Doves and Peacocks

“We’ll be back soon” is something Hollia hears more often than “hello”.

The aviary does not fund itself. No, mother and father, who gave the aviary to their daughter as soon as she turned sixteen so that they could free their hands up for real, paying work, left for Sonora to keep the family alive.

It has been a long time since captive birds have been seen as holy symbols, and there is a growing notion among religious Astrans that the capture and caging of birds is, in fact, not condoned by Ihir. While the Candelabra aviary no longer turns more than a sliver of profit, the fortune of Hollia’s forebears, made off of the people's delirious fanaticism and their decidedly secular hunger for novelty combined, will be enough to keep it running for decades yet.

There is no perceptible reason it should be left standing, though. It is not necessity, but obligation, that keeps Hollia bound to her glorified birdcage: it is knowing she holds their very lives in the palm of her hand.

Hollia still stares out over the fields from the vantage of her porch sometimes. They are vast and windy, and she can hear the cicadas in the far-off trees, especially when it’s hot and the grass isn’t rustling. Candelabra Town drifts tiny in the distance, untouched by the wind. There’s the silhouette of the great beech tree down the road, a hundred tiers of branches weighed down by the nests of wild birds.

She sees them land sometimes, and cannot help but to feel a little rueful. Is her own gnarly little tree comparable to that one? Do captive birds see their free brethren and long for that which they can never have?

Mother and father return once a week to the aviary whose abandonment they attempted to wash their hands of by giving it to their daughter so she could perform the honours. They return once a week to daughter and grandmother upon this quiet meadow—asking after their health, wringing their hands, going through the motions.

“We’ll be back soon,” is how they greet her before they leave, as if disappointed that the aviary’s still there, that she continues to cling to the prison they are trying to demolish.

But she does not see a prison. She sees a beating heart, a haven, and she has too much love to give, love that no one else will take.

Hollia Canavere's heart aches as they close the door behind them, and one would be wrong to think she doesn’t occasionally contemplate leaving her birds to the mercy of the wild so that she can finally live. But those dreams are easily diluted, by guilt and love and love and guilt, and she continues to fill their dishes, and to arrange the leaves on the gnarly old tree, and there’s nothing there for her.