I dropped the jess that was tethering Cinna to my arm. “Fly!” I commanded. She just sat on the glove, head cocked and amber eyes boring a hole in my face. She lifted her foot, only to set it down immediately. I sighed. “You can’t stay here forever, you know.” She tilted her head the other way, asking why. “Cinnabar, you’re fine now. You just like the fat rats I give you.” She clicked her beak, reminding me that she hadn’t eaten yet today. “Yeah. Okay. Hold on.”
I held my arm steady while I bent down to pick out the fattest rat in my feed bucket. So I spoiled her a little. I felt like it was kind of expected at this point. I had a tendency to care too much. I held up to the rat by the tail, as far away from Cinna as I could reach. “Will you fly for it?” She fixed me in her dark glare. “Yeah. I get it.”
I tossed the rat to the ground a short distance away, looking on like a proud parent as Cinna hopped off my arm to devour the small creature. As much as I loved the red-tailed hawk, there was no way my hand was getting close to that lethal beak. If she really wanted to, she’d make short work of the leather gauntlet encasing my arm. As it were, she seemed to enjoy my presence, so she hadn’t turned on me. Yet.
I studied her as she tore the fur off. Her wing looked, and felt, perfectly fine. The car accident that had broken it hadn’t damaged her body in any other way, but I had my concerns about her psychological condition. Who says hawks can’t use therapy? She’d been cleared to fly a week ago by the clinic’s vet, but she still hadn’t done more than stretch her long wings. I was worried.
I know it sounds kind of pathetic, but Cinna was my best friend. As much as I wanted her to stay with me forever, she needed to be somewhere else. Soaring over the treetops, using her keen senses to track and catch a vole from the safety of the ground. Returning to her mate and nestlings. The satisfaction of doing something, because there is no doubt in my mind that she had feelings. I found myself wondering occasionally what she thought of me. What she would say if we spoke the same language. Sometimes, I wished myself into an animal form, if only for the simple reason that I didn’t fit my human one.
School was always a touchy subject with me. My grades were stellar, most likely because my social activity had long ago taken a spin down the toilet bowl. I wouldn’t mind getting a B once in a while, if only I had a human friend to grouse about it with. The closest people I regularly talked to were, like, 30 years older than me. My parents, I knew, really loved me, and maybe not even because they had to. Mirabel, the owner of the clinic, appeared to enjoy my company too, but I can’t help but think maybe cheap labor had something to do with it. That’s not saying she was cruel or anything, though. In fact, she had to be the coolest 50-something year old I’d ever met.
She used to be a corporate lawyer, something I could barely imagine from the kind spitfire I knew. Mirabel said that one day, she just got sick of it all and walked away. She spent a few years just searching, wondering who she was. She was in a downward spiral until coming across a three-legged dog named Jersey a few years back. Her husband was surprised when she came home a dog heavier, but somehow a whole lot lighter. Mirabel didn’t wait long to start the clinic, didn’t wait long to hire me. Jersey still hung around the clinic, even though he was getting on. I wondered if he knew how many lives he’d saved by losing his leg.
“Hey, daydreamer. You wanna help me with Toby?”
I whipped around to face Mirabel, leaning against the fence. “Holy crap. Sorry, I didn’t see you there.”
“What, the eyes in the back of your head not working today?”
I snickered. “That’s one way to put it.” I tossed Cinna another small rat, feeling bad about leaving her so soon.
