1. To him it was precious. Or pretty. He always got those two confused. Maybe it was both. He had only just learned the former. Precious. Things were always precious to him now. Like his little feathered bird. It certainly had all sorts of feathers. And a tongue too. He knew it had a tongue because he could hear it sometimes clucking. Making sounds and acting just like a friend of his. He had never seen it spit, though, and this made him slightly distrustful of the creature.
2. Weeks had passed since she had noticed it. She had not even glanced at it in weeks. But there it was, still, persisting as always in its quiet, unobtrusive way. A chamber is how she thought of it, a bird chamber. Birds, like people, must have chambers. She did not know a single person who did not have some sort of chamber. So why shouldn’t a bird have one too? This, anyway, was her thinking on the matter.
3. There are feathers, variegated, strewn across a sheet of yellow newspaper. He blinked at them, heavily. Then, in an ear of his, the sound of people’s voices. Those voices are not coming from the cage, he thought. The bird can be heard in the cage, faintly. Nothing sounds like the voices of people. They are so rough and unpleasant. So loud. People should really not be allowed to say so very much. Quiet, he thought, would be better than this.
4. There is a daughter too. She has seen the thing but does not know it yet. She sees the bird as she sees all other things. Which is to say she just sees them, actually, before she says them. Once you start saying things then you are no longer really seeing anything at all. She was, the little daughter, still seeing things, but she did not really know it yet. That is, she did not say it yet.
2. Weeks had passed since she had noticed it. She had not even glanced at it in weeks. But there it was, still, persisting as always in its quiet, unobtrusive way. A chamber is how she thought of it, a bird chamber. Birds, like people, must have chambers. She did not know a single person who did not have some sort of chamber. So why shouldn’t a bird have one too? This, anyway, was her thinking on the matter.
3. There are feathers, variegated, strewn across a sheet of yellow newspaper. He blinked at them, heavily. Then, in an ear of his, the sound of people’s voices. Those voices are not coming from the cage, he thought. The bird can be heard in the cage, faintly. Nothing sounds like the voices of people. They are so rough and unpleasant. So loud. People should really not be allowed to say so very much. Quiet, he thought, would be better than this.
4. There is a daughter too. She has seen the thing but does not know it yet. She sees the bird as she sees all other things. Which is to say she just sees them, actually, before she says them. Once you start saying things then you are no longer really seeing anything at all. She was, the little daughter, still seeing things, but she did not really know it yet. That is, she did not say it yet.
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