Veronica was Born a Bird

Here is another illustration I did originally for a friends poem but have written a new unrelated story to go with it here for my blog!

Veronica's mother was a robin. She had a rounded red chest the color of an autumn sunset. She had a merry tweet the chimed through sky. She met Veronica's father one day while flying in a new neighborhood. They saw each other, he trilled confidently and puffed out his own orange chest, and they fell in love and created little Veronica. Veronica hatched from her blue egg one late morning in early fall. Everything was normal as normal can be for a baby robin until Veronica's two week birthday. Instead of growing a longer, more mature beak, she had grown a little, itty-bitty human nose. In another month, Veronica would be sporting a human head with a little bird body. By the time she was a full grown bird, she wasn't a bird at all but a person. Veronica missed flight dearly and she had fond memories from her childhood of flying in the sky. But there were perks to being a human. She loved language! She liked hearing people talk, or sing and she loved reading books. She loved understanding the beauty of a well constructed sentence. She also loved having fingers. She could do all sorts of things with her fingers and thumb. She could use a pencil to draw a picture, she could pick up interesting objects she found on the seashore, she could open doors and do cartwheels and shake hands of interesting strangers. Even though Veronica was a human and no longer a bird, there was still something about her that was bird. She had a magic with birds. Birds weren't afraid of her like they were of most people. Birds wanted to be her friend. They fluttered down from trees, or swooped from telephone wires to land on her shoulder or outstretched finger. They chirped into her ear, and Veronica always understood exactly what they said. Veronica felt she was likely the only person who was bilingual in bird and human. She decided she would write a book from the voice of the birds. But she worried. Birds knew some secrets she didn't know if humans really wanted to hear. Birds were wise in a way that would be difficult for the humans to truly understand. But the birds could teach the humans something, and Veronica was the only one who could be that bridge. So even though the secrets of the birds may shake the very foundation of what humans call reality, she knew she must reveal it to them. She just hoped they could handle it.