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Wes Tern
Feathers
“Can I be an engineer?” the little crow asked his mother.
“I don’t see why not,” his mom replied.
“An actor?” he asked.
“I suppose,” she said. “If you work very hard at it and want it bad enough.”
“An astronaut?”
“Sure.”
“Can I be President?”
“Not only can you,” his mother said. “I think you should be President. You’d make a splendid one. I’m sure of it.”
“What about a peacock?” the little crow said.
“A peacock?”
“You know,” he said. “Those birds with huge tail feathers.”
“No,” she said. “Absolutely not.”
“But–” he began.
“I said no,” she told him firmly. “You will not be a peacock.”
After a moment’s silence, the crow said, “But…you told me I can be anything when I grow up.”
“I did,” she admitted. “But I misspoke. What I meant was you can do anything when you grow up. And you certainly can. But a peacock is not something you do, it’s something you are. You either are one or you’re not. You can’t become a thing you’re not just because you want to. That’s not how it works.”
They never spoke of the matter again. But in secret, the little crow began dressing up in peacock feathers he collected and hid under his bed. He did this every day. He would lock his door and strut around his room with enormous peacock plumage spilling out of his tail feathers and towering over his little crow body. He covered himself in them.
Then one day he came home from school and the peacock feathers were gone.
It was obvious what happened; his mother had discovered them and tossed them in the trash. But he never said a word to her about it. Nor her to him. He tried to forget about being a peacock, and he told himself it was just a phase. He prayed every night to get the peacock thoughts out of his head. He tried to be a normal crow, to be who he was supposed to be.
But who was he? Was he a crow? He didn’t feel like one. He felt like a peacock. And the more he fought the peacock urge the stronger it became. The clearer it became. Until one day he knew. He knew it with the same certainty he knew his own name. He was a peacock. He had always been. But knowing it was not enough. He needed to do it. To be a peacock, to live as one, and he knew he could, if given the chance.
He began hanging around peacocks, which was not easy. Most wouldn’t give him the time of day. They’d take one look at his small stature, his blunt beak, his tiny twig-like legs, his lack of dazzling colors, and they would ignore him or shoe him away. He was a pest to them.
But he felt better being a pest to the peacocks than being an imposter among the crows.
He began wearing peacock feathers again. Now, though, he lived alone and there was no one to hide them from. He filled his studio apartment with them. It looked like a peacock bomb had gone off in there – walls, furniture, artwork, even the toilet seat had peacock designs on it.
One day, he returned home to his mother wearing his full dress-set of peacock plumes, and colorful makeup that nearly erased all signs of his outwardly biological species.
His mother answered the door. She stared at him. His heart hammered in his chest.
“What do you want?” she finally said.
“I want to come home,” he replied.
His mother froze. She had not recognized him. She approached very close to him and squinted, staring into his eyes. She looked up and around at the peacock plumage he was covered in, at how wonderful it all looked, beautiful, perfect.
“Son?” she asked.
“It’s me,” he said.
She cried and laughed at the same time. She rushed forward to hug him and they cried together.
“I’m sorry I threw away your feathers!” she said, sobbing. “I didn’t know!”
The little crow was so overcome with emotion he could not even respond. He just squeezed his mother with his wings, and held her tight.
“Can you forgive me?” she asked.
“Mom,” he said, “I already have.”
Wes Tern writes books and teaches classes. His work has been published in Flash Fiction Magazine, WINK Magazine, Blue Lake Review, and elsewhere. He lives in Florida. You can find him on Twitter.
This story was first published by Brilliant Flash Fiction.