Harbinger

There was a hawk.

The hawk is my totem animal, he said, my spirit messenger. I carried hawk feathers with me, each one a gift left behind by a hawk that told me something.

It's unlawful to carry raptor feathers. He knew that. It didn't matter. Things of the spirit trump the laws of man.

When a hawk crosses your trail, they're a sign of changes coming. Good, bad, that's up to you. The hawk just knows the wind will blow another way soon, and she's telling you.

She landed in a tree across the street from where I sat at a stop sign, waiting. The tree wasn't much more than a sapling, a gangly pine. It swayed under her weight.

I called out my usual blessing - "Good hunting, cousin!" She nodded, but otherwise did not move. She watched me as I turned onto the road.

Sometimes I dream I am the hawk, carrying words on the wind, soaring ever higher. I'm not bound to this grey place, to pain or sorrow or loss any more. I do not see the world through bars and shadows. Then I wake up here, trapped in the waking world by the fay's anathema (iron)...but I remember what it was like to rise up and shake it off like dust from my feathers, and I hope.

She waited until I was out of the turn, straight on the road, before launching herself into a glide that carried her across my path.

Change coming. She flew towards the house I'd just left, home. Change coming home. Home coming. Home changing.

Yes, ma'am.