The woman in the yellow jacket arrived the next day, too lost in her own world to notice my mutilated wings. She stood in my courtyard, and the two of us spent the moment pitying ourselves and trying hard to imagine a sorrow greater than what our insides felt. I didn't understand why I defended her, why I stood on principle for such a miserable, self-loathing creature. Why I thought she was different than the endless homogeneity of her people. Why I thought there was a deeper meaning in putting on a yellow rain coat on an overcast day when there wasn't one. She did it because wanted to. Because she could. And for that same reason, she stripped off her coat and lay down in the snow in just her off-white sundress and her knee high rain boats. Her breathing slowed and her eyes fluttered shut. She was no longer crying.
My brothers and I have witnessed a similar spectacle before. When I was younger, one of my brothers took me and some of the other young ones to a small farm on the outskirts of Vienna. Mind you, that was a long time ago, like before steam engines and jello shots and tooth paste that comes in a tube. We all piled into one of those picturesque barn with these gigantic red doors and wads of hay stuffed into every conceivable nook and cranny. He told us that this was a real special occasion, because what he was about to demonstrate took years for him to set up. He said that in five years time, he would come back to this barn with a human in tow to show us what happens when we zap them back in time. We crowded around, pressing our stone bodies into a ring about my brother, all while being ever so careful not to take our hands from our eyes. The air shifted, and we knew our brother had done it. We heard the frightened creature gasping for breath. We heard him muttering to himself as he started to panic. I was near the middle of the pack, and being well behaved as I was back then, I waited until I felt a touch on my shoulder before I stole a look at it.
It certainly was a man, or what was left of one, anyway. He was truly a pathetic creature to look at: his eyes wild and shot with blood, face a pummeled mess. He was withering on the dirt floor, chipped nails clawing into the dusty soil, for the bones in his legs were fractured. My brother must have had a great deal of fun with him, because gibberish garbage and moans of desperation were spewing from his lips like water from a fountain. I was intrigued, and repulsed, and … delighted. Dinner and a show never looked so good as it did in that moment.
Then the man did something I never expected. He lay back, shut his eyes, and opened his mind to me. His voice, the stream of his raw memories: the earthy smell of the fields in autumn, holidays with his parents at the beach, sex with a woman with long blond hair and freckled checks. The record of his life would be something I could never forget. I listened to his soul—and he begged for me to end him.
I, of course, did nothing to aid the man. I listened to my brother tear his body to shreds, the squelch of wet skin being pulled apart from muscle and bone. But that moment he allowed me to see into him, And I experienced a moment of true inner harmony. Of everything not really mattering and serenity washing over me. That was the only other time I had been near someone who had come to terms with their own death.
But I would not allow the woman with the yellow rain coat to go out so easily.
My knee touched the buried cobblestones as I scooped her out from the snow with one arm. My other hand swaddled her body with her discarded jacked, then gently draped my stone fingers over the thin lids of her eyes—protecting her from me. She barely had a breath, her exhales were marked by ghostly whispers of a cloud. The warmth of her body was faint, but it was heat enough to chase the ache from the stumps that protruded from my back. Her limp, bare legs knocked together as I rose to standing in the midst of my courtyard, cradling the woman like a child. Then I ran.
Over the ivy, past the moss covered crumbling brick and mortar. Down the mountainside, crashing through icicles hanging from tree branches without a second thought. Legs pumping faster than the human eye could process. Feet digging divots into unblemished snow. Faster, faster. Holding her tightly to not jostle my precious cargo. The beats of her heart growing further and further apart.
Hold on, little one. Your people are not much farther now. Hold on.