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I am every day envious of the birds.
This sentiment appears in your heart while you watch the robins chase each other through the front yard. Your guardian angel perches heavily on your shoulder, peering out the window alongside you.
You wonder what that means. I am every day envious of the birds. The phrasing is strange. Does this mean your guardian angel is trying out words now?
Maybe it does, and maybe it doesn’t. This thought might be yours or it might be the angel’s. It’s hard to tell, sometimes. Your guardian angel uses your brain to think much more often these days.
You remember what it’s like, walking through the forest, light on your feet and able to alight at any moment you please.
Your fingers wrap around the windowsill. Is the tradeoff worth it? wings for opposable thumbs?
Your guardian angel’s toes grip more strongly into your shoulder, as if reminding you that you may sometimes share a mind, but you do not yet share a body.
You pretend to not notice the word yet in your thoughts.
This will not work. Pretending is a thought as well.
Your guardian angel pretends to not notice you pretending to not notice.
I am every day envious of the birds, you think again.
It’s a simple sentiment, you know. Not worth the thought you’re giving it now. You were envious of the birds long before your guardian angel first visited you.
The robin you are watching alights, fluttering up, up, and away, going off to who-knows-where.
You remember that you both dream of soaring.
You wonder why your guardian angel uses your mind to remember things so often, to think, to wonder. Aren’t angels supposed to be wiser than mortals?
That may be true for human angels, but your guardian is a bird angel. You think about the relative sizes and complexities of your brains. You think about whether an angel is constrained by mortal physiology, wonder what the point of divinity is if you cannot break a few limits.
The angel on your shoulder bobs its head doubtfully.
You notice that it did not think of its response in your head.
You do not think it noticed you noticing.
You think about how strange it is to use a brain that is not your own, about the relative sizes of your brains not only compared to each other, but compared to the bodies you inhabit. You think about thoughts sprawling across new distances, like being a very small child and trying very hard to stretch tall enough to be allowed on the ride. You think about how complicated languages are, with their syntax and grammar, their vocabulary, even their orthography.
You think about how your guardian angel has shown no interest in writing.
You think about how impressive it is that a little bird like itself might know a word as fancy as orthography.
You think about how your thoughts are not only shared in one direction, how anything that enters your mind is stared at, pecked at by your guardian angel.
Your guardian angel adjusts the way its wing folds against its body, slapping the side of your head in the process. That was not an accident. Your hair is not mussed. Your guardian angel does not exist in the world like that.
You watch the robins chase each other across the front yard. It is spring. You have lived another year with your guardian angel. You have spent every day envious of the birds.