The Two Crows

On the edge of a wind-battered cliff, a young crow stood trembling, her feathers ruffled by the ocean breeze. Below her, the waves struck the rocks like a heartbeat. Above her, the sky stretched unbroken — pale blue, endless.

It was her first flight. One step, one leap, one single choice between falling and flying. In that instant, the world split. Two lives unfurled like black wings: one caught by the wind, the other caught by the earth.

The wind cradled her, strong and merciful. She rose higher than her siblings, higher than the hawk’s shadow, higher than the clouds that skimmed the horizon. Her wings ached, but they held.

She grew into a wanderer. She followed the great flocks that painted black rivers across the autumn skies. She traced the arcs of valleys, the snows of distant peaks, the glowing rivers of human cities. From rooftops she watched lovers quarrel, children laugh, beggars weep. From the masts of ships she saw sailors throw bread to the sea and whisper their prayers.

The world was hers, vast and shimmering. She tasted everything — spilled grain from markets, fruit from gardens, meat from forgotten plates. But no matter how far she flew, a hollow gnawed her breastbone. She had left behind something she could not name. She never once returned to the cliff where she was born.

At night, when the stars shone like scattered seeds, she dreamed not of horizons but of small things: a fencepost, a farmer’s field, a boy’s open hand. She did not understand why such ordinary visions haunted her wings.

Meanwhile, on that same cliff, her wing had clipped the rock. She had tumbled into the bracken. Pain carved itself into her first memory of flight. She limped for days, learning the ground before she ever trusted the air again.

The earth became her kingdom. She hopped through undergrowth, dug beetles from the soil, found warmth in the straw of barns. A farmer’s field claimed her — or perhaps she claimed it. She watched seeds buried, sprouts rise, and harvests carried away in golden wagons.

The boy in the field noticed her first. He was small then, thin-armed and curious. He tossed her crumbs when no one looked, and she learned his voice before he learned to shave. They grew older side by side: the crow in the field, the boy becoming a man.

Her days were small, bounded by furrows and fences. She never saw a mountain, never heard the sea. Yet she learned the slow music of the earth: the hum of crickets at dusk, the steady drip of rain from the barn roof, the whisper of mice tunneling through grain. The world was narrow, but rich.

Still, some nights, when the sky was clear, she lifted her head and saw the flocks wheeling overhead. Her breast ached with a longing she could not quiet — to leap, to rise, to know what lay beyond the edge of the farm.

One twilight, both crows dreamed the same dream.

The sky crow landed in the middle of the field. The earth crow spread her wings and, just once, caught the wind. They faced each other — two lives folded from the same feather, two shadows stitched together by chance.

The sky crow saw in the earth crow’s eyes a rootedness she had never known: belonging, routine, the gravity of love.

The earth crow saw in the sky crow’s wings the freedom she had always craved: endless horizons, wild possibility, the taste of other worlds.

They recognized themselves and wept in silence, though crows are not known for tears.

When dawn broke, each crow woke alone — one on the rooftop of a distant city, one in the furrow of a quiet field. But something lingered.

The sky crow, in her soaring, began to notice the smallness of the world: the detail of a pebble, the loyalty of a nest kept year after year.

The earth crow, in her walking, began to feel the wind differently: as though it carried her too, even when her wings stayed folded.

Though they never met again, both carried the haunting comfort of knowing another version of themselves existed — one who had chosen, or been chosen by, the other path.