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Description
you met magpie first when you were fifteen; straight out of luck and on the roads, unable and unwilling to cope with the meaning that came with death, and she offered you drugs and you didn’t say no, just shoved them in your pockets and never used them. you used to think she was a heroin addict. she had grey skin and it hung off her bones in loose flaps, and she had a face you could've mistaken for pretty, you think. once upon a time, her looks would have taken pages to describe, but now it was like some of the pages were missing, and she wasn't all there. her eyes were a bloodshot brown, and her hair was bleached so blonde that it was almost snapping at the ends whenever she walked. she wore this vest with armholes so big you could see the tops of her hips when she turned, and you found out that she didn’t wear a bra and you could see her tits from the same angle, flat as they were. you like to pretend that wasn't the first time you felt hot over a girl, but at least you know it wasn't the last.

you remember when magpie invited you back home, to the ratty apartment she and her friends had holed up and did drugs in. she lived up to her name; her mess of shiny friends and gaudy baubles was a pitiful attempt at making herself a nest to live in, you think. there were more just like her; boys and girls a bit older than you but still children all the same, all birds pecking away at the scraps left by society. there was crow and owl and wren and robin and more, but you still like to think that magpie was the most beautiful of them all. you could nearly envision her with corbeau feathers that only flashed green when they caught the light.

they called you quail and flocked around you like a family, keeping you warm during the freezing October nights in the flat which had no heating. they cared for you, and fed you and told you the maximum amount of time you could spend in the shower before the water got too cold to breathe. you always made sure to stay close to magpie, and she would give you her jacket and you think you still have it today. sometimes you would wake up and catch her sitting on the windowsill smoking a joint, staring at the sky which looked like death's robes. there were no stars there, the thick pollution of the inner city blocked all view to the heavens, and instead left you both staring at nothing and waiting for your melancholic lives to gain meaning, again for you, for the first time for her.

when you were sixteen she fucked you against the bank of the Thames; you're not sure if you initiated it or not but the way she slid her fingers inside you and curled them roughly was enough to make your hips buck and knuckles whiten tight against the railing of the barrier. you remember kissing her and she tasted of weed and how she her voice was smoky when she told you to come. you hung on to that moment because it was one of the rare times she spoke; she generally communicated through looks and mumbles, yet charisma and leadership dripped off her like treacle. your legs wobbled uncertainly as you slid down on to the ground as she walked away, heels clacking on the concrete. you focused as hard as possible on the graffiti on the wall opposing you, trying to forget that the whole incident ever happened but grasping on to it with all of your being at the same time.

you tried to avoid the sex part of the strange relationship you two shared, but it was unavoidable at best when you couldn't sleep without her presence anymore. you had kept up appearances at school and occasionally you'd pass there with wren on the way to get more drugs, and they would see you as the little quail in a jacket twice your size, and people you'd once called friends would try to catch your attention, slander you or both. you always kept walking, holding on to magpie's damn jacket, desperate for her to come and take you away and you might never have to deal with life again. you never thought yourself suicidal, but you supposed that if the opportunity to slowly slip under the ocean arose, you would do it leaving nothing but a trinket jacket behind.

magpie's jacket was special to her, and therefore special to you. she had built it up from a cheap black jacket over a period of ten years, she said, and before that it had been her brother's. there were patches on it, bits were ripped and sewn up, badges, patches, shiny adornments and general use had turned it into something unique that only she could really appreciate, but you loved it more than most things. there were painted stripes in green and blue and white that she said were magpie markings, and you remember how she made sure you kept it perfectly clean so that she'd never have to wash them off.

magpie got her tattoos when she was almost twenty, made your corbeau dreams a reality. she said it was for a birthday present, even though it was December, and her birthday was April. it took her almost eight months in total and it was like the tattoos were giving her life. she shaved off half her hair and got the wings of a magpie all down either arm, beginning from her spinal column. slowly her skin became coloured again, she talked, she didn’t fuck you as hard and leave you in an undisclosed location. her eyes would shine when she thought about her next visit to the parlour, where she was getting the tattoos for free in exchange for drugs, and her good mood penetrated the hopelessness that had surrounded your avian group for so long. you were nearing seventeen by this point, and you watched as the expert artist painted her wings. the tips of the feathers extended right up her middle fingers on each hand, the carefully separated tips of each wing feather encircled her wrist, forearm, upper arms, and they started huge and beautiful from pinpricks in the centre of her spine, etched with inspiring ink.

there is a picture of you two, her with an arm around your shoulders and smiling, right side tattoos completely coloured and left side half done. her hair was blue at the ends, a birthday present from one of the boys in the flat trying to convince her she wasn't a lesbian, and she was wearing pearly green leggings and no shoes and that top you saw her in the very first day. it's outside the flat, near the edge of the river, and the ground is dusty and you remember that day well. it smelled of concrete and sweat and you were wearing shorts and a long vest, like hers, but with some sanity. you were short and skinny and bumpy, she was tall and bony but graceful, and you think that you could love her if she wasn't her. you have that picture and every day you look at it and feel like dying.

magpie didn't think she couldn't fly, but when she fell from the cliffs on June 18th 2007 you remember the smile on her face as she whispered, I love you, and how she spread her wings and flew away. they loved you and consoled you after the suicide (they said it was suicide, but you knew better. that's why she was never found, you told them all, because she never hit the water, she flew away and never came back for us, because she needed to be free). you kept her jacket and moved out and went back to school four years later. owl became your best friend and you are together today, wren died of heroin overdose, and you never heard about the rest. magpie still haunts your dreams, fleeting as though your love was; you were over legal when she vanished and you're nearly thirty five now and you can still taste her lips and her smile, and you see her in the glint of the magpie's wings, in mirrors and windows, in stoner's drug smoke; her hips so bony and eyes that held secrets you never even learned.

Description
you met magpie first when you were fifteen; straight out of luck and on the roads, unable and unwilling to cope with the meaning that came with death, and she offered you drugs and you didn’t say no, just shoved them in your pockets and never used them. you used to think she was a heroin addict. she had grey skin and it hung off her bones in loose flaps, and she had a face you could've mistaken for pretty, you think. once upon a time, her looks would have taken pages to describe, but now it was like some of the pages were missing, and she wasn't all there. her eyes were a bloodshot brown, and her hair was bleached so blonde that it was almost snapping at the ends whenever she walked. she wore this vest with armholes so big you could see the tops of her hips when she turned, and you found out that she didn’t wear a bra and you could see her tits from the same angle, flat as they were. you like to pretend that wasn't the first time you felt hot over a girl, but at least you know it wasn't the last.

you remember when magpie invited you back home, to the ratty apartment she and her friends had holed up and did drugs in. she lived up to her name; her mess of shiny friends and gaudy baubles was a pitiful attempt at making herself a nest to live in, you think. there were more just like her; boys and girls a bit older than you but still children all the same, all birds pecking away at the scraps left by society. there was crow and owl and wren and robin and more, but you still like to think that magpie was the most beautiful of them all. you could nearly envision her with corbeau feathers that only flashed green when they caught the light.

they called you quail and flocked around you like a family, keeping you warm during the freezing October nights in the flat which had no heating. they cared for you, and fed you and told you the maximum amount of time you could spend in the shower before the water got too cold to breathe. you always made sure to stay close to magpie, and she would give you her jacket and you think you still have it today. sometimes you would wake up and catch her sitting on the windowsill smoking a joint, staring at the sky which looked like death's robes. there were no stars there, the thick pollution of the inner city blocked all view to the heavens, and instead left you both staring at nothing and waiting for your melancholic lives to gain meaning, again for you, for the first time for her.

when you were sixteen she fucked you against the bank of the Thames; you're not sure if you initiated it or not but the way she slid her fingers inside you and curled them roughly was enough to make your hips buck and knuckles whiten tight against the railing of the barrier. you remember kissing her and she tasted of weed and how she her voice was smoky when she told you to come. you hung on to that moment because it was one of the rare times she spoke; she generally communicated through looks and mumbles, yet charisma and leadership dripped off her like treacle. your legs wobbled uncertainly as you slid down on to the ground as she walked away, heels clacking on the concrete. you focused as hard as possible on the graffiti on the wall opposing you, trying to forget that the whole incident ever happened but grasping on to it with all of your being at the same time.

you tried to avoid the sex part of the strange relationship you two shared, but it was unavoidable at best when you couldn't sleep without her presence anymore. you had kept up appearances at school and occasionally you'd pass there with wren on the way to get more drugs, and they would see you as the little quail in a jacket twice your size, and people you'd once called friends would try to catch your attention, slander you or both. you always kept walking, holding on to magpie's damn jacket, desperate for her to come and take you away and you might never have to deal with life again. you never thought yourself suicidal, but you supposed that if the opportunity to slowly slip under the ocean arose, you would do it leaving nothing but a trinket jacket behind.

magpie's jacket was special to her, and therefore special to you. she had built it up from a cheap black jacket over a period of ten years, she said, and before that it had been her brother's. there were patches on it, bits were ripped and sewn up, badges, patches, shiny adornments and general use had turned it into something unique that only she could really appreciate, but you loved it more than most things. there were painted stripes in green and blue and white that she said were magpie markings, and you remember how she made sure you kept it perfectly clean so that she'd never have to wash them off.

magpie got her tattoos when she was almost twenty, made your corbeau dreams a reality. she said it was for a birthday present, even though it was December, and her birthday was April. it took her almost eight months in total and it was like the tattoos were giving her life. she shaved off half her hair and got the wings of a magpie all down either arm, beginning from her spinal column. slowly her skin became coloured again, she talked, she didn’t fuck you as hard and leave you in an undisclosed location. her eyes would shine when she thought about her next visit to the parlour, where she was getting the tattoos for free in exchange for drugs, and her good mood penetrated the hopelessness that had surrounded your avian group for so long. you were nearing seventeen by this point, and you watched as the expert artist painted her wings. the tips of the feathers extended right up her middle fingers on each hand, the carefully separated tips of each wing feather encircled her wrist, forearm, upper arms, and they started huge and beautiful from pinpricks in the centre of her spine, etched with inspiring ink.

there is a picture of you two, her with an arm around your shoulders and smiling, right side tattoos completely coloured and left side half done. her hair was blue at the ends, a birthday present from one of the boys in the flat trying to convince her she wasn't a lesbian, and she was wearing pearly green leggings and no shoes and that top you saw her in the very first day. it's outside the flat, near the edge of the river, and the ground is dusty and you remember that day well. it smelled of concrete and sweat and you were wearing shorts and a long vest, like hers, but with some sanity. you were short and skinny and bumpy, she was tall and bony but graceful, and you think that you could love her if she wasn't her. you have that picture and every day you look at it and feel like dying.

magpie didn't think she couldn't fly, but when she fell from the cliffs on June 18th 2007 you remember the smile on her face as she whispered, I love you, and how she spread her wings and flew away. they loved you and consoled you after the suicide (they said it was suicide, but you knew better. that's why she was never found, you told them all, because she never hit the water, she flew away and never came back for us, because she needed to be free). you kept her jacket and moved out and went back to school four years later. owl became your best friend and you are together today, wren died of heroin overdose, and you never heard about the rest. magpie still haunts your dreams, fleeting as though your love was; you were over legal when she vanished and you're nearly thirty five now and you can still taste her lips and her smile, and you see her in the glint of the magpie's wings, in mirrors and windows, in stoner's drug smoke; her hips so bony and eyes that held secrets you never even learned.