Paper Wings

The Day The Hummingbird Came

Alex was a peculiar girl. She shared a room with three other girls in the orphanage, a young red-head called who was always wrestling with the boys, a beautiful girl with silvery hair that shined blue, and a toddler with brown hair called Alley. Alex was closest to Alley, and her roommates barely talked to her and Alley.

Alex was someone not to be reckoned with, for the most part, she abided by the rules, she was a good girl- until someone started to tease Alley. If Alley got hurt in any way, the person who caused it- man, woman, girl, boy or animal- would be severely punished. Nobody knew why those two were so close but nevertheless, the two were inseparable.

Alex said she didn't have any memories, but at night, when even the mice were stilled, you could find Alex sleep-walking. She would sometimes fight unseen things, and other times she would have her arms spread out and face towards the sky in a trance.

Alley never left Alex's side, even on the day the black birds came. The black birds always took a child in the winter, when the moon was full and the Crow's Hour came upon the town. When the crows hushed, the owls stilled, the mice shivered and the convicts huddle in corners of fear and despair.

The black birds took not only little Jaime in the room next door, but on that same night, on the 21st of December, Alex and Alley left the orphanage- with no adoption papers, at the Crow's Hour, when the black birds took hold of Jaime, and all the world was stilled into a suffocating, despairing  silence.

Everyone said, "Alex followed the hummingbird, the crow of the flock- she followed it to her happiness, and so we must honor her dream." 

There was a black hummingbird that came every winter, and Alex would always watch it with exemplary fascination. "Raven", she had named it, "Raven", she would call out the window. Every winter you could see her with Alley watching and attempting to talk to the little black hummingbird. It was always a sight to see for the people, but they didn't understand; they didn't know why she talked to the bird- they didn't know what she could do. The people in the town didn't know who Alex was- not even when she and Alley disappeared on that blizzarding night at the Crow's Hour.

But Alex knew, and Raven did too. Alley learned, and Alex made sure that she showed Alley what she could do- who she was. She showed her a new world, one nobody would ever believe was real. The world she had been longing to be in all that time, the world that she belonged in. Yes, she was not from this world in which the orphanage existed, the world Alley came from, the world where Raven was a black hummingbird that appeared at their orphanage every winter. Alex was from another world.

Alex was a "Fallen". Of the great world of Nyr, where people lived mainly as birds and were gifted with the power of flight, and the power of living in both worlds. Yes, people thought she was a strange child, but in her eyes, the strange ones were them- were those without the longing of flight.