Crow

Michelle Grade 10, Featured Image: Flowers 0915 Emilie Grade 12

Emma sipped her tea, though it was dark out. It was dark all around.
Holding the teacup between her thumb and pointer finger, she nodded very seriously, “it is very peculiar indeed.”
In front of her, a small crow. It rested, ruffled feathers draped over its slight figure. It cocked its head, beady black eyes resting on Emma.
She wore a white dress with poppy flowers stitched all the large hem. It billowed out under her like an open umbrella.
“Now, this is quite unusual weather isn’t it,” she glanced at the unblinking crow. Struggling to find the right words, Emma cleared her throat, “as I was saying, quite an unusual turn of weather don’t you agree, Mr. Crow?”
The crow only blinked once, and that was enough to produce a small smile on Emma’s lips.

“What shall we do?” muttered Emma, crossing her arms quite angrily. She gazed around her, but the strange weather persisted, and she could only see the grey gloom. 
“I am quite certain that when we were sitting on the balcony before the angry clouds rolled in, there was a deck of cards, and I’m sure if I could just see… “ Emma knelt and reached her arms out and around her, feeling for her cards. 
Pit, pat, pat.
Flesh touching one thing or another, but nothing like her deck of cards. She knew by heart how its wearing edges felt under her palm, as she knew how her gloves hugged her fingers.
“Ah.. well maybe we shall play another time,” Emma crossed her arms again, scrunching the fabric of her dress.

The crow still sat, nestled in the grey mist, in front of Emma, but now it tilted its head to the side. While it fixated on Emma, its tiny mind calculated. Constantly wiring and rewiring and rewiring. ‘Girl, red, flower. Flower, worm, ant, food, hungry.”
The crow cocked its head and thought how its stomach seemed to growl, and how much the mass of brown on the girls head looked like the noodles it often snatched from shiny round plates, and how the flowers she was wearing looked awfully similar to the ones that it liked to dig under to find the best beetles.
The crow blinked.

“Well, what do you think?” Emma asked, glancing at Mr. Crow.

Crow hadn’t been listening to Emma at all, and it blinked up at her, still imagining diving into the bouncing head of noodles in front of him.

“Why I agree wholeheartedly,” Emma beamed, “we should try and make out our surroundings to discern where we are. For I’m sure, this is not home.”

She pushed off her feet and wavered, blinking.
Crow watched carefully.

The ground blended with the rest of Emma’s surroundings. It felt like bits of cloud and wool. Her feet sank through the ground. The ground that wasn’t ground at all.
Wading forwards, Emma pushed through the grey as Mr. Crow finally extended his knobbly twig legs and hopped on after her
“How strange…” muttered Emma, “I’m not sure I know this place at all!”
The grey stretched on and it never seemed to end nor start in any direction. Emma turned and turned and turned until a small patch of white gleamed through.
“Ah! Mr. Crow, let us move towards the light patch, for I’m certain we’ll find a way home if we can just get out of this gloom,” cried Emma, peering through the small hole above her.
The city.
Her city pointed towards her, flipped above her as if it were hanging on a delicate thread and would come crashing down upon her any second.
Crow watched Emma with its beady black eyes as she stood as still as a statue. Not a single tremble of her muscles. With the coast clear, and with all the courage it could summon, Crow hopped one foot at a time, flapping towards her head.

Snap.
Its beak closed around the strands of her hair.
Twist.
Crow tried to devour the noodles but Crow was jerked forwards.
Fall.
Crow fell through the hole, its beak wrapped around Emma’s brown locks, as she dove through.
The hole opened, and they fell.

Tumbling through the grey particles, somersaulting over and over and over.
No end and no beginning.
The city drew nearer and it turned and turned and turned around them.
Crow squawked as it fluttered and flapped, thinking, ‘not noodles, not noodles, not noodles!’

Emma’s mouth was wrenched wide as if it would never close again, the wind rushing against her, and her glassy eyes tearing.

Mr. Crow untangled himself from Emma’s mass of hair and flapped furiously to regain his control. The world rightened for him and the city appeared below him as he flapped to regain his balance. Tilting his head upwards, he saw a mass of rolling grey waves, threatening to swallow the sun that sat frailly in the sky.

Down below, he saw a small white flower.
And it was plunging down towards the ground.