birds & the bees /gonzo + sif

[gamemaker kelsier]

s i f .

"I was
a moving thing
before I was
a human being"

Sif stands in front of the chicken coops waiting patiently for Gonzo to emerge. There is a jar of honey with gingham-waxed seal in her hand. They make the same trade every Thursday morning, honey from Sif's bees for one of Gonzo's chickens.

He is late.

The chickens shuffle around in their coops and make little cooing sounds as she finally moves between them. Some of these chickens will end up on a dinner plate, some on the altar to sacrifice, only a few live on to see another year. Those are the ones that Sif can't have.

As she walks further into the coops, she lets out a long low whistle that tilts up slightly at the end, like a question. Where is he? Maybe still asleep. Sif makes a little face of annoyance at one of the hens which then clucks at her in indignation. She's right, it isn't her fault. Sif nods in apology.

She keeps walking until she finally reaches Gonzo's hut. The chickens are clucking frantically now at her presence. The chatter is so loud that knocking on his door seems pointless. She looks instead for a spot to sit and wait and that's when she notices that the axe, usually wedged into his executioner's stump near the woodshed, is gone.

Her brow narrows, she places the jar of honey on the dirt outside his door and walks to the edge of the woods to look in. There's an old game trail here that she knows he uses to get in and out of the forest. Thanks to yesterday's rain, she can see fresh footprints.

Damn.

He could still be awhile then if he's in there.

She grumbles softly and heads back to the chickens. A bag of feed is leaning against the first coop, the scoop still inside. Gonzo had shown her how to feed them a few visits back. Maybe that's why they're so loud this morning, they're just hungry.

Sif opens the first coop. The chickens inside shuffle away from her, one of them gets nippy with its beak, but she isn't scared of them. Chickens are stupid, their brains the size of a walnut at most. It doesn't take much to outsmart them.

Her hand wraps around the neck of the closest one and she drags it out of it's little home. Its claws scratch at the dirt floor and it lets out the littlest cluck as Sif tucks it under her arm.

It's little heart beats so fast against her side.

She picks up a handful of feed and holds it under the chicken's beak.

[marguerite harvard d2a (zori)]

g o n z o

Can't open your eyes for a while
You just breathe that moment down
You can't open your eyes for a while
You just breathe

He’d stayed up listening to the pitter patter of the rain off the tin roof of his hut. Crouched over the threadbare mattress on the planks of his wood floor, he’d sat clutching Maribelle between his arms. The soft white feathers of the Silkie brushed against him, she nestled close to his chest. Now and again, she’d let out a little coo and tilt her head to press tight.

Last week, he’d found her wandering further out from the coops, stutter stepping now and again, until she would lay flat-out across the ground. She stayed there for hours, not bothering to rise when he’d brought out the feed. At the click-click of his tongue, she’d stared with a set of labored eyes as to say she simply couldn’t. So, he’d made sure to lay down the feed right in front of her, to make sure she gobbled down a handful. When it came to water, he’d taken to gathering it up in a little finger bowl to lay out for her afternoons and evenings.

Maribelle had been one of the first chickens in his coop. He’d remembered that he’d bartered for her after fixing up a farmer’s shed, taking her in payment. When he’d scooped her up in his arms she’d nipped at his overalls and puffed out her chest with a buck. Love at first sight.

Gonzo had been astonished that he could ever have lived without the birds – the way that she strutted into his life and sauntered around the little clearing by the coop – they lived life as it should have, with less care about one another’s differences and more about how life should’ve been.

“You’re a good girl,” He’d whispered to her. With one hand along her back, he stroked at her feathers, and watched Maribelle close her eyes. He listened to her hissing breaths, how she offered a wheeze that cut through the silence of his shack. Gonzo let the candle burn down beside them as he watched her. He hadn’t wanted to sleep, hadn’t wanted to miss a moment as though watching her dream would preserve her. That somehow, he could fight away the hours as they slipped away, the two of them nestled up against one another in the dingy light of his hovel.

But morning came all the same. Sunrise cutting through the canopy to reveal the crash of red and orange overhead. The unfailing crow of his roosters stirred Mirabelle. Her black button eyes peering out underneath the fluff of white feathers, she remained still against his side. Comfortable. Tired.

Gonzo turned the faucet of his sink and sank his face under the spigot. He pushed back his hair and let the water drip down his back. He stared at the mirror and gripped the porcelain lain into the metal wall and pulled hard enough he thought the whole thing might come out. It would’ve been good if the whole house had fallen in on them.

But he released, then, yanking at a towel and throwing on his overalls and a parka a size too small.

He’d knelt down to her and lay his head on the floor beside her. Just to watch her breathe.

There are few things in life he has learned for certain, but one of them is that death is never easy, or fair.

And so it was that he tried to tell himself, Maribelle in one hand, axe in the other, marching out along the game trail. Every step his throat closing as he swallowed down that he would return alone, without one of the first things he’d ever raised on his own.

He bargained that perhaps it wasn’t the right decision – perhaps there was more time! But she’d stopped eating and looked at the water bowl as though it were unrecognizable. She’d starve soon enough, a slow and painful death for someone so wonderful.

They came to a clearing with a flat rock that came up a few feet out of the ground. He’d cleared it of the weeds and brush that had surrounded it. The birds of the morning were calling then, clarion, and sweet. Up in the old oaks that surrounded them. He’d set down the axe at the rocks base, and plopped Maribelle on top.

She kept on her side, head bobbed low, eyes half closed.

“I love you, old girl,” Gonzo had whispered. He sat next to her and lay his hands behind him, flat. He stared out at the forest and lived in the quiet. He let it surround and swallow them so that before long he wondered if they might defeat time – that perhaps the world would forget them. But Maribelle let out a wheeze, and he could see her struggle to lift her head.

“I love you.”

He pulled at the axe at the side of the rock and raised the thing high above his head.

---

Gonzo had trampled back through the forest. His boots splorching through the mud, he ignored the whipping of the branches that he pushed through. One cut up the side of his shoulder and he hissed, but pressed forward anyway. He’d need to get back to take stock of the birds, to draw up the feed, to pump the water, tuck away the eggs, pack some for market, some for trades, some for breakfast, and then make his way toward town.

He hadn’t forgotten the day of the week, though he’d pushed the fact to the back of his brain. Most days hadn’t relevance to a boy who lived in the woods surrounded by land fowl. But he rarely had much in the way of company. Most of the time he said he wrong thing to other people, and as little he understood people, he understood some of his kinsmen less.

Sif had been one of the exceptions.

He believed it the silence she lived in. Her way of carving out another’s true wishes without having to say a word a sort of magic that few possessed. He didn’t have to explain himself if he didn’t want to, didn’t have to bother with the small talk. Just as his chickens could cluck but never once had an ill word for him. She’d offered him a fair trade, too, of sweet honey each week from bees. She knew what it was to care for another living being and wouldn’t think him strange for how he’d named each of his chickens. How he could tell of their lineage, who were cousins, who hated who, and all the makings of running a family.

Would she?

“What are you DOING?” His voice had leapt out of his mouth in a way that surprised even himself. Gonzo couldn’t help but shake with a furor he’d yet to feel at the foot of the trail. He took in Sif trying to feed Dayana and wanted nothing more than her to let go. “Who said you could touch her?”

Red-eyed and snarling, Gonzo moved to set down his axe in the wood stump with a grunt. His hands were stained maroon. The chickens lazed about, cackling as he made his return.

“Let her go. You don’t know what the fuck you’re doing,” Gonzo started at Sif, “She doesn’t want you to touch her!”

elegant