“Nu?” She inched towards the hunched figure in the alley, her wings drawn back and tensed. The shaking figure turned its head towards her and she gasped. It was Nu, aged far beyond his years, broken and ragged, and very alone.

“Nu, what happened?” She leaned down and reached a hand towards his face, but he recoiled as his big eyes stared up at her in fear.

“Mel?” he rasped, his voice hoarse, unrecognizable.

“Yes, Nu, it’s me! It’s me.” Nu’s eyes lit up and the youth returned to his face. He grabbed her hands as tears began to stream from his eyes and slowly stood, knees shaking.

“I missed you, Mel,” he whispered, falling into her arms.

“We have to get you home, Nu.” She was trying to keep herself level-headed.

“They don’t want me,” he slurred, burrowing into her chest. He’d missed her even more than she’d missed him. She understood the situation and realized what must have happened.

“They found out, didn’t they?” Nu said nothing in response to her question, only held onto her tighter and closed his eyes. “Oh Nu, it’s okay. I’ll take you home.” She searched for his wings, but found them a tattered mess of feathers and blood. She hugged him close and whispered in his ear, “Hold on.”

Soaring above the filthy streets of the city, she regretted not taking the bus so that Nu could fall asleep, but then remembered the kinds of enemies you can make on the streets, and decided that flying was best.

Her nest was on the edge of town, in a neighborhood that wasn’t quite a ghetto, but was far from a suburb.

“Jes!” she shouted from the doorway, struggled to hold onto Nu. The door opened a crack and a blue eye peaked out.

“Oh my god, what happened?” Jes swung the door open wide, revealing the soft light of the room.

“He’s hurt, can you help me get him to the couch?” Jes rushed to Nu and Mel released him into Jes’s arms with relief. With little effort, Jes had Nu lying comfortably asleep on the couch and had guided Mel to the kitchen, where she had dinner ready.

“Food!” Mel sighed, collapsing into one of the chairs around the kitchen table. Frozen mixed vegetables, red beans, and pork bits and wild rice; it tasted like a gourmet meal after her apparent lack of food inside her stomach. She hadn’t eaten much in a few days save for the spare energy bar because of her busy work schedule. Jes continued to spoon food onto her plate as she attempted to tell Jes her reasons for being out so late.

“Jared asked me to deliver the packages, and so I’d flown them there, but there was this huge delay. So of course, I had to wait almost all day just to sign a piece of paper.” She shoveled another few spoonfuls of vegetables into her mouth while Jes daintily picked at hers and waited for Mel to continue.

“Well, you know Jared, when he saw that I’d been waiting, he took me back into the warehouse to show me around. Then he insisted on buying me a new coat, ‘seeing the tattered state yours is in’ is what he said. What a jerk.” She felt that her story was complete, and dug into the pork and rice.

“That explains the coat,” Jes pointed at Mel, “but what about the injured young boy you brought to my doorstep.”

“You don’t recognize him?”

“Should I? Who is he, Mel?”

“That’s Nu,” Mel said with a sad smile. Jes gaped at her open-mouthed and gazed off into the other room at the sleeping mass of feathers, skin, and bones…

“Nu?”

“I found him in the alley next to the warehouse. He was… with a bunch of pigeons, next to the steam vent, you know, where the warm air comes out? I heard him whimpering and followed the sounds, and there he was.” Jes was shaking her head, and Mel’d almost lost her appetite remembering with horror the sinking sensation in her gut when she’d recognized the lump of feathers in the alley. “You remember his problems?”

“With his parents? Of course.”

“They found out, that was how this happened.”

“They threw him out? Over something so silly? Well, I wouldn’t put it past them. I never did like them.”

“Either way, he’s here now, so we’ve got to take care of him, right?”

“I thought Peko was supposed to be taking care of him.” Jes looked nervous talking about Peko, and so Mel tried to change the subject.

“That’s what I thought too. Nu’s going to have to explain himself.”

“When he’s ready, I know he’ll tell us.”

They ate in silence from there, brooding on recent events and conversations. More than once Mel looked over at the couch, just making sure Nu was still lying there, that it wasn’t all a dream. He was always there.

As Mel stood at the sink, Jes came up from behind and wrapped her arms around Mel’s waist. Mel smiled and turned to kiss her briefly, but then went back to doing dishes.

“But-“ Jes tried to protest.

“Not tonight. I’m tired, there’s Nu here, and I need my sleep. I still love you, baby, don’t worry. Just not tonight.”

Jes stuck out her lower lip, but still helped her dry and put away the dishes.

“I’ll lock the door tonight, both sides. You remember where the key is?”

“Yep.”

It had been a long day, and as Mel retired to bed late that night, she thought back on the old days they used to spend so often with young Nu. Jes curled around Mel’s body and gave her feelings of safety that she so desperately needed. Despite her exhaustion, sleep came slowly, and her dreams were both disturbing and fragmented.

OoOoO

He was soaring in the sunlight with him, and they were circling around and around each other, laughing and shouting, finally landing in the grassy field below.

“Peko,” He laughed, “we will always fly together, right? Forever.”

Peko smiled at him, but suddenly the scene changed, and his face went dark. He was being dragged away, and there was fear and hurt on his face as he reached out to him…

Peko lay on the dirt ground, bloody and wingless. Lightning flashed in the sky, thunder rumbled, and it began to rain.

“Peko!” He shouted, falling to his side. Lightning flashed again and there was blood on his hands that just wouldn’t wash off with the rain. “Peko!” his cries echoed in the empty expanse of darkness…

He woke up, quickly checking his hands for blood, before sighing and closing his eyes again. He was warm, inside a nest instead of on the street, and that was all that mattered right then.

Then the memories of the last few weeks came flooding back to him and he groaned. So that hadn’t been a dream after all. He felt hungry all of a sudden, and in need of a shower, so he decided to get up from the couch. He recognized the nest almost immediately as Mel’s, and sighed as he recalled the horrible state she’d found him in, back in the alley. Thank god for Mel. As always, she was there for him when everyone else had faded away, people like Peko. He cursed himself and tried to remember not to blame other people for his problems. Instead, he focused on the present, getting a shower and getting something to eat.

His muscles felt less stiff than they had after a night on a couch instead of on the streets, and he quickly abandoned the sofa in search of a bathroom. He found one near the back of the three-room nest, and ran to it, locking the door behind him.

There was a mirror above the sink, and he shied from it, avoiding his own reflection. He stripped of his grimy, bloody clothes, quickly remembered how to use a toilet, and jumped in the shower. It all came back to him so quickly even after those weeks with no practice. He remembered how to turn on the water, to make it a shower instead of a bath, to adjust the temperature, and soon was scrubbing the dirt and dried blood from his skin and what was left of his wings. It wasn’t until he turned off the water and dried off with a spare towel that he realized he needed some clothes.

Wrapping the towel around his waist, he went directly to Mel and Jes’s bedroom closet and found their men’s clothes, a set of which he nabbed and changed into.

Soon he was clean and dressed, but desperately hungry. He laughed when he opened a cabinet and discovered his favorite cereal sitting on the shelf just waiting for him. They still bought my favorite cereal, they still remembered, he thought. Taking the whole box, he plopped back down on the couch and pointed the zapper at the telly. He flipped past news of recent suicide bombings and entrancing music videos for something a little simpler: cartoons. He giggled at the cartoon violence, carefree for the first time in a while. He was still sitting on the couch, munching cereal and watching cartoons, when Jes stumbled drowsily into the room.

“Hey, Nu,” she cooed, just like a mother hen, and he smiled at her through a mouthful of chocolate puffs of cereal. Jes disappeared into the kitchen to get herself some breakfast while Nu turned back to the screen. Soon Mel shuffled into the room, nodding at him with a grim face, but saying nothing. Mel shuffled her slippers to the shower, and Jes came to join him on the couch with a proper bowl of cereal, some milk, a spoon, and a bowl. They waited for Mel, giggling at the cartoons, and eating many helpings of cereal.

Mel joined them only after they’d watched two shows, sitting on the far end of the couch beside Jes, moodily shoving cereal into her mouth. At length, Jes leaned over to Nu and whispered, “Definitely not a morning person.” He smiled at this, remembering the old days when they would, all four of them, go have breakfast as Molly’s Pancakes on Saturdays. Mel was always rude towards the waitresses, so they would laugh at the funny things she would say to them. Now, things seemed more desperate, and their laughter was nervous. Mel was trying very hard to be polite, not saying anything so that she wouldn’t accidentally say something upsetting.

When Nu was full of cereal and cartoons, he turned off the telly-Jes shouting an accusation at him that he was ruining her childhood-and went to replace the cereal box. When he returned, he sat back on the couch and tried conversing with Jes.

“Morning,” he mumbled to her, shifting his gaze so that he didn’t have to look directly at her, and because he was reluctant to get into a conversation with anyone from his regular life for fear the conversation would turn serious.

“Good morning, you feel okay?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I feel okay. I had to borrow some clean clothes, though.” He grinned at her, trying to make his bloody clothes into a joke.

Jes snorted. “Well, that’s stating the obvious. Where’re your old ones?”

With a lurch in his stomach, he realized that he’d left them on the bathroom floor. “There in there,” he said guiltily, pointing towards the bathroom.

“Ah,” Jes sighed knowingly, smiling in his direction.

He tried to smile back, but the memories were flooding his brain, taking control.

“No! You can’t, you can’t take him! I won’t let you take him, let him go!”

Blinding lights, men in suits, Nu sobbing, tears dripping onto the table.

They let him see Peko one last time.

“Peko!” No response. He opened his mouth to speak, but no sounds came out. They’d killed his voice, his beautiful voice.

“How dare you!” Nu growled at the guards, lunging at them.

They dragged him, kicking and screaming, out the door, away from Peko, away from his love, the terror on Peko’s face etched in Nu’s memory forever…”

Nu leaned over and hugged Jes, who drew back at first, but then settled into the embrace.

“I missed you guys,” he mumbled, and Jes merely stroked his hair. He could feel her longing to know what had happened to him in those months that he’d failed to call them, but he wasn’t ready to talk about it, not then.