Noelle found the feather under the couch. She held it up to the light. She ruffled the vane apart, as one does with feathers, and it bit her. It was too light to drop and hit the ground. She shoved her bleeding fingers in her mouth and prised open the vanes again, gentler. She unhooked a tiny barb from the rachis, and the whole thing turned into dust for a shocked second before reforming off-white and brittle into her hand. She had not slammed the door coming in, only shucked off her sandals. The house groaned. It was too early for this heat. Too early for the suffocating stillness of summer. The crushing weight pooled to the rafters. Noelle’s feet stuck to the floor as she walked out to the porch.
Kerry had put a plastic bedsheet on the couch downstairs and then, over that, she’d pinned a topsheet patterned with B. Kliban cats. They slept on that -- or rather, Noelle did. Kerry didn’t really sleep much. But Noelle woke up in the middle of the night to read the thin scrawl of nibble on they tiny feet repeating around the cat drawings. She’d sit there reading til she found a pocket of cool wrapped in the plastic on the side. She’d drown herself in that and drop off again.
“Flap for me,” she said to Kerry on a particularly broiling night. She flicked out her fingers like a magician.
Kerry, perched on the couch end, naked and dripping sweat: “Absolutely not.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s not a party trick, you dumb turtle.”
“I’m melting.”
“Good,” Kerry said. “Less to carry away.”
* * *
Outside, the sky boiled blue. The clouds curled in parched wisps. Noelle kept her fingers in her mouth. The grass thirsted enough that one could mistake it for the brown of winter. Easy to miss the bright green fumbling at the roots. Kerry knelt over their wild-jungle flowerbeds on a battered foam board. She scratched at her shoulder to pull down the spaghetti strap. She gleamed. Besides her, the detritus of the locked seasons. The broken thorns. She didn’t wear gloves. She never wore gloves.
Kerry had explained it to Noelle once, explained the math of her adaptation. The concept of the battle is ageless, but it is far-spanning and does not insist on sword and shield. The battles here in the new shining world are against beetles and seasons. They are against rust, fungus, mold, neglect. The battles are hard fought, they are against varied enemies, and they do not stop. They, the flowers, are thus worthy.
“That’s bullshit,” Noelle had said. She was tired and she was wet and she had been planting daffodil bulbs all day. Kerry was serene and it annoyed her. Noelle threw her soaked gardening gloves on the kitchen table. “That’s bullshit and you know it.”
“It’s a metaphor,” Kerry said. She tsked. “You have no poetry in your soul, turtle.”
“I’m not doing the weeding.”
“Neither am I.”
Noelle growled.
“That’s the point, I mean,” Kerry hastened. She came over to Noelle. Kerry worked security at the meat-packing plant and her hands were cool. She smelled like iron. They stood together, Noelle dripping, rocking her cheek against Kerry’s rough palm.
“I’m not being lazy,” Kerry said, soft. “I promise.”
* * *
Kerry did the dishes for the next month. Noelle kept forgetting to take out the trash.
Kerry leaned over onto her hands. Her back shone. She grunted and showed her teeth. The wings burrowed out from under her skin, leaving rifts where they crept out. She held the trowel against her mouth and it glinted. It sparked. It sharpened.
Noelle held the feather between her thumb and forefinger. “Dropped this.”
“Oh.”
“You okay?”
Kerry grunted.
“You feeling okay, Kerry?”
“Yeah,” Kerry said, and coughed.
Noelle winced. “You need your inhaler?”
“Nahhhh,” Kerry said; she coughed again, with less of a wheeze this time, and slapped the gloves together. “’m good.”
“Your hands are bleeding.”
“Yah,” Kerry said, and she bent towards the beds.
The sun beat down. Kerry should be shifting in tandem with seasons, at the leaving of darkness and at the dying of the sun, but the world had changed since the days on the banks of the Sea of Wolves. She had migraines now instead of battles.
“Honey, you’re gonna dehydrate.”
Bathroom floor, cold white tile, and Kerry with her head in the toilet.
“Nina’s an ER nurse at Dell General,” Noelle said. “I can give her a heads-up we’re coming, and she can put you on IV fluids, and then you’ll feel better. I’ve done it before.”
“Oh, God, no. Why we need to do that?” Kerry set her forehead on the bowl and breathed like bellows. “It’s a headache, turtle. I promise, I have done this before.”
Noelle tried again. “You look half-dead.”
“So’s the year.”
“What?”
Kerry roiled over and puked. Noelle patted her on the shoulder and cooed til Kerry lifted out again. Kerry’s eyes were bloodshot and the tendons on her neck stood out but she was very calm, and her deep, unbothered stillness made the thought of bothering Nina less palatable. Noelle rubbed the bright knob of tension on the back of Kerry’s neck.
“Equinox,” Kerry gasped. “Go get me some ginger ale?”
Kerry’s blood crusted black and Rorschach-patterned down her spine. The wings worked out all the way. They rattled to be shaken out. Noelle walked three steps on tiptoe to lean over the railing. She rubbed the bony feather over her palm. Kerry was okay, even if she was wheezing a little. Kerry turned out to be right about the stupid weeding. The battles are hard fought and must keep being hard fought, so Noelle shouldn’t use plant food either, and the earth must provide its own bounty of flesh. They had a wall of seedlings in jars in the bedroom, and they called the shelves Valhalla. Or Kerry did. Kerry thought that was funny. Noelle wasn’t sure sometimes.
* * *
Second date, except at this point it wasn’t a date. It was a threshold. An inevitability. Noelle sitting naked on Kerry’s kitchen floor, drinking cold hot chocolate and whiskey out of a red Solo cup. The start of the second date had been twelve hours ago. It was six in the morning now, a blizzard howling up against the window. Kerry had said on the first date last week that she didn’t celebrate Christmas. Noelle, about four hours ago, had had the thought well, joyeux Noelle, Christmas celebrates you. She hadn’t said that out loud, partially because it was dumb and partially because her mouth was full and partially because Kerry had the skull of an enormous stag in her bedroom, draped in mistletoe and oak leaves. The stag sat on top of a sword hilt, and the tip of the sword’s blade sat in a flowerpot of black earth. The earth had been harvested from the field where all the gods had died. The flowerpot was from IKEA. Noelle wouldn’t push her about midnight mass.
“Do I get to go to Valhalla?” she asked, instead.
“Depends,” Kerry said; she was drinking the whiskey straight out the bottle. Kerry was in love with Noelle, and Noelle knew that because Kerry had said it out loud. Kerry drew her fingertips across Noelle’s bare shoulder. The whiskey bottle was cool on the back of her neck. “Depends on where you wanna go. And, and. ’s hard, when you’re a mortal.”
Noelle spluttered. “When I’m a what?”
“Mortal?”
Noelle laughed so hard that she spilled her cold hot chocolate. She tried to swipe it up, lost balance, and rolled on the sticky floor. She looked up at Kerry, who was laughing too. Kerry’s wings nearly touched the ceiling, and she had a faded Rammstein tattoo on her ribcage.
“I thought you said turtle,” Noelle wheezed.
Noelle folded her hand. The feather cut at her palm. She had no calluses. Kerry had calluses. Kerry had bone-shards, shaped for a swan. Noelle licked at the cut. She watched Kerry sort through all the winter death. Her wings brushed at the lilac bushes. Noelle felt a splinter working its way into her sole.
“I’m fine,” Kerry said.
“Just turning early?”
“Yep. Can you make dinner?”
“Maybe.”
Something caught Noelle’s eye. On the pile, on the heap of bracken, a daffodil. A daffodil. A long white feather.
Kerry flapped. Just once. Noelle smiled. She went inside.
Colin Fisher (he/they) is from the American Rust Belt and currently lives in Reykjavík, Iceland, where he studies folklore and procrastinates on everything else. He has had poems published in Pithead Chapel and Pidgeonholes. You can bother him at @bear_euphemism on Twitter.