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There is a bird on the windowsill.
She doesn’t know when it got there. Perhaps it’s been there for a while, peering in with its glassy, beady eyes. It, too, happy to ogle her as she sits quietly, silent and proper at the dining table. It watches her as she listens to the voices of her parents with a polite smile and perfect posture.
She tries to ignore its gaze, to turn back to her tasteless meal and carve more meat off her plate. But she feels its eyes on her neck, pinpricks across her skin. It does not peck at the panes, nor does it chirp for attention. It simply watches, unmoving. Expectantly, or maybe with apathy.
She wishes she could kill it.
“Lady Mafuyu, would you like any more water?”
In truth, her throat feels as dry as sandpaper, hoarse from a night of talking to no one. Her head throbs, a ceaseless pounding that blackens her vision at the edges. But she should not be selfish. It is her palace, and her servant, but a proper lady — a perfect lady — should set an example.
“Oh, no need to worry.” she lies through her teeth. A picturesque smile sits upon her face. “I’ve had enough already.”
The server smiles back and moves on to her father. He engages in simple, petty chatter with the other guests at the table. It’s banal conversation, so much so that it simply runs in and out of her ears like wastewater. One of them turns to address her at a point, his face blurred in her vision. She’s not sure if it’s simply the migraine. He tells her a joke, and she laughs, her cadence measured, having long since erased any irregularities with a tuning fork.
Her mother asks her if she would like any dessert. Mafuyu shakes her head, dabbing at the corner of her clean mouth with a napkin. No, she says. I’ve had enough already.
In the study room, the bird is back. This time, the window has been opened a crack, and a hint of winter chill seeps into the room. The bird sits just outside of it, unable to squeeze through, but now watching with a view unobstructed by warped glass. It digs into her temple, even as she reads her tome diligently. She recognises the words and understands their meaning, but she retains nothing with that cold, blank stare trained on her at every moment.
She looks up at it eventually, snapping the book shut. It does not flinch. Not even when she stares back at it with an equally blank and cold look, attempting to scare it off. It just looks right back into her eyes, sitting impossibly still on the windowsill. It’s not going to leave.
She stands from her desk and puts the book back on the correct shelf, then leaves the room, locking the heavy wooden door behind her. She’s had quite enough of it.
In the evening, the window is closed again, but it does not matter. It’s long since become dark outside, and she can’t see out of it, but she knows without a shadow of a doubt that it is still there. She knows that it is watching her as she stands before her mother for inspection. The woman looks her up and down, circling her hawkishly and muttering to herself. Occasionally, she interjects with a command. Chin up. Show me your arm. Close your eyes. She follows her mother’s every word without complaint.
She is asked to produce a flower. Just one will do, she says. So she holds out her hand, her palm skyward, and urges the flow of energy bubbling through her joints to crystallise into a rose. The back of her hand burns, and her mother smiles, pleased. The bird watches. It sees enough.
Deep into the night, she is alone. Her window is open, because the room smells too much of herself otherwise. It allows the bird to watch her freely as she sits on the bed, straight-backed and unmoving. She holds a book in her hands, but she isn’t reading. She’s watching the bird back, waiting to see if it speaks, but it doesn’t, of course. It is a bird, after all.
In the solitude of the room, there is no need for false appearances. The gloves she wears are folded on the dresser at her bedside, leaving her hands bare. The book discarded, she contemplates her left hand. There is an ugly blemish against her pale skin, something dark bluish and warped. Her mother had told her it was a snowflake. She had also told her that it would not hurt.
It had hurt. Icy steel clamping down her arms, biting into her flesh, a deep violet flame licking at her fingertips, the soles of her feet. She can still feel the searing heat of it as it entered her veins and found her heart, filling her with its sick, pulsing joy, tasting nothing but bile and blood. The memory is hazy, but the pain is fresh. She remembers with every brush against that discoloured stain on her hand, sending a shock of something unpleasant and indefinable through her. It is one of the few things she remembers how to feel.
So she reaches her hand out and creates a flower. A rose. She flexes her fingers, and the petals wilt and die, leaving her with a thorned stem. She twists the stem between her fingers, as though it were a piece of yarn, a child’s plaything. Her mark flinches and stings as she weaves it into iron, becoming thin wire twisted together as a braid.
She considers it, running a finger along its side. It is not sharp enough to cut something, not yet. But with some time, it will be. With a rub between her forefinger and thumb, the sides weld and flatten, becoming something razorlike that shines coldly in the candlelight. This time, the edge of the blade tugs at her finger ever so slightly. With any more pressure, it will break skin.
All the while, the bird watches. She tracks it from the corner of her eye, and it does not move to enter the room, despite the ample gap between window and sill. It does not come in, because it does not want to come in. It simply wants to watch. That’s all the bird will ever do. Sit and drink in all of her, no matter what she may do. She is certain it would be licking its lips if it had any, the bloated, wretched thing. A deep, writhing disgust pools in her stomach just to see it there. She hates it. She utterly despises the thing, her rage at its presence flaring until she cannot breathe, cannot think. She has had enough.
So she lodges the iron knife into its chest, and it is dead.
Now it is her turn to watch as its pathetic form flops lifelessly onto the sill, staining the ice underneath with thick, dark red. It fills her with something.
She hasn’t moved from her bed.
“Why did you kill that creature?”
The voice calls to her from a corner. She’s not sure which one, and it doesn’t matter. She closes her eyes.
“I didn’t want it there.”
When she opens them, she is no longer alone in the room. A girl stands by the window in a pool of moonlight, her silvery hair and long white dress almost translucent. She, too, watches her, but her eyes are not dark and beady. They are mismatched and dull, but they are also honest. Human. More so than her own.
“That isn’t very fair.” She seems sad, but she often seems that way. Mafuyu has grown used to her melancholic demeanour. Not like it ever bothered her anyway.
“What do you want, Miku.” Mafuyu says, cutting to the heart of it.
Her frown only grows. “...I want to help you.”
Mafuyu makes a noise of disinterest. The candle has been blown out. She watches the last of its smoke snake up and disappear.
“Can you take me somewhere else?” she asks.
The girl shakes her head. “No.”
“Then there’s nothing you can do.”
But still, the girl does not stop. “I could sing for you again.”
Sing. The meaning of the word sinks into her, stirring some recognition of a sensation, an experience. Something that doesn’t feel unpleasant.
“...Alright.”
She seems surprised by the response, taking a moment or two to process it. Then, as though asking a question, she steps tentatively out of the light and into the rest of the room. When Mafuyu does not object, she continues making her way toward her, barefoot against the stone until she sits beside her on the bed. Mafuyu allows the girl to guide her into a resting position, in a practised motion she has still yet to grow entirely used to, with her head in her strangely soft lap.
And so, the girl begins to sing. A nameless tune, a song in melody only, but it is as clear as water and flows as a river might. It makes some of the flames nestled inside of her body feel just a bit less choking, less like she is being consumed from the inside out. She pets Mafuyu’s hair as she sings, something she hasn't done since Mafuyu was much smaller, but the familiarity of it has not left her quite yet. Her cold hands are warmer still than the knife had been.
“Miku… I’ve had enough.” It’s barely loud enough to be a whisper, but the girl hears her all the same.
“You can rest for now.” she says. “I am here.”
Her eyes have grown so heavy. She has not the energy to even wonder when she’d become so tired. When she finally allows them to fall closed, they don’t open again for a very long time.
❆
In the morning, she awakens alone, sleeping on the wrong side of the bed.
The window is closed, and the knife is gone.
Only the corpse of a bird remains.