Miranda walked in a fog of her own thoughts. The warm spring day gifted her a clear blue sky. Even downtown Atlanta was warm and inviting, but Miranda's thoughts formed a fine mist obscuring the beauty around her.
She didn't even have the excuse of a pressing personal problem to blind her to the change of the seasons. Instead, her fog was the random unfocused thoughts of an undergraduate two-thirds of the way through the semester; she thought of a rude remark, some weird march on campus, and the latest annoying pop song that was everywhere. The thoughts might not be grand, but they could be dangerous. Blinded to traffic by distraction, she could make a misstep. She was preserved through the habits of a downtown campus which trained unconscious awareness of cars, bikes, and other pedestrians.
The thoughts, however, blinded her to the pigeon.
The bird flew straight at her head. It was only a split second that saved Miranda from a head-on collision as both she and the bird shied away. Miranda stumbled as she dodged to her right and fell into a gravel bed that was, in theory, a tree bed.
The pigeon dropped to the ground in front of Miranda.
Miranda stood and walked to go around the bird. The dirty scavengers invoked her ire to the point she called them wing rats. She would then apologize to rats for the comparison.
Rats, after all, had the decency to not shit all over your car.
The pigeon pursued her, half running and half flying to get in front of her. Taking the more direct method, she lifted her leg to step over the bird. It backpedaled to block her footfall.
As Miranda twisted her leg to the side to avoid stepping on it, the bird pecked her left ankle. There was a small prick, but no pain. The gesture was gentle, making the barest of contact. It was more a tap to get her attention than an attack.
Miranda stopped. As she did, the bird placed its right leg high on Miranda's left ankle. There was a small piece of paper tied to the pigeon's leg.
The bird did not flee as Miranda bent down and slid the paper out of the string. It let Miranda clear the string from the animal's leg, then cooed. Miranda recalled the purr of Oliver, her friend Stacy's big gray cat, whose purr you could hear from one end of the couch to the other. As she watched, the bird cooed a second time, then took off as though the entire exchange was deliberate.
Looking at the paper, Miranda realized it was an envelope about half the size of an Altoids tin. A tiny bead of red wax sealed it instead of glue. The paper was tissue thing, like that used for printing Bibles. She turned it over.
The front simply read, "For Miranda."
Confusion tamped down her instinct to scream or run. How this could be for her? She hurried back to her apartment but kept hold of the paper.
Miranda slammed the door of her apartment and stood in the entryway. She allowed her purse and book bag to fall to the ground in a heap around her. Leaning against the door to hold it shut, fear having nosed forward of perplexity in her mind. She believed someone was right behind her.
"I know stalkers are weird, but one who could train a pigeon is really out there," she said to herself.
She looked down at her hand, which still held the tiny envelope. To her amazement, it had stayed intact as she ran. Not a single crease marred it, despite being clenched in her fist and its delicate nature.
Without thinking, she turned it over. Slipping the nail of her right pinkie under the tiny red wax seal, she popped the seal into the air. As it spun away, it grew to the size of a quarter before breaking in two when it struck the floor.
The envelope expanded as well, and Miranda dropped it. Before it reached the floor, it had reached the size of a typical thank-you notecard.
Miranda bent down and picked up the envelope. Curiosity, and the safety of the door she leaned against, had overcome her fear. She opened the envelope and pulled out the folded note. Before she could begin reading it, her eyes caught the signature, "Your birth mother, Genevieve."
Miranda sank to the floor, sliding down the door, and joining the heap of her spilled purse and bookbag. Tears flowed before she started reading.
My Dearest Daughter,
Having waited so long to send this missive, I find I am afraid to write. Before you were born, I knew I could not raise you; that my duties would not permit it. I also knew that, having given you up, even if you sought me, I could not allow you to find me, not until this day.
"What responsibilities? What about your responsibilities to me, your own daughter?" It was the barest whisper but rang in Miranda's ears.
The effort you made leading up to your sixteenth birthday broke my heart. I have the three letters you sent memorized. The last, wishing for nothing but to merely meet me for your Sweet Sixteen present, still haunts me.
"Then why now? Why wait so long after I tried so hard? I gave up five years ago?"
Miranda sat through a replay of forgotten memories of her sophomore year of high school. Lost in the teenage maze of finding who she was, she set out to find the birth mother who had given her up. She loved her parents, but her missing mother was like a lost memory vital to understanding who she was.
I could not allow you to find me until the Triple Season of Delphi had passed. Today is the last day of it and you are safe. If you would still meet me, find me at the blue table at the end of Broad Street Plaza tomorrow. I will wait from sunrise to sunset for you.
Her last tear fell and washed across the last line of the letter. Through the remaining wetness in her eyes, Miranda read the line over and over until she fell asleep against the door. At some point, she woke enough to stumble to her bed, shedding clothing as she went and resume her dreamless sleep.
The note, however, never left her hand.
Miranda slept through her alarm despite having fallen asleep hours earlier than normal. Pulling on jeans and a shapeless sweatshirt, she hurried to the bathroom. Off came smeared mascara and eye-shadow from the day before. She considered for a moment at least putting a basic face on, but the lack of time and her already failed state of dress led her to leave her face as raw as she felt.
Stepping outside, the weather seemed to have changed to match Miranda's state. The bright blue sky which had matched her carefree state now swelled with black, angry clouds rolling in from the west. As she stepped out of her building instead of heading south towards Georgia State and classes, she walked west into the teeth of the sky's anger.
She knew Broad Street Plaza. It was mostly a lunch place, a blocked off street with picnic tables and some painted pavement. Pizza places selling by the slice, sandwich and wrap shops, and some noodle places catered to business people looking for lunch or an early dinner.
Miranda ate lunch there sometimes but was rarely there this early. Most places would be closed, but she could grab a bagel or something for breakfast at one of the coffee shops, using up the time saved by leaving her face plain.
As she walked the four blocks to Peachtree, Miranda tried to remember the last time she'd been there this early. It had been the prior fall and was actually much earlier than this, closer to five am than the present eight. Most of the other customers, a surprising twenty or so in the shops and at the tables, dressed completely in black, goth kids who had hit the Masquerade then that all hours place in the Underground that catered to them and New Age weirdos. When the kitchen closed at the strange club, they were there, grabbing coffee and pastry before returning home.
Miranda felt the first drops of rain promised by the dark clouds. The cold, wet splashes broke her reverie.
"Why I am doing this? What am I going to meet her?" she said, allowing herself to admit the real reason she sought a bagel at Broad Street. "After all, if she could be bothered to raise me or even answer a letter five years ago, what would impel her to wait in the rain now?"
An inner voice added support, pointing out the blue table was smack in the center of the blocked off-road at the edge of the barrier. While trees and awnings would shelter the tables to the edge, they would not cover the blue table.
Splashes from cars on the road, however, could drench it if the rain kept up.
"No. If she could risk writing the letter, I can brave the rain to see her," Miranda said to herself.
"And you'll wind up looking like the Bird Lady." The reply was a voice inside Miranda. The voice of reason is how it labeled itself. "You think you'll prove something by being stubborn."
"Yes, I do." Again, Miranda spoke aloud. "Sometimes it is important to see things through, no matter how foolish."The verbal retort silenced the voice of reason, but it soon got its revenge.
The verbal retort silenced the voice of reason, but the comparison rambled in her head.
The Bird Lady was an institution of downtown Atlanta like Baton Bob was in Midtown. Dressed mostly in black, festooned with feathers, she fed birds in the various parks and open areas of Downtown. More than one person claimed to see her leading birds from one location to another. Miranda wasn't so sure of that, but she had to admit a couple of times she had seen the Bird Lady talking, which she never did otherwise, and walking a lot the day before new construction began. As she passed, birds in the lots took flight. Yet, the flight was not that of a startled bird or one drawing a predator away from its nest. It was as though the birds knew to move on because of the Bird Lady.
Once Miranda had watched while workmen began the clearing of a lot the morning after she'd seen the Bird Lady walk through it. While Miranda saw a few rats scammer out of the lot ahead of heavy equipment, not a single bird took flight. Miranda thought it odd but had no experience with birds in empty lots and thus the impression had passed.
Now she considered it and realized one thing she rarely saw in Midtown was a dead bird. Given the traffic and construction, not to mention stray cats and even a few stray dogs, that was odd. Growing up in the suburbs, the occasional dead bird, often in the jaws of a local house cat, had been part of growing up. Her friend Jess got left dead birds at least once a summer by her cat Greybeard back home.
But there were almost no dead birds in Midtown.
Trying to think of where she might have seen a dead bird during all her years at Georgia State preoccupied Miranda's thoughts as she turned down Peachtree towards Broad Street. It so occupied her thoughts she did not see her surroundings until she bumped into the first table at Broad Street Plaza, having made the slight right on autopilot.
She looked up sharply, and the voice of reason got its revenge.
"You'll wind up looking like the Bird Lady," the voice of reason had said.
Looking at the Bird Lady would have been more correct as she sat alone at the blue table.
Miranda walked towards the table. She needed to make the Bird Lady move; she needed to clear the place appointed for meeting her mother.
As she reached the table, the woman spoke to her.
"Hello, Miranda, I wasn't sure you'd come."
"You weren't sure I'd come. Why were you expecting me?" Even as Miranda spoke, she knew the truth, but would not let herself know it yet.
"Well, now, if I wasn't sure you'd come, could I honestly be expecting you?" The woman's eyes twinkled as she spoke, and there was a new lightness in her voice. Miranda had always thought of the Bird Lady as old, but close up and with the smiling eyes, she looked maybe forty. "I was hoping you'd come, that I'll admit. And you did."
Miranda stood, not sure of anything. Her mind latched on to the only thing she thought she knew.
"Is your name Beatrice?"
The woman nodded.
"If that is your way of asking if I am your mother, then the answer to that is yes as well. I will understand if you prefer calling me by my Christian name instead of Mother. I gave that up when I assumed my kingdom."
"Your kingdom?" Miranda slid into the seat next to the woman. Her voice ran deeper than normal as she asked. She pulled the chair closer so she could lean in to talk of secrets. She continued in a bare whisper, "But you're just the Bird Lady."
Beatrice laughed. As she did, Miranda continued to notice details she'd missed in all her sightings. Before she'd just seen another of the many homeless, you saw in Downtown and Midtown. While she was more colorful than that mostly male and beaten down population, as well as less dangerous than its outliers, she seemed just as disconnected from reality.
Yet, instead of being shabby and dirty, Beatrice's clothes, and herself, were as clean and put together as any office worker who would lunch here. Then Miranda revised that opinion. Beatrice was more put together than all but the primmest girls at GSU and even better than most were at semester's end.
"This is my kingdom, Miranda, although the proper term is Regina in Eria."
When Miranda did not respond, Beatrice continued.
"In this world, there are individuals touched by nature. For most of humanity's existence, they not only fit into human cultures, but were a necessary part of them. A tribe that had a bird-touched had scouts which even the highest tech-equipped hunters of today would kill to get their hands on. When you are living as a hunter-gatherer, the bird-touched can be life or death."
"The bird-touched," said Miranda in a quiet, halting voice that was both question and statement. She looked up from the top she'd been staring at. "Are you saying you gave me up to be Queen of the Pigeons?" she said in an awkward combined screech and laugh.
"No, I'm saying I was doomed to be Queen of the Pigeons and gave you up to spare you having The Bird Lady as your mother. That, on top of being the child of a single mother, would be too much to subject you to."
"Then why come for me? Why now?"
"Because I still love you and even if I cannot be your mother, I want to know you."
Miranda looked across the table at the woman she'd once mentally colored in as just another crazy, shabby homeless person. Now she not only saw Beatrice’s put together, if eccentric, dress, but the love and care needed to talk an entire empty lot of birds into moving to safety.
Miranda held out her hand.
"Let's start small. If you're Queen of the Birds, I assume you prefer everything bagels because of all the seeds?"
You surprised me. I expected something much more mundane. Delighted when the pigeon left her a note, and then again when she opens it, and then is startled when it grows.
Some uneven-ness in the voice of the girl, but it's difficult to balance between the modern-day realism and the fantastic element. You do it well, and I think if you made this a full story, you'd find the balance.
I'm not sure how I feel about her mother being the Bird Lady. I very much liked the description of the Bird Lady, and how she transforms in the girl's mind from a street vagrant detached from reality to a connection to a different, and in one sense, higher reality.
I like the pigeon delivered message as the call to action, and while I suppose it is a common trope, the situation as you wrote it did not seem at all cliche'd. The same with the Bird Lady.
A fascinating premise. I would read more of a story like this.