Crow Woman

Day 8: "Bad hair day," she thought when she first looked in the mirror on Monday morning, and then, "Boy, I need more sleep. I'm getting dark circles around my eyes." It hadn't been a particularly long weekend in the vernacular sense of parties and liquor; no, it was solely the mental clarity typical of myopic vision and expecting not to see the unexpected. It wasn't until she picked up her toothbrush that another realization took hold. "What the hell? I've got a BEAK? Wait a minute here...I don't recall Gregor Samsa being in the forecast."

It was an incomplete metamorphosis. The hand holding the toothbrush was pink and fingered. The elbow bent at a slightly odd angle, but it brought the arm up and allowed her to touch her hair. At least some things hadn't changed. Again she spoke a stream of invective, and this time, she paid attention to the sounds she was making: "Caaaaw! Caw-caw CAW-ca-caw!" Sibilants and fricatives had absented themselves from her tongue. Her second language came naturally, however. After all, she'd been using it for years to communicate with her corvid friends. She'd always claimed a kinship with them as well, citing similarities in their behaviours to her own. Perhaps it was the corvids' talent for situational assessment which kept her from panicking at this moment, and some of their curiosity as well.

If millet toast had tasted good to her as a full human, it tasted even better to the palate of a semi-crow. Coffee posed a problem, if only for the size of the cup compared to her bill. Breakfast accomplished, she then began thinking about how her co-workers would view this alteration in her appearance when she showed up at her job. She decided it probably wouldn't be an issue. No one pays a crow much attention unless they're raiding songbird nests, and as an ornithologist, she had always used the utmost care when measuring and weighing eggs, returning each one lovingly to its bed of down and weed-fluff.

Communication was going to be a poser, though. She had a class to give, and twenty students who had only got as far as the correct pronunciation of "Caw" as a signal of danger. "Turn to page twenty-six" was going to be difficult to get across. Demonstration! That was the key. It would also present a means to illustrate how serviceable a beak is for lifting and probing. Without consciously noting it, she was demonstrating another ability common to the Corvidae: intelligent analysis of a problem.

As the next few hours progressed, it became apparent to her that not much had changed except for her appearance. The traits common to corvids were none other than those of her human persona, traits which had stood her in good stead all her human life. A crow from birth, she'd simply fledged.