Different Ways of Thinking
A tiny patter along the windowsill, one that Annabel almost mistook for a leaf stuck against the glass pane. It was only the Starling. Her eyes widened, a chubby finger already pointing to the fireplace.
"There's a biscuit up there," she told him. "By the Royal Doulton bowl."
The Starling hopped along the sill before gliding across, taking the Arrowroot biscuit in his beak. He took it back to the window.
"Thank you, you dear thing," he said. "You always remember. These little treats make my visits all the merrier."
With a confused look in her brown eyes, she called across to him. The light made her golden curls look like a halo.
"Starling?"
"Yes?"
"What makes her so different?" Annabel glanced across the room as if she would be heard.
The Starling's eyes widened. "Oh, her. She's always been that way, child. All babies grow up and forget but not her. She never forgot how to hear the wind and talk to the birds, nor did she forget how the stars danced for her in their circus."
"I won't forget," Annabel told him, determined.
With a knowing chuckle, the Starling flapped his wings as if he were shrugging. "It can't be helped. Nobody remembers."
With a swift goodbye and the promise of a gift for the next visit, the Starling left. Annabel watched him go, tears welling in her eyes. She glanced across the nursery with a frown. The Starling was wrong, she told herself. She wouldn't forget.
Mary Poppins draped Jane's stockings at the fireplace, back turned to the cot. She had returned to find the Starling flying away and she had called after him- "Be gone, you horrid Sparrer!". From the tears shining in Annabel's eyes, she knew what they had spoken about.
That was the way things were. Mary would not explain herself; nobody needed to know why she thought differently to everyone else. Why she was able to remember all the mysteries of the universe that others so willingly forgot. Annabel would be no exception to that rule.