Fiction Friday: Form Of

She had curled up into a ball in the corner and was grinning. She was a pill-bug! A roly-poly. She had senses unavailable to most humans. To her they were quite incomprehensible.

All of this was from the drugs.

Her hair stood out like so many quivering antenna. I watched her with amusement. I myself was some kind of one-winged bird. I was lounging on the sofa. It was my aerie.

I let out ululating sea-bird sort of squawk: "Hey, you want to watch a movie?" Her questioning response came in a scrabbling, whispery bug voice like many voices - a compound voice, like her compound eyes: "Like this??"

"Sure!" I replied, "why not?"

"We better not. I think it would freak me out." Her initial pleased grin had frozen into something tentative.

"Isn't that the point, to be freaked out?" I was stretching my yawning bill and flapping my wing around, looking at it from various angles.

"I don't know if it was, but it isn't now." She looked me over again. "My thinking's going funny. How come you're a bird and I'm a bug?"

"You wanted to be a bug," I said.

"No I didn't!" her changed voice was scandalized. "Why would anyone want to be a bug?"

"You said they were cute. Anyway, I've only got one wing."

"No, the other one's under you!"

Sure enough it was. I jumped up on my backwards-kneed, gawky legs and spread my feathers out. What a span I had! "Hey, thanks! Great! Two wings."

"Can you fly?" she asked, very small. She seemed much smaller now, with me looming so much higher on those stilt legs, plus the height of the couch.

"I can probably fly," I said thoughtfully, lowering and gathering myself under me onto the couch. She still looked smaller. "I can probably fly, but you know, it takes birds themselves a while to learn the trick of it. I better go easy in the beginning. I'm in no rush."

"I want to turn back," she said. "I want to be myself, or a bird!"

"But you're a bug now," I reminded her.

"I don't want to be a bug!" she protested.

"You wanted to be a bug!" I looked at her again. Hesitated. "You're cute."

She was tiny.

"I don't want to be cute," she sighed.

It was just a broken little hiss.

I leapt off the couch and crazyleg walked towards the door, long-billed head bobbing on a pendulum neck. The sky looked so cold and blue and wild.