In the parking lot across the street from the school, Mariah stared out the car window and thought about pulling off without the twins. A cluster of moms pretended not to talk about her from across the way. Not much of a talker herself, but for the kids she could keep up appearances. Most of the time. There had been a few incidents. Like overindulging at the school fundraiser, her loud impressions of several people in the room unappreciated despite the accuracy. Her caw-like laugh echoing off the wine glasses and stunned silence. Her sharpness a threat instead of a tool. When the moms turned again to look, she gave them the eyes like stoked coal, and a small wave.

The transformation had been a curse twofold. First turned from crow to human, that messiness imposed upon your nature, and you go along with it to avoid delirium. Participate in capitalism, have a couple kids, learn to eat with your hands, and what it means to be diminished as a woman. Only after building something of a life do the crows come calling, forcing the choice back into your hand when it has already been chosen. Mariah had spent quite a few years trying to return to the feeling of flying, but the drugs didn’t ever quite capture it and the sex wasn’t enough, and her black hair was thick and smooth but not the same as feathers, not at all.

A beak appeared then, pecking at the top of the windshield. A sizable crow came down onto the hood and perched there, staring at her. Another messenger from the very select group she’d been banished from, which had chosen one another and memorized the faces of each other's enemies. The crow tilted its head. Children streamed out the double doors, her own spotted immediately in the crowd. Fully human. Early enough for them to start new? She could take the offer being dangled and fly away.

She imagined them finding just a feather in the driver’s seat. They would run its softness over their top lips. Would love the blackened iridescence. Would want to show their mother and find no one there. Mariah saw triple her reflection, in the windshield glass and beyond that in the crow messenger’s eyeball. Hunched and patient, peering as if to say, today, friend? And in the little faces of her twins. A fun house illusion. Mirrors at every turn. A lack of escape.

They began to skip, something shiny glinting in their hands with each rise and fall of the knees. Mariah sat up, the spell of what-if sidetracked. Curious. Always something new with these two.

Look what we found, Mommy!

A silver chain, thin as a fresh cut. Light as a bird bone.

Try it on!

She held it against her collar, the delicate loops like tiny teeth.

Will you keep it?

Her foot eased off the gas pedal slightly. The messenger crow continued to preen.

Will you keep it?