Birds circled overhead-

"What? But you don't know birds."

I can try to.

"You're not gonna be immediately good at it."

Maybe that's okay.

"Fine. What kind of birds are they?"

They're ostriches-

"Ostriches don't fly, numbskull."

Okay, then... they're crows.

"How foreboding. And what do they mean?"

Um... I don't know. That's for the reader to decide.

"Well you have to give them at least _something_ to try to figure it out."

But I don't know where the story is going.

"How are they supposed to know, then?"

Okay... they represent death.

"Original. Whose death?"

No it's like... the concept of death.

"Death is an event, not a concept."

Can't it be both?

"Why does it have to be?"

I don't know. Maybe I like death. Maybe it seems comforting to me.

"Death is scary, not comforting."

Can't it be both?

"Things can't be two things at the same time. They're either one or the other."

But what about nuance? What about freedom? What about the flow of the river that bends as the ostrich dips his head down to drink, or the winds that twist and turn to keep the crow in the air? You can't tell me those are in the same states all the time.

"No, there is no such thing."

Why haven't you seen them?

"Maybe I don't want to... Maybe they scare me. I can't categorize them like I can other things."

Maybe that's okay. Maybe you don't need to know something for it to be beautiful.

"But what if it hurts me?"

Hurt is a part of life. If you don't let yourself hurt, it hurts you more. You can't escape it, so why not embrace it?

"It's hard to change."

Yes, but it gets easy, and then hard, and then easy again. Birds don't fly first, they fall. They get picked up and try and try and try again. Try again.

"Okay... but you'll help me, right?"

Of course. Birds of a feather stick together.