One for the Blackbird, One for the Crow

by Olivia Hawker

she had grown a little taller and there was something carved and set about her features, as if her chin and cheeks and nose had made up their minds about how they ought to look and were committed now to their purpose.

When a breeze stirred, the grasses shifted, rippling from silver to green and back again, as if some vast, invisible hand were brushing the fabric of the prairie this way and that.

Each had taken up the truths they had trained themselves to see, drinking anger and hate or loneliness and despair as eagerly as the summer-parched prairie drank the rain. I ain’t fool enough to think I’m wise, exactly, but I have learned one scrap of wisdom, at least: whatever a body expects their life to be, that’s what they’ll make of it in the end.