Transmigration

He twists his head backward—she will never get used to this—and angles his forehead to her face, eyes staring at her upside down while his talons grip her outstretched arm covered in black wool. She smiles and brings her arm closer, presses her lips to his downy forehead, shimmering black in the full moon light as he adjusts his feathers, a subtle shiver down his wings.

He had been watching her, watching her for perhaps weeks, before she noticed him, not knowing at first he is a barn owl. Although his face is heart-shaped, his midnight black wings and white spotted feathers, a kind of galaxy across this back, are rare. Yet he would have been special to her regardless of his coloring, just by the way he pays such close attention to her, never turning from her stare, noticing every micromovement and expression seemingly before she feels them herself.

Although her life is devoid of meaningful human connections, she fancies some relationship with birds during her waking and walking hours. There are the two ravens that sit outside of her classroom every day waiting for her drop some of her leftover sandwich pieces for them. There is the heron at the pond that fixes his eye on her, powder down feathers lifted and sifted in the breezes. There is an osprey that floats above her, occasionally glancing down, holding her eyes with his until he flaps and flies away. And now, this owl, appearing to her every night.

He rotates his head forward, looking sharply around before taking a hop off her arm and gliding to the ground. He’s gone too soon, she thinks, willing herself not to be disappointed. It seems they are getting closer and closer, but now he is gone, her arm floating in the air without the weight of him. He lands at her feet, head tilted up to look at her and she hates the idea of him twisting his neck like that even though he can.

A voice in her head—is it hers?—chants, begs her to say it aloud as her tongue licks her cold, chapped lips. She kneels down, hands on her thighs, knees sinking into the plush wet snow, and she watches as he tilts his head, his eyes capturing hers again. She is ashamed, ashamed that she wants this, her throat tight, unable to ask for anything for herself, ever.

“I wish,” she croaks, bending lower, trying to look into his eyes. He waits. Blinks. She thinks he sighs before he takes two steps toward her, his long legs stretch so their eyes can meet her at her kneeling height. She bends, bowing her head to him as he approaches, rests his beak on her crown.

“I wish you would take me with you,” she sighs as he runs his beak through her hair, and she lets her fingers reach toward his downy chest. He pulls at a strand of her hair until she raises her head to meet his eyes before her lips find his beak, firm and cold.

---

She wakes with a sense of falling, wind caressing her cheek. Instinctually, she kicks out her feet, toes gripping wood. She opens her eyes, her body swaying as she realizes she is up high. She is in a cabin she had never seen before. Although the lights are dim, her eyes hurt just the same and when she reaches her hands in front of her, she sees only feathers.

Oh no.

This wasn’t how it was supposed to work. Was it?

---

When she kissed him, everything should have been fixed. Him, returning to human form to join her, to make a life together if she chose to—it would always be up to her. He had hoped she might choose him, after months of watching her and waiting, timing his approach, but he knew he couldn’t hope for anything more. The crone, whom he only believed to be in fairy tales and not real life, had told him only someone else’s care would set him free. He had always imagined it would be an owl rescue unit and not a singular person. The way she knelt in the snow and looked into his eyes made him feel seen for the first time either as human or bird. Now she stared at him while rotating her head and flapping her wings and he didn’t know what to tell her, how to apologize for the fact that they had somehow traded places.

At least, that’s what he surmises.

He doesn’t know that she had always wished to be a bird.

---

She watches as he moves around the cabin, which must be his. First he builds a fire in the fireplace. Then he moves around in the kitchen making food. He talks with her, tells her he didn’t know, tells her he’s sorry over and over again. His long black hair is flecked with white, so much like the wings he used to have. At least she presumes this is her former owl, although he never says as much.

She is not sorry at all but is unsure how to fly, not remembering how she arrived at these crossbeams. If only she could tell him that, she could land and walk around, and he would perhaps stop worrying about her so much. He might even open the front door and let her explore. She closes her eyes remembering each bird she has observed—all of the ways that they floated above her school building, and above the pond, and over the trees of the forest. Perhaps she is overthinking the mechanics of this. Barely a flap and then, a glide. This distance is shorter, so she recalls his flight from her arm to the ground earlier this evening. As simple as opening her wings and—

She glides until she crashes into the wooden table, somersaulting talons over wings.

That could have been more graceful.

---

He watches as she crashes into the table, sitting upright now and shaking her head once, twice. He’s there, crouching low, waiting for her to look at him and he swears he hears her laugh, but it comes out as a small screech. He apologizes again, this time for not instructing her, tells her it looks easier than it really is. Promises he will help her practice tomorrow if she’s still…like this.

She nods and thinks it’s probably for the best that she rest tonight anyway. She is so very tired and knows she won’t be able to fly back up to the beam. But where to sleep?

Sensing her exhaustion, he moves around the house and tips over a small table, wrapping it in a blanket, adding a pillow. She watches dust motes displace as he walks from one room to the next, stirring something on the stove while watching her. He runs a hand through his hair, apologizes again. She huffs at him, not angry, just curious about this situation she finds herself in and he’s not providing any answers, just apologies. It’s not like she didn’t wish to be a bird; it’s just that she never knew that wish fulfillment was a real thing.

He fixes a bowl of food for himself and brings it, along with an empty plate, to the table, placing the plate in front of her. He pulls chunks of beef from what looks like stew and cuts them into smaller pieces on her plate. It’s warm and savory and she only needs a few bites before she feels herself falling into a kind of food coma that usually happens after three pieces of pizza on an ordinary Friday night. He tells her he’s going to pick her up and then he does, moving her to the makeshift nest of the table and blanket. He pulls the blanket back and she settles on the pillow. She only wishes she could stretch out, arm under the pillow but realizes she will fall asleep like this, upright, and most likely will have the most restful night of her life.

---

The next evening, he opens the door and leaves it open while he moves out to the yard. She hears the click of the latch and leaves the table nest. She stretches her legs and toddles on her talons toward the door.

He’s wearing a flannel jacket and heavy boots, looking less comfortable in his human form than his owl form. She wonders if he misses his wings as he explains to her how she will launch herself and fly. After a few failed attempts, she closes her eyes, seeing the motion and movement from her memories. She stretches her legs again, runs, and flaps her wings, and soon she is looking down at him.

She had forgotten her fear of heights.

---

While she understands the mechanics of flying now, she hates the tension she feels in her body. She is on the lookout constantly for any movement in the snow. She doesn’t want to trap and capture the small field mice that remind her of the ones that used to make homes in her rock garden walls. Instinct has her swoop and pounce to the snowy ground regularly even though she lets them escape every time. She is used to feeding all of these creatures with seeds and nuts from her own kitchen and not eating them herself. But she also can’t seem to eat human food anymore as she did on the first night.

The man seems at a loss as well, and she wonders how he ever got the taste of mice out of his mouth.

If he ever got the taste out of his mouth.

---

She has stopped eating and now he’s not sure what to do. On the third night she can’t move so he scoops her up and carries her around the cabin in his arms like a baby, swaddling her in a small blue blanket, not knowing if she’s hot or cold. He tells her she has to eat, she has to eat. This much she knows and once in a while she opens her eyes to look at him, then turns her head and sighs. She can’t explain the mice to him or how she had even talked herself out of eating voles, also cute little things. He manages to feed her some broth through an eyedropper and brings her to bed, the blue blanket a nest while her head rests on the pillow next to his.

This life, now close to death, is the last thing he wanted for her. He knows how to survive outside in the wilderness, and she is learning, but not quickly enough. She won’t eat any living thing. The more he considers what to do, the more he realizes only one of them can live as human. He crawls into bed with her, careful not to disturb her blanket nest. She turns her head toward him and before she can move again, his lips touch her beak. She closes her eyes first and he follows hoping that tomorrow, she will return as the woman he knew, open the cabin door, and let him fly away, back to his forest, and she will return to whatever life she had been living before he took her choices away. He won’t tempt fate again, won’t kiss her back, promises everything to the air all around him, receives no reply.

Until then, he will stay with her, like this.

Tomorrow, he will worry about tomorrow.

---

She wakes, her arms stretch under a pillow, the blue blanket now pushed aside and filled with brown and white feathers. She stretches her legs and splays her fingers and looks at the feathers again. They had been hers and now she has returned in this form she almost doesn’t remember anymore. A large hand settles on her lower back, pulls her closer. She turns and he rests his hand on her hip while she cups his neck.

This, this is how it is supposed to be.