Is Someone There?
She wakes, bolt upright, sheets soaked through with sweat - her hair is plastered to her head as she finds her hands, scrabbling palms against the wetness of the bedclothes. Her mouth is dry, her tongue running over her teeth barely unsticking her parched lips from one another. It's still far too early for any regular person to be awake, and so her dressing-gown slips, feeling rougher than she remembers, over her skin. Her hair will have to dry, though she attempts to brush it through with hands that feel like paper, interrupted by her avian companion.
"Be an opener of doors. A gift consists not in what is done or given, but in the intention of the giver or doer," he says, too worried about their friends to bother sniping at her. She is, in turn, too recently awoken to entirely appreciate the quiet, simple gift he's given her.
"Thank you." She very nearly understood that.
He alights on her arm for the first time since they've met, shifting nervously from foot to foot. "You lack the season of all natures, sleep."
"I know. Thank you."
But he leads her outside, anyway, or to the doorstep at least. A sharp beak points out the tiny offering, which Olive settles her fingers around, plucking it up. The dry husk rubs raw against her palm. She blinks, twice, when the top half comes free.
She chokes on the dust.