From One Bird How to Sing

By Rose with Thorns

Prologue

The waves crashed along the beach, though the two lovers paid no attention to them. How could they, for-after all-they finally were in each others arms.

"I think this is a fresh start for us, my love," he whispered. He brought a hand up to her face, speckled with sand. She beamed at him, the wind tangling her hair and opening up his billowing shirt wider.

"Yes," she said. "I think so, too."

"And I think that's the biggest load of shit I've ever sat through," said Elizabeth as she lustily hit the 'Stop' button on the DVD player. Her friend looked up at her groggily. He was cute like that, she mused. But only until she realized he had forgotten whatever it was she'd been talking about prior to that adorable look.

"I thought you'd like it," Will said sleepily. The DVD player whirred slowly to a stop and Elizabeth slipped off the couch, padding over in sock-clad feet while glaring over her shoulder at him. "One of the girls in Victoria's said they liked it," he added, as if to defend the choice.

"You mean Melissa, the forty-something with a romance novel sticking out of her apron pocket and a self-proclaimed, abnormally large amount of love for her cats? Of course she would love it." Perhaps it was mean to talk about the dreamy-eyed waitress that way. She always did give Elizabeth an extra-large slice of pie-or rather, Will would order for the two of them and she'd serve it to him, smiling.

He scrambled up, as if aware that the night was closing to an end. "But it had what's-his-face-in-it. That guy with the bald head?"

Liz Swann snorted and gradually started moving towards the door with him following, a wave in her wake. She always led, regardless of the occasion. A lifetime of being a successful politician's daughter seemed to be her only explanation for that strange phenomenon.

He nodded, a finger running along the glossy black DVD case, just as he would her hair-one of his odder habits developed during their lifetime acquaintance. "I've got work tomorrow, so-"

She nodded, knowing. "Call me tomorrow night, then, alright?"

The kiss was brief, a peck on the cheek that left him blushing. "Yup." The creak of well worn construction boots and the following thuds of shoelaces and he was gone. Liz settled back onto the couch.

She really did love him in a brotherly way. It was one of those comfortable relationships right from the start. His mother had been Elizabeth's nanny during their younger years; she was deposited in his playpen on the very first day. After twenty three years of Halloweens in matching costumes made by his mother and earlier on, bubble baths at the same time, one could only presume that they either were the best of friends or absolutely hated one another. They were nothing like siblings, though. They'd shared their first kiss after school when her high-scale preparatory school let out in the third grade. He'd always held her hand when they crossed the street: it was a habit that still remained. Now, he'd continue to hold it, furtively casting glances in her direction to make sure it was fine.

And it was. She guessed.

Elizabeth frowned down at her toes at this. Part of her was very concerned that she did not have some burning, passionate love for him. His mother now grinned openly at her when she came over, as if knowing her son was going to ask her out any day now. Elizabeth would go over for tea, and then go out for a drink with Will when he returned from his job at the construction site. It was a pattern, a fixed routine. She could depend on it, just as she could depend on the sky being blue and grass being green and that 'I'm a minute away' from a client meant fifteen minutes on a good day in her beloved New York City.

Strike that, she thought, glancing out the windows to the bay, it was the ocean she loved. She had been born in a tiny town in Jamaica and had visited from time to time when she was younger, and still knew her mother.

Much younger, since the last time she'd talked to her was at least ten years ago.

From her window, Liz could see the waves as they crashed against the beach, and sometimes, above the sirens and the sounds of cars and shoes on pavement, she could hear she could even hear them. It left an emptiness in her, a strange feeling she couldn't quite understand, but it would make her take a step back and reexamine her life: the appointments, her public appearances for her father's sake, her own miserably floundering social life and it's marzipan-thick friends. Her hand would twitch, as if ready to purchase a ticket on the next plane to some tiny island.

And then reality would set in, and the governor's daughter would set about preparing for the next day, settling in an almost lethargic way into a well-worn routine that offered no surprises or disappointments she didn't already know about.

Funny thing about life like that, whenever you really get into it- I mean really get into that almost Zen-like state (that knitters talk about)-is that it always sends you something you'd never expect.

Always.

Author's notes:

The title is taken from an e e cummings poem called 'you shall above all things be glad and young'. And the full line two lines are

I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing

than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance