The elder Miss Finch preferred to stay a finch most all of the time. Which was just as well, really. She never was much of a conversationalist.
Kev was out running an errand, and because asking one of his drunken regulars to chaperone me seemed like a bad idea, I went into the nearest shop to ask someone who was at least gainfully employed. The door read FISHMONGER. I pushed it open to find myself cowering before a bearded giant in a blood-soaked apron. He left off decapitating fish to glare at me, dripping cleaver in hand, and I vowed never again to discriminate against the intoxicated. “What.
UK – that was Britain.
I love being peculiar, Jacob- It’s the very core of who i am. But there are days i wish i could turn it off.
He proceeded to give us directions in a lilting accent, which I found enormously entertaining. I loved hearing Welsh people talk, even if half of what they said was incomprehensible to me.
What’re you going to do,” he said, “pollinate it to death?
How could I possibly stay here and leave behind everthing I’d known? But after all I’d learned, how could I go home?
Such was the way the sad world turned.
Though in a million superficial ways it would be identical to the day before – the same breeze would blow and the same tree limbs would fall – my experience of it would be new.
Despair was tangible here, weighting down everything, the very air.
Yeah, he was a psychobabble-spewing prick. But that didn’t make him wrong.
Still, I could have been kinder.” She frowned, her eyes wandering. “Sibling relationships can be complex. I wonder, sometimes, if my own actions had some bearing upon the paths my brothers chose. Could I have been a better sister to them? Perhaps, as a young ymbryne, I was too focused on myself.
We’re peculiar. Aren’t you?
I knew then that my shaky faith in myself was starting to dig a hole in hers, and Emma’s confidence was what held everything together.
There was a single ray of sun shining through the window. I got up, went to the cracked glass, and saw that it was both raining and shining outside – a bit of meteorological weirdness whose name no one can seem to agree on. My mom, I kid you not, refers to it as “orphan’s tears.
Likewise the boy who was dressed to the nines in a muddy but finely tailored suit and stove-in top hat, his face drawn and haggard from lack of sleep, for he hadn’t allowed himself any in days, so afraid was he of his dreams.
Let me see: There’s Miss Garnnett in Ireland, in June of 1770; Miss Nightjar in Swansea on April 3, 1901; Miss Avocet and Miss Bunting together in Derbyshire on Saint Swithin’s Day of 1867; Miss Treecreeper I don’t remmeber where exactly – oh, and dear Miss Finch.
Armageddon chickens.
Then Bronwyn said, “I believe in you, Jacob. I haven’t known you too long, but I feel I know your heart, and it’s a strong, true thing-a peculiar heart-and I trust you.
For amusement, they ingest whatever flammable liquids are at hand and sing badly at the top of their lungs.