Ornithology Expert [802 words]

Then it descended, its wings of flaming feathers casting a searing light through the darkness—

Jackal slammed the book closed, and then rubbed her eyes fruitlessly. She’d gladly have a cigarette then but didn’t want to light one with so many papers surrounding her. Besides, she didn’t want to get distracted. The sources she had — which was to say, not many at all — were finite, but she was struggling to see the actual end in sight. It wasn’t just about reading them. She had to study and cross-reference them, which she thought wouldn’t be a problem if she was systematic enough from the beginning.

And she had been systematic enough from the very beginning. It was just that the sources were so contradictory that she didn’t know what to believe.

But, if nothing else, she was certain that “flaming feathers” were a bust. She closed the book with a large thump. A few papers flew off the table, so she got up and popped her spine just to move a little and stretch her limbs. She’d completely lost track of time. The book was unfairly large and had given her a hefty hope she had to let go of as soon as she realized just how small its section on birds was. It was no more than a few paragraphs, but Jackal had reasoned that it was alright if the information she gleaned was valuable. If it was something that she could sort, something that she could find more information about easily or something — anything — that someone else could recognize.

As it was, anything she had read so far had been useless. After all, she clearly remembered the feeling of the feather fitting in her hand. Or rather, the surprise of its lightness. It was so small and white. When she’d first seen it, she’d reckoned it’d be cold and sharp because of its even edges and the way it refracted the light so smoothly. She was surprised to find out that she couldn’t even feel it in the palm of her hand. If she’d tried that with a claw, she was certain she’d feel it even less, almost like it was there. So she easily disregarded the “flaming feathers” claim immediately. If the feathers were ordinarily on fire, that meant that they would be hot to the touch, and presumably not pale and whitish blue.

Unless something was wrong with that feather.

She didn’t let herself think about that option. Instead, she took another book from the pile and opened it randomly without even looking at the table of contents. Jackal knew what wings were, of course. But feathers on wings? It seemed a little silly. Like something that someone made up. Like a stage prop or something of the like, something that was made up just so someone could pretend to be original. It seemed messy, even, but most of the sources agreed that feathers went on wings and, sometimes, on the body. But those were small feathers, different to what she had encountered. The big ones, the intricate ones — she was even supposed to believe that pink and orange feathers existed as much as the pale ones — were placed at wings and sometimes, their shapes were different too.

Jackal was a little tempted to just go out and ask people about this. Still, she knew what the street talk could lead to. These sources were written, if a little aged and sparsed. So someone must’ve thought them worth scribing. And besides, even though she’d found them hard to categorize, not all of them were a complete bust. She could still order some of them by similarity or frequency.

And all of them, it seemed, had one common place they appeared at — a bird.

And what exactly was a bird?

Well, it was small, apparently, but it could be large. It was white, but it was also pink and flaming orange, or gradient blue-grey. And it had short legs, or it had long legs sometimes… And well— her head was aching from the inconsistencies. She really could use that cigarette, yes.

Jackal threw another glance at the paper where she had a haphazard table drawn according to the categories. Beak, one category said, and all the sources she’d read were listed beneath it. She was using this column as a “I have read this” list, rather than using it as a category. She could just imagine that this bird was some sort of a monstrosity.

And yet, she was growing curious, she thought as she flipped through her book and added another source beneath the “beak” category. She flipped a few pages more, just skimming the text filled with info she already read elsewhere and—

Bingo, she thought.

—this book had an illustration.