Nevermore

Flying around a dusky sky, I spot a human-house with a shiny object inside.

Perfect, a new addition to my collection.

I glide through the square opening, eyes on a golden stick with a feather (like mine?) attached to it. Just as I land on the wooden surface it lies on, a man enters the room. I squawk in annoyance, retreating to the entrance’s edge.

    He glares back at me, taking the tool and dipping it in a glass container with a feather-black liquid inside. Paying no more attention to me, he then produces a white, flattened strip of wood and begins scratching the object’s point across it. 

    I watch closely as the black water collected by the stick is focused on a metallic tip, tracing out an unknown alphabet. 

    As soon as he had begun, the man stops. Glances with gloomy eyes from the top of the room, to outside, then to me.

   He arcs his mouth downwards, deep in thought.

  “Nevermore, nevermore...” he seems to be repeating what he had scrawled, as if searching for more to it.

What an interesting sound, I ponder what such a word could mean in my tongue.

   I decide to echo it: “Nevermore!” I caw to him.

  He drops the golden tool and stares at me. Is that fear in his eyes? A man, afraid of a bird?! How fun!

    “Nevermore,” I continue, gleefully tapping my talons on the frame of the entrance. 

    Those wing-black eyes of his spark with something else, and before I can process it, he is back to etching black on white. 

Inspiration, I realize as he straightens his legs and rushes out the room, wielding the writing and a contained light. Did I help him get an idea?

    I would later learn that, by repeating his speech in the dead of night, that I had done something special for him and many other humans. 

    (And I got the shiny stick; a price for my assistance, of course.)