We Were Birds

Today marks the one week anniversary of Fern Whitelaw's death.

Usually she sits quietly on the train, watching mile after mile of land roll by her window. She always gets off long before the Final Stop, however. Sometimes she'll wander from small settlement to small settlement. One night she saw a group of people in a field, sitting around a fire. She approached them, looking for a familiar face, and while she found nothing, she did sit with them for awhile and listened to stories of both Life and Death. The fire cast an orange glow on all of their faces and she told them a few stories from back when she was alive, told them that she was looking for Quinn. They smiled and told her "Good luck, kid, you're gonna need it."

It's hard to find people in death, apparantely. She won't give up on him, though, because Quinn never gave up on her. So she wanders and wanders and watches and wanders. Any sort of life gives her hope, even though any sort of life is all just one big joke. Or it would be, if she were laughing.

Sometimes, very strangely and often very without warning, Fern will have an innate sense of restlessness. Like something is telling her to get on that train and just go. She fights the feeling away quite easily - she always can - however, the fact that she feels this way at all disturbs her. Why would she want to leave? She would be giving up everything. But the feeling is still there. It's almost as if her feet itch to take her up, up and away. Away to the train so she will never come back.

She sits in a golden field at the brink of sunset. Fern has never been to this specific field but she knows she's been here (the word here is now so subjective) before. She's memorized the way golden grass moves with the rush and curve of the wind. It ripples in waves and makes her believe she's sailing on a gilded sea. She is the master of her own destiny...which in a large way, she now is. Fern's studied the ways butterflies move through and above the grass. And she always knew the birds that flew around her. Some are unfamiliar but they are like old friends even in their anonymity. The birds seem to anchor her to a world she no longer belongs to, and this gives her some comfort.

The birds sang on the day she came back. Father had found them all, had caught them all and put them back in the aviary. There were some new ones, too; Fern watched them with interest from her spot just outside. The moment she'd come home to her father - who looked pale and frail and sick - he'd raised an eyebrow and said, "You know you're not allowed inside the aviary anymore." She'd nodded quietly. She'd given everything up for this man and he wasn't even allowing her this one simple pleasure.

It was as if her magical year with Quinn had suddenly disappeared, as if it just hadn't happened - he had mysteriously vanished like water into the sky. She was right back to where she started from. Father needed help: it was harder and harder for him to move his limbs each day, but he still worked hard on his books. He drew the birds, labeled them carefully, stuffed by hand all the ones that died, and wore those pince-nez glasses at the very tip of his nose.

She came into his study late one night bearing tea. His study was all the study of a wealthy University professor should be. It had rich, wood paneled walls and red hanging curtains that - because it was night - were pulled together. All the furniture, save the desk, was leather, and the desk was made of dark mahogany, upon with moleskine after moleskine was stacked. A handmade chess set sat by one of the overstuffed chairs, an antique globe sat on a table dating from the French Revolution. One of the walls was an entire shelf for books of every subject. Fern didn't come in it much - it smelled too much like her father and was closed off and stuffy, in her opinion - but loved the room all the same. Particularly the rich, hand-woven oriental carpets that donned the hardwood floor.

"Now that you're back home, Fern, we should talk about University." The year that Fern had spent away from home was absolutely not discussed. It was as if it just hadn't happened. So this came as a surprise for Fern.

Setting the tray down, she looked at her father. "Well, I thought I might instead take the nursing course down at the hospital, if you don't mind." Her father considered this and nodded in agreement - he approved. One might have thought that not having to save to go into a nursing program would be an upside to returning home, but not Fern. She had savored those months it had taken her to save all that money. She had been working hard and seeing the benefit of that. That money had been something that was all hers.

She'd left it for Quinn on the morning she'd left. All the cash she'd stored away from those paychecks she tucked into an envelope and put on the table - For Emergencies, it had said. And that was the only thing she'd written to him. That was the only thing she'd left for him on the crisp spring morning when she'd finally pulled herself up. The entire night she had spent watching Quinn as he slept, the tears leaking silently from her eyes to the pillow.

Fern hated crying and yet she couldn't have stopped even if she'd really tried.

But when Fern had pulled herself up, it was as if all that sorrow somehow evaporated. She became careful and pristine. She packed everything up neatly and carefully, cleaned up around the apartment a little, put the money that she wasn't using for a train ticket in an envelope and left it on the table for Quinn and left. It could have been as if she'd never even been there at all. She walked down the street to the train station where she'd taken a train from the city to the train station in her town.

She'd walked from the station to her home on the cliffs with the suitcase in hand, dutifully ignoring all the stares she recieved as she walked through town. She'd caught some of the whispers - "...Professors daughter who ran off with the fisherman's son..." but had ignored them. What did they know? If they'd ever bothered to look past Fern and Quinn's parents, the gossippers would have seen that they were simply two people who had fallen in love and moved away together.

But now she was home. And she was not going back.

Fern spent the next few months getting her nurse's certification and taking care of her father. When he finally couldn't move his legs, he retired from the University and had given her the hearse to drive. He'd even told her the story of how he'd gotten the hearse in the first place. "Your mother's brother...he worked in a funeral home. There was this one hearse that everybody somehow believed was cursed because no matter how many times they used it, it always got sidetracked. Your mother's brother sold it to us for next to nothing, with is about as much as we had back then." The car was as old as it was beautiful, and somehow Fern, after hearing its history, felt a sort of pride at being able to drive it.

In all those months, Fern did not once go into the aviary. Instead, she spent long hours just looking into it, peering at the birds. Everytime she saw it she was reminded of the day she'd let all the birds out and had felt free herself.

Now she was sitting on the outside of the aviary and felt more caged than ever. And as spring burst into summer, Fern kept one eye at the driveway, hoping to someday see Quinn's car in the driveway...even though she knew he'd never come.

The memory of her betrayal still stings at Fern's heart. In her life she has betrayed both of the men in her life that ever meant anything to her. She cannot take these betrayals back and she knows this. There is an emotion there that she can't quite place. An emotion that she knows she felt but somehow forgotten. It's almost as if she's smelled something sweet that brings up the edge of a memory of long-passed days...

In the field, the wind blows upward somehow and the air suddenly becomes filled with bits of golden grass. Fern watches with what feels like piqued curiosity the butterflies as they mingle with the grass. Then she picks herself up, dusts herself off and moves out of the field to the dirt road that she came off of. Time to move on to another trian station. Time to move onto another field like this one where the trees are slightly different and the birds are slightly different, but everything feels somehow the same. Death is calm. Death is peaceful. Death is perfect and beautiful. But Death also feels monotonous. Maybe this is why Fern feels restless. Because maybe she is searching for a catastrophe.

This train station is in the middle of absolutely nowhere. There isn't even one house here. Nothing. That is why Fern is so surprised when she sees someone sitting on the rail of the train station. It is a girl, not much older than hersef, dressed in a white blouse and a flowered-pring skirt. She wears no shoes and while Fern can't see her face, she can see the long brown hair that the girl has left down around her shoulders blowing in the slight breeze. She sits, her mouth set in a patient line. She looks as if she's waiting for the train.

The prospect of meeting someone new sends a thrum of unexpected happiness into Fern's heart. She wants to get to know this girl, wants to know how she died, wants to know what her life was like, she wants to know her entire life story. Learning something new about somebody different seems like it could be a temporary reprieve from the anxiousness that is fighting its way through her lower stomach.

Walking as quiet as she can, Fern approaches the girl. When the stranger turns her head and looks at Fern, it's as if the girl wasn't waiting for the train, but for her. She doesn't look as if Fern is some unexpected person who just showed up on the platform. Instead, the girl looks at Fern as if she's been expecting her.

"Hello," Fern says, her tone a mixture of eager curiosity and soft melodiousness. "I'm Fern." There is nothing really, besides that, to say.

The girl nods once. "Astrid," the other girl replies almost instantly. She has a long face that somehow looks almost blurry, as if Fern was seeing it through a film. Her eyes are muted, mossy green and she has a tan complexion, as if she's spent too much time out in the sun.

"Do you mind if I sit with you?" asks Fern, gesturing to the side of the girl - Astrid. In response, Astrid nods once again. Somehow, inexorbaly, Fern likes this new girls' abrupt nature. It is refreshing, she hasn't known her for five minutes and yet Fern knows she's never met anyone like Astrid. All at once she feels a great deal of sympathy for whomever she left behind. The look in her face says that she is not waiting for anyone. She doesn't look particularly sad.

And yet when the train comes and Fern stands up, Astrid does not stand up either. When Fern looks back, she sees that Astrid is eyeing the train with hesitance. Her eyes are filled with doubt. Fern waits a moment or two before speaking. "Are you coming?" She would understand if she wasn't, but Fern was so sure Astrid had been waiting for the train and the train only.

After a few more moments of uncertain hesitation, Astrid gets up and darts onto the train. Fern trails after the girl, unsure as to why exactly she's following her. Somehow Fern feels drawn to Astrid, as if the younger girl has some answer that Fern needs to go on. She knows this is a ridiculous feeling, and still, Fern can't shake it off. Fern sits next to Astrid on the train and once again, it's as if Astrid isn't the least bit surprised that Fern has done so. She doesn't find it obnoxious, even though Fern might, if the situation was reversed.

The train moves along slower than usual and Fern looks out the window for a few moments as the train rolls by field after field of golden grass. The sky is lit cornflower yellow in an electric flash of sunset, but after awhile, Fern turns once again to her silent-yet-serene new companion. She knows she shouldn't ask, but somehow the words come tumbling out of her mouth.

"What's your story?" Fern asks, and then flushes when Astrid looks alarmed.

Astrid's face melts into one of...pity? As if somehow she pities Fern for asking the question. After a moment this look fades and when she turns her face to Fern's, there is an emotion painted on it that shocks Fern. An emotion that Fern knows all too well. Regret.

"Do you really want to know?" is all she replies.

Fern stood in the doorway of her father's large bedroom. It was a few months after she'd completed her nursing degree and now was spending her full time to taking care of her father. By now, summer had faded into fall and the trees around their house were alive and dying in bursts of gold, orange, red and purple. Her father had a far away look on his face, but after some time, looked straight into her eyes from his spot in the bed. "I have always regretted keeping your mother in a cage like one of my birds. I knew she longed to fly away but loved her too much to let her go. I was selfish and finally she escaped on her own." He sighed. "And then of course, you...I kept you the same way I kept her...even more so, hoping if I just brought you up the same you'd never wonder about the outside world. I have always regretted that, too."

Looking down at her slippered feet, Fern felt her mouth go dry. "I never understood much about regret. Why does it exist? Why can't we live without it?" These were mostly hypothetical questions. She hadn't had many regrets in her life. The only regret she'd ever had was leaving Quinn to come back home. She hadn't even regretted leaving in the first place. How could she regret a most perfect year?

Her father sighed. "The truth is, animals have emotions. Happiness, affection, protectiveness...even grief. But regret...regret is what makes us human." Fern was quiet. He was right, as he always was. Her father took off his glasses and rubbed them against his Egyptian cotton sheets. When he put them back on, he gave his daughter a hard look, one that quickly melted. "I regret keeping you here. It was another selfish move. I only wanted to see your face again."

"I know, Father."

"I want you to go back to him." He spoke before Fern had the chance to. "But I want you to know-" here, her father cleard his throat, and for a moment he looked on the edge of tears. "I want you to know that if that chapter of your life ever ends...you always have someone to come back to. You always have a home to come back."

Fern went to her father and kissed him on the forehead before smoothing down her hair. Her eyes were glassy but her smile was bright and infectious. "I know, Papa," she said, using her childhood name for him. "Thank you."

And off she went, out the door. She drove out of the driveway in the hearse, and never once looked back.