Featherless
The morning Baby Rose was born, was one I will never forget. Her deep brown eyes glowed and seemed to warm all those in our hospital room. My nurse called all the other nurses to come see her. Each of them, short and blonde, were in complete awe of her beauty and lack of tears. Fang was much more caring that I had expected him to be. Instead of sitting on the white sofa in the corner of the room, he grinned at us, proud of his hatchling. He stood by me, his shadow enveloping mine, and kept to himself. But his eyes lit up and once the dimples in his cheeks appeared, they never left. She was just like us in just about every way. Except, she was missing something. Something that defined each of us as inhuman. She would not have our freedom, but would not live in constant danger. She lay there, smiling at us quietly. It was as though she knew how lucky she was not to have feathers in her back.
After two days of recovery, the three of us left for San Francisco. Fang and I had decided to let Baby Rose have as much of a normal life as we could give her, and to do that, he and I would just have to blend in as much as possible. We had been created in a lab, kept in cages, and we wanted nothing more than to keep Rose from living like we had. Fang was suddenly so much closer to me, all the time. He acted as though he had been a father for years, the way he spoke softly to her, constantly offering to carry her, or be of any service to she and I both. I had never seen him so happy. He looked forward to arriving in the city and creating a home for us.
Rose slept, wrapped in a couple of Fang's T-shirts, the four hours it took us to fly to San Francisco. We couldn't exactly look at housing, simply because neither of us thought a house would be sold to a family with winged parents. So, Fisherman's Wharf was what we decided on. There was something about the tacky shops selling cheap souvenirs and the ever-amusing sea lions that drew us there. Even Rose showed signs of enjoyment as she giggled at the ocean's blue-green tide washing away the shore and the constant smell of fresh Dungeness Crab. With the hundreds of people swirling around us, it was not hard to exist and be hidden at the same time. However, once in a while a small child would innocently ask us why we had big sweatshirts on even in the sunshine. Fang would just smile at the child and whisper under his breath, "We are unlike you," then suddenly disappear into the crowds of people.
We found a large alley away from the piers immediately after we arrived. Fang and I set up a small campsite-like area for us to sleep and eat.
"We can move around the City every two to three weeks," I decided. "Rose will learn early on to quickly adapt to her environment this way." We both knew that in order to keep our new family together, safely, we could never let our guards down. Erasers were and always would be a constant threat, so we simply braced ourselves for their arrival.
The first night we slept in our new home, Rose didn't want to keep her eyes or mouth closed. She screamed and cried for what seemed like hours, until Fang finally jammed his head underneath multiple pillows and fell asleep. After coming close to tearing all my hair out, I decided to grab Rose and fly across the city. The lights of the bridge were covered with a thick layer of fog, but all the car and building lights looked like a second sky, with trillions of moving stars only a few yards from us. Rose's crying ceased and her eyes widened. She stared at all the glowing dots racing around underneath us and blissfully drifted off into a deep sleep.