Cardinal & Hummingbird Ready For Winter

She couldn’t believe her skin, already delicate and as thin as rice paper, was all scaly and flaky, making her iridescence self dull, drab. She hoped Cardinal wouldn’t notice or if he did, not care that her shiny summery self was having trouble adapting to the changing winds.

His feathers and skin in turn were as rich and wondrous as the moment she met him sunning himself under a shrub. At least externally, he seemed impenetrable—his scarlet skin glistening regardless of season, rain or sleet, sun or shade.. Cardinal was a constant not only in place and presence but in face and essence. This consistency, this grandness easily explained why Cardinal was the official state bird in 7 states, while Hummingbird wasn’t appointed to even one. She thought for a while that maybe she would be honored by California, her frenetic flapping and delicate frame a parallel to its shallow and skinny synergy, but it was not to be. California instead chose a quail, the antithesis of them, bulky, bland and hunted.

Yet, she felt quail-like as the air became colder as she needed to bulk-up to sustain herself through the long winter months. It was certainly a choice to remain in what many of her Hum friends called, the Tundra, but it was a choice she made with relative ease. Since flying with Cardinal, life was less frenetic, less lonesome, and full of serenity and a security she had never really known. But it was more than that—with Cardinal, Hummingbird...paused...stopped...focusing on the next nectar, the next flower, the next state, and worked to just focus on the now.

Yet, this now’ness as she called it was not without struggle. For one, her wings were frayed from falling leafs, her lungs burned as the winds whipped themselves into a frenzy, and though having the highest metabolism of any animal in flight, Hummingbird found herself getting chunky or rather plucky around the lower wing area. Pausing could not and should not be confused with complacency. Cardinal gave Hummingbird pause, and thus peace in her life, yet she, a natural migrator was wondering, worrying even..”what next?”

Next for Cardinal was the immediate: seeds, pick-ups, drop-offs, bird-calls to neighborly friends, a day trip to a new feeder and back, financing of a new nest, running on a wing-mill, and feather preening. Cardinal was a constant.. he had a plane and terrain, a map and a compass. His next was now. Hummingbird’s next was …

“Namaste!” she called to him across the leaf-strewn ground. Cardinal raised his beak and smiled. Hummingbird flitted towards him and perched herself on a near-by wilting rose. They looked at each other. They were different in all the obvious ways: color, size, shape, but so___ similar in the quietest of ways. They loved to chirp and chip and chirp even when there was no moonlight left to see each other; they believed in destiny; loved almost all other species (except ones they ate); liked their vertebrae’s ruffled and rubbed; did not wait for magic to happen, but made magic happen; liked routine, but needed new adventures, and uniquely both were willing to reveal a vulnerability, a flaw, a broken wing for each other to see. Cardinal knew that she was cold, chilled, and that he would need to be her warmth. Hummingbird knew that she was his movement to new planes and new possibilities.

They looked at each other. As the last leaf fell, Hummingbird, her colors fading with the summer sky, and Cardinal, the only color in a world of gray, touched each other’s wings, and breathed under the formidable autumn sky.