[image description: a white vulture leans back, wings folded in front of it. A light blooms behind it, with a prismatic effect across it’s face and beak. It’s eyes seem very determined, for a bird. Text reads, “psychopomp and circumstance by spacelawn”. public domain, edited by me.]

The record player is an anachronistic sight in front of a chrome window viewer.

The bullet speaker attached to the base betrays the Victorian effect – but Fanny would never sacrifice her sound, never.

It’s not the first time I’ve seen this set up – still don’t understand it. Why keep parts of the past, why keep anything at all? None of it lasts. The music sounds familiar; a waltz I’ve heard again and again and again is playing with a rendered misty view of the bay behind it. No one ever goes to the bay in person anymore unless they’re trying to find me before I find them. A note peaks and crests and the waves in the view match the tones but I don’t think this is on purpose. It wouldn’t matter if it was because Fanny is smiling in anticipation and her smile makes me melt. Fanny sits in an overstuffed chair that swallows her frailty, her delicate fingers trill on the chocolate pleather.

People are funny like that; they love juxtaposition, opposites, nostalgia, and status. Fanny isn’t really like that in her heart, though, not in any area that I can reach (and I can reach very deep, indeed). Not ever sought status, which helped her to get it. Another funny thing. I watch her sitting from my perch in the door way. I indulge and let my feathers match the beat she leaves in the material. The three of us make a beautiful sound. Tubes in her nose, wires on her chest, needles in her arms, eyes closed letting the music wash over her – My heart flutters, she is so beautiful and I love her immediately. She smiles, so soft, barely perceptible. She knows I’m here and is performing for me. She doesn’t acknowledge me when I enter the room, but instead raises her arm like a maestro and directs me towards her as the music allows.

It is adorable. She is adorable.

I do as she wordlessly requests.

Muscle memory is an amazing thing, she’s done this so many times and it doesn’t falter even a step, even as so much of her mind has been lost from her, something remains in the bones. Her bones under that skin, I want them all. I will have them all – I can give her this pleasure of controlling me. I step deftly around boxes of diapers and towels haphazardly left around the room by overworked aides. I don’t smell the aroma the others smell; to me it all is comforting. The smell of blood and shit and death calls me closer, closer, closer. It marks someone as mine.

But the aides run from Fanny, as quickly as they can. I can see the wounds from my other eyes, the spirit wounds are deeper and healing right before my eyes as I approach.

Soiled bedding threatens to trip me, but I flutter over it. Fanny would never apologize for the mess, nor would I expect it, and I love her for that deep current of grit in her spirit. The music binds us tighter up, a family again. A family together. A family connected by a song but I never learned what this waltz was actually called, never saw a reason to. The record warbles for the first time and Fanny finally opens her eyes and takes all of me in. She smiles. My heart flutters. I am beautiful in her eyes and I love her. Those eyes of hers are hazy and aged and rheumy and call to me, deeply. I see through them. She’s alert in those eyes, deep behind the normal sight. I know why she’s suddenly perked up and she knows why and neither of us speaks the reason. Everyone always knows it when I come and we rarely ever speak it aloud. She’s beautiful and I love her and I want her with me. The piece continues to play unobstructed and she lets her hands down from conducting and she reaches up to pull me closer.

I lean down and let her hands run over my beak, over my head and down to my second face. She touches the foreign skin first, runs her finger down the feathers, to the cheeks more similar to her own and my lips. The electric touches surge through my body, all of my feathers fluff on their own and I rest my skin on her knee and take her little hand with mine, avoiding the talons. The flesh would tear so easily, feel so good beneath me. But, she wouldn’t like that as much as I would. And, I would never want to give her what she doesn’t want. So many people have rested their head in her lap through her life. I am in good company here.

Her fingers trace my beak, sending more of those impulses through my body. They know so much; find every indentation, every little crook. She is so smooth, knowing, and sensual. This touch is so familiar; once again I am filled with the knowledge that I am always hers, so she was always mine. Always meant to end up here.

She coughs, to clear her throat, “This is such a basic piece,” she says and grips my mask with more force than it would ever be expected she was still capable of. Her voice is smoother than it’s been in years, all for me, and only me. I don’t mind the grip, the pain is nothing, and it’s wonderful. I feel all of her great need, and my desire to give her everything she wants, the hunger of her fingers goes to my core.

“I wouldn’t know anything about that,” I say as she loosens her grip.

“The Blue Danube,” she says with a pause, “it’s had a long life in our cultural memory. Must strike a cord, or should I say a chord,” her laugh ends in a wheeze and my heart breaks. “But, it’s such a basic piece I think. Maybe that’s why it persists,” she finishes with a deep breath, more wheeze than breath.

We remember together why I’m here, and she gives me a crooked smile. She doesn’t mind, not now. She closes her eyes again and lets the music wash over her. I haven’t moved since I put my head on her lap. She hasn’t pushed me away. The moment between us continues in multiple directions through time. The notes stretch out even beyond time and we are the infinite experiencing itself. And then I have to move and I reach to turn the record off and she grips the edge of my robe.

“Don’t turn it off,” she pleads.

I take my hand back. “Whatever you want.”

I sit back and watch her eyes relax and her face settle into content neutrality. She breathes deep and steady breaths that I count off. And at the apex breath she would sink into slumber on, I take my own practiced muscle memory and plunge my hand into her chest at her heart, blood pools down the front of her gown. As I pull it out she exhales for the last time and the blood quickly disappears into the ether and we all hope it is a painless experience but no one ever knows for sure except for the human, but they leave behind so much after I take their hand. They can’t let anyone know by then, can they?

The moment slips away from me and I kiss her brow and she’s beside me in silver and smiling. The music continues to play and I offer her a hand. She takes it. We dance together out of the room and into the bright darkness beyond.