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