Chapter One – The Language of Wings

Even the birds knew her mood had turned. They grew quieter, less demanding, lingering at the edges of her awareness. Their wings beat softer, their calls much more subdued, as if to say, “We’re still here. We’re not going anywhere.”

It was as though they knew her, felt the subtle shifts in her heart. Sensed exactly where she was and what she needed. This was not the kind of knowing that came from habit or feeding schedules. It was older, deeper, as if written into their bones. Written into her bones as well. Some ancient current bound them together, a language older than words, written not in syllables but in pulse and breath.

The morning was tender and awake, draped in that soft, gentle, kind of light that hushes everything it touches.

She sat at the far edge of the deck, in the old, weathered chair with a colorful sarong draped over its back like a flag from some small, secret Queendom that only she had ever been to. The chair’s fabric was worn soft from years of sun and windy air, and the sarong still smelled faintly of the memorable, adventurous, coastal trip where she had found it. She was not sure if that were even possible, but it felt so. It seemed indelible. An eternal imprint.

Strange how a scent can outlive a moment, she thought. How something long lost can still speak to me.

Morning critters stirred all around. The woodpeckers knocking a patient rhythm, the titmice and nuthatches darting in pairs, the blue jays shrieking their declarations. Even the hummingbirds, feisty and territorial, zipped in and out of the oaks, their wings like trembling music that that cut through the quiet. Such a joy to witness.

The air was full of life. The kind of life that heals just by breathing it in. If only she could bottle it. 

From here she could see the whole yard, though her gaze kept settling on the familiar shapes. The thick rise of the oak trunks, the delicate arc of spiderwebs jeweled with moisture, the dark, still, stump where the great limb had been cut not long ago. 

Her eyes fell to the fresh-cut log where Whiz, her loyal, black lizard companion, basked in a bright slant of sunlight. They had that in common, she and Whiz, the pure love of basking in sunlight’s warm and deeply comforting embrace. To her, sunlight felt like being held, like the earth itself was whispering, You’re safe. You belong here. 

She felt enveloped in warm hugs—and how could anyone not love that feeling? Unless, of course, you were being smothered. She frowned faintly. A distant memory popped into view. She had never liked that feeling. Smothering felt like it was love without breath, and she’d had enough of that to last her a lifetime. No thank you. She needed to breathe.

The piece of oak Whiz lounged upon had been lost only days ago. What once was towering mightily with strength and vitality, aging and weathering by relentless winds, rain and the weight of accumulated snow, had weakened over time…was now gone…just like that. The cut was clean, but not perfect, the fibers frayed at the edges, rings darkened where water had seeped in. Even trees, she thought, carried their own unfinished repairs.

For years, the oak’s broad crown had shaded a good portion of the yard; but now, the emptiness it left seemed too raw to look at for long. It was like an eerie scene, laid out in front of her. A stark, in-your-face, reminder of loss. A single tear fell and then a flood of them; it was quite a while before they stopped. They were silent, yet persistent. Unrelenting and unrestrained. Like a dam had given way within her. Burst wide open. Uncontrolled. Unstoppable.

That oak had been a steadfast constant, a kind of anchor, to her mornings, to her life, much like the quiet conversations she once had with the critters, and with herself. But lately, she’d gone silent. Not because she wanted to. Because someone she loved had told her it’s “not normal,” this habit of speaking aloud to the animals, to the plants and flowers, to herself and to the Lord God Almighty. Sometimes answering herself back—make that oftentimes answering herself back. Two small words. Two small words that had cut deeper, sharper, than they were intended, sure, but still leaving her unsure if she was foolish, or strange, or broken, or if she was somehow not quite right. Questions that begged answers. 

The remaining oaks held their ground, towering, immovable. Standing at attention, almost like a tribute to one of their fallen. They shaded a good portion of the yard now, even with one less to spread their reach. She loved them for that. For the quiet authority of their presence, for their refusal to be swayed by the passing opinions of wind and weather.

She wished she could be like that.

But she was not an oak. Not this morning anyway.

The comment had burrowed in like a splinter, tightening the wound in her heart the way the oak’s torn roots still gripped the earth. She’d always been a little different—a lot different, if truth be told. She was attuned to the unseen threads between living things, an indescribable connection she had with flowers, herbs, bees, birds, all living things really. Imaginative was a word often used. She was once told she had a 360-degree imagination, like that was abnormal. Like she was a freak of nature, Imagine that. They said she lived in her own “vibrant” little world. (True, for sure, but they made it sound like she was offbeat somehow.) She had often been described as “not normal”;  “a lot”; “quite different”; “too much”; and things such as that, in her young life, which is why the comment probably stung so badly in the first place. A time when she didn’t feel like she belonged. Like she didn’t fit. Of course, that must be it, so clear now but not at the time.

Talking to the birds, the squirrels, the wind, to the invisible Presence she knew in her bones, wasn’t madness. In her mind, it was pure communion. But now, she wasn’t so sure. Now she had a lingering, painful, deeply rooted doubt pop up. And that doubt was growing and sprouting offshoots at an alarming rate.

Something in her now felt brittle, as if one wrong thought could send a fracture running through her whole being. Lately, she had found herself pulling back from the little conversations she once had, those murmured words to the critters, the half-spoken questions she would usually answer herself. Her mind was in retreat and reflect mode. Searching for the sense of it all. Guarded and reserved. A timidness she was neither expecting nor was accustomed to.

Her mind kept returning to the “not normal” assessment. They hadn’t meant harm; she knew that in her heart. The words were tossed like rocks into a pond, but they had sunk quickly, settling in like silt in her soul. Those old, deeply rooted and buried insecurities had been stirred up and now the pond was murky and hard to see through.

She had never spent much time thinking about it. It had simply been her way of being for as long as her memory reached. An instinctive method for loosening the knots inside her, a quiet ritual of staying tethered to the world around her. She hadn’t examined it closely because following that thought train always hurt. It was the pain train that veered too easily onto the track of the old ache of not belonging, of being set apart in ways she could never fully understand. Soshe’d pressed it down instead, burying it deep enough that she could go about her days without brushing up against its sharp edges.

But now that light had finally reached it; now that something in her life had watered and warmed that hidden place, it was sprouting everywhere, pushing up doubt like stubborn shootsthrough thin soil. And it was taking hold. Those edges were very sharp now. Bloody hell! She needed to figure out what to do with it, how to manage this unruly thing she’d ignored for so long. If only she could pluck it out like the weed it felt like. Or better yet, if it was at least a useful kind of weed, something humble and medicinal, like a dandelion. Wouldn’t that be sweet.

But no.

It’s never quite that simple with those pesky weeds. If you don’t get all their roots, they have a nasty habit of popping up again and again. She hadn’t fully realized that this particular weed had been planted, but alas, clearly it was. Then, apparently, what she did was bury those seeds deep in the soil of her soul, ignore them and keep them away from the sunlight. She couldn’t ignore them any longer, as tempting as that was.

Talking to birds and trees isn’t crazy, she told herself. It’s remembering where I came from.

But even as she thought it, doubt whispered louder. It was patient, that voice, soft and convincing. Maybe it wasn’t about madness or sanity. Maybe it was about permission. When had she started needing the world’s approval to speak her own language in her very own small Queendom?

The birds still watched her, quiet and deliberate. And from his place on the oak stump, Whiz, ever the loyal companion, tilted his head as if weighing whether to approach. She gave him the faintest nod. He moved closer.

Under all of it, she sensed something deeper, a pull toward an answer that might be less about words, and more about listening. Much more about listening. The question hung between her and the trees, the answer was soft but insistent. Yes…

The morning dew clung to grass blades and spider silk, luminous and glistening in the low light. It was delicate yet certain, appearing without fail no matter how harsh the night before. She thought of it as something sent from the God she longed for, each drop a quiet truth. This morning, though, the dew felt like a mirror, reflecting her own thirst for assurance, for some sign she was ok and wasn’t alone…was not broken.  

Her thoughts drifted right back—was she really not normal? Or was the world around her simply tuned to a different frequency? And what exactly is normal? And does she really even want to be normal? So many questions about this whole “normal” thing. Is it just a thing that makes others feel comfortable? She decided she would need more thought on the matter. Indeed, much more thought. Maybe her answers would come like the dew, not in the thunder of a revelation, but in the quiet gathering of something unseen, until she could finally feel it, know it, be it. Until it could not be denied.

The hummingbirds cut into her self-talk, swooping, sparring and entertaining in midair. Their sharp, noisy chittering was insistent, as if they refused to let her sink further into herself. And maybe they were right. Maybe her bond with them, and with all of nature, existed because she too was nature, created by the same Creator who gave them wings, Whiz his scales, and the oak its towering years. Connected, easy, real. Unburdened by expectations of how we “should” be. Just being.

But that thought only stirred another. If her loved one could so easily shake her sense of self, maybe this was about more than their opinion. Maybe this was the edge of something deeper, a crisis not of personality, but of faith. She had always believed that He made her just as He wanted her made. He even says she is His masterpiece. So why now does she doubt?

At that moment a majestic hawk appeared circling overhead, making wide, expansive circles that became smaller and smaller circles until suddenly, and what seemed out of nowhere, dove into an oak down a ways in the valley. Kind of playing out the spiral she herself had been feeling for more than just a few heartbeats. Deep breath girl, deep breath, she told herself as she worked to ground herself. 

She sat there wondering if she should say something or stay silent, but just then her lips parted before she’d even decided what to say. “Morning,” she murmured, the word slipped out, barely more than a breath. The nuthatch stilled, watching her intently. The titmouse called out three bright notes that sounded like exclamation points.

“You still here, my friend?” she asked Whiz. His tail flicked once, slow and sure. His presence always had a calming, heart lifting effect on her.

“You ever feel like you don’t fit, buddy?” she asked softly. “Like you’re made for something, but you’re not sure what?”

He flicked his tail once, a small, deliberate movement. The kind that said, I hear you, even if I can’t answer.

Her laugh came out low, more exhale than sound. “Yeah. I thought so.”

The blue jay screamed from somewhere high, like he was also answering the question and she couldn’t help but reply. “I hear you loud and clear JJ! No need to shout.”

It was nothing, just scraps of conversation, but it loosened something that had gotten all wound up and tightened in her chest. She realized she wasn’t only speaking to the critters. She was speaking into the quiet. She was testing whether it was truly empty even though she knew in her heart it was not.

“Are You still here too?” she whispered.

Her bare feet rested on the deck boards, cool and damp with morning dew. It clung to her skin the way certain thoughts did, slow to seep in, slower still to leave. She could tell it was dew and not last night’s rain as rain came in a rush, all noise and insistence. Dew was gentler, quiet, yet it could leave just as deep a mark.

A squirrel darted up the largest oak, claws scratching a rapid rhythm against bark. They had come to a truce, she and the squirrels. They stay off the deck and she continues to be amused by them. They were friends with firm boundaries. It worked for them. It hadn’t always. They were proof that compromise made relationships better, stronger. 

The aggressive hummingbirds, always in some feud, cut the air with their wings, each determined to claim her attention. Somewhere in the branches above, Prince Woodrow the woodpecker began his staccato tapping, as though setting the beat for all that was waking, including her. 

The oak leaves above leaned toward her in the breeze. A brilliant streak of sunlight broke through, falling across her knees. The woodpecker tapped, the titmouse sang in short, sweet, little bursts and she felt the knowing settle in her bones. She was no accident. Her connection to this life was no flaw. She was hand-crafted thoughtfully, intricately, intentionally, purposefully, by a Creator whose opinion outweighed every other by amounts too great to measure.

The leaves rustled in answer, a thousand small amens.

Whiz turned his head, catching the light, and she could almost hear him say what the oaks and the wind had been telling her. You are His masterpiece. Always have been.

The sting of her loved one’s words was still there, but smaller now, pebbles against the roots of an ancient tree.

She drew in a slow breath, the air rich with the scent of damp earth. “Well,” she said aloud, “I guess that’s settled….fornow anyway…”

The nuthatch trilled loudly. The hummingbirds returned, buzzing past her face, their wings brushing her hair like a blessing. She looked at Whiz. “Guess you’re stuck with me talking your ear off again. Hope you don’t mind. Wait, I wonder if lizards even have ears.”

His tail twitched. She smiled. Big.

Lifting her chin toward the oaks, she spoke clearly enough for every leaf and wing and scale to hear: “Good morning, my little sweeties!”

There was no hesitation. No shame. Just her voice moving into the yard, naked, claimed and unafraid.

The leaves continued to rustle above, joining in a sound that could have been a wind song or something more. She didn’t feel the need to decide which.