Numididae

There’s a golden glow when the girl awakes, the spread of iridescence as the sun rises in the early morning. Her hands chill as she pulls the slice of chocolate cake out of the fridge box, the swirls of frosting peaked at glistening on top. When she bought it it had smelled rich like cocoa but it has chilled to a dead cold scent of refrigerator. She hunts through the large drawer by the sink and finds a fork with a heavy handle, reminds her of her grandmother’s good silver but she’s pretty sure that was sold a long time ago. The farm house belonged to the old woman originally and the girl was the only one interested in upkeep it when she passed. Her siblings had trawled the entire house, crawling through for any scrap of value and leaving her with a wooden shell. It was an overwhelming task initially but she started with a floral wall paper in the main room and continued building it back into a liveable state and now her only complaint is the draft that creeps in on cooler mornings.

When she slips outside she murmurs a greeting to the newest addition and plops down on the porch. The archaic looking creature regards her with suspicion as she settles in an takes a bite of cake. She read somewhere that chickens are closely related to dinosaurs and, if chickens are a relative of them, then guinea fowl must actually /be/ one with their crusty horns on their heads and giant claws. It coo’s a melodic noise that sounds like the drone of a broken church organ. Speckled feathers ruffle as the coop becomes alive with morning light.

She hadn’t planned on getting a guinea hen. It was one of those impulsive things one does when their heart has been broken and everything has sharp edges and bitter memories that jangle and bruise against rib cages. She’d seen the ad and in that moment the only thing she’d wanted, the only thing that could possibly fix her, was this dumb looking dinasaur bird that ate ticks and howled at any sign of intruders. A trance came over her and she’d crawled into her father’s old pick up truck and drove the two hours to get it. It was around the third aggressive thump against the cardboard box perched on the passenger side seat that she broke out of it and realized she was still alone and had now involved an innocent poultry in the situation.

“It’s my birthday Sauro,” she takes a bite of cake and the bird cocks it head, one eye boring into her before it violently attacks a bug in the grass, “isn’t that cool?”

It coos again, inquisitive this time like it knows she’s trying to communicate with it. Drags its claws in quick succession across a grassy patch dive bombs another insect.

“See, this is why he doesn’t like you,” her sister had said when news of Sauro had reached her, “you’re so impulsive, he wants an actual adult.”

There was something satisfying about the click of her hanging up on her sister. She could imagine her elder sibling, mouth puckered slightly open in shock in her airy kitchen that has too much yellow in it. Lips that were probably bright red and she imagines a spot on her sister’s teeth from her too eager application. Her sister shouldn’t have called, they both knew it but her sister couldn’t seem to help herself. The malignant tendency to insert herself where she didn’t belong.

“I was supposed to have a party and stuff,” she licks chocolate frosting off the side of her fork, the cream luscious and heavy against her tongue. Gives a shrug to the impassive bird, “but things happen you know. Things come up.”

Logically, she knows the bird doesn’t understand her beyond the primitive assessment of predator/prey/food/safe/unsafe but she likes to pretend the creature appreciates the company. Maybe he would give her advice about being broken-hearted and how to smooth over the bomb shell crater in her chest.

She remembers when the bomb exploded, the shrapnel of her sister’s gloating face and the girl’s fiance’s glassy eyed stare. He had not wanted to be caught, her sister did, the rupture starting from the inside of her ribcage outwards. And now the two of them are jigsaw puzzle pieces forced together and the girl is eating chocolate cake alone on her birthday talking to her impulse purchase like it understands her.

“How do you get over something like that?” she asks, maybe to the guinea and maybe to herself.

Sauro fixes a dark eye on her and dive bombs a tick, ripping it from the slender blade of grass and gobbling it while staring at it.

“I’m already eating,” she gestures to the plate that's now mostly smeared frosting and crumbs.

Sauro takes another dive at the clumps of grass, head whipping back and forth as it destroys the greenery.

“I guess I could burn everything to the ground,” she muses jokingly.

Sauro squeaks, makes his ghostly demonic church organ noise and fills the air with an extended note, a melancholy song that fills the valley. Sweet and desperate. Lonely.