*****
Sneaking a gargantuan bird cage into an apartment complex that was in tatters in more areas than it was stable proved to be much easier than Rosetta had anticipated. Since there was no one seated at the front desk, all she had had to do was walk in and avoid allowing her weary arms to drop the heavy load and alert whoever might have been working in the back room with broken monitors that were supposed to be for security camera surveillance.
Once Rosetta made it to her room on the third floor, she fumbled for the key and shoved it eagerly into the lock. She practically fell into her entryway when the door opened, and the cage squeaked in annoyance when she lowered it to the ground. Sighing with relief, she peeled off the soft, fuzzy sweater that had been hanging over her shoulders and let it hang on one of the hooks on the door. Her backpack followed suit, landing with a clunk. The whole house seemed to be saturated in gray, and Rosetta took immense pleasure in lighting it up, flicking the switches on the wall and letting the lightbulbs affixed to the ceiling pour faux sunshine into the living room. She let her fingers brush against the colorful bindings of the stories lodged in her bookcase as she set the cage on top of it. She had been hoping to reread a few of her favorite chapters for the umpteenth time, to become entranced with a fantasy world of enchanted arrows, forbidden caves, and clear-cut lines between good and evil, but upon glancing at the time, she knew it was most likely too late tonight.
She pondered her options for a moment. She had a few hours to slog through before her meeting with Luka—hours that felt just as much like a prison wall as they did a shield. She could always ignore the responsibilities that were sitting like boulders in her backpack, and then she would most certainly have time to lose herself in the colorful worlds of monsters and heroes that always seemed so much more tantalizing than anything her life had to offer.
A thought struck her and, for a few seconds, she forgot how to breathe. What if stories are just like dreams? she wondered, a raw streak of fascination gripping her. She had lost herself in thoughts of realized dreams through the entire walk home, and her mind was swimming in musings that felt a bit like magic disguised as prose. What if heroes were real, but in being so, did not appear to be heroes because they failed to meet the precedents that fiction imposed? What if they came to save, but only did so in small ways instead of on vast battlefields, drenched in the blood of their enemies? What if, instead, they merely braved the rain that consumed the lives of the sad, the lost, and the lonely, just to lead the poor souls to a place where they could feel the warmth of the sun kiss their cheeks again?
Rosetta's mind wandered to memories of Rachel's hand tightly clutching hers as Rosetta led her from the darkness and brokenness of their home to somewhere beautiful. It was always a different place—the park, the top floor of some building in the heart of the city, a secluded path in the forest. Rachel had always looked so thankful in those precious moments, and there had been so much light in her eyes. Rosetta fleetingly allowed herself to consider that she might have been a hero, if only to the one person who truly needed her to be.
An impatient trill from the birdcage ripped Rosetta's mind from such tinsel-woven thoughts. She was no hero. A survivor, perhaps. But a hero? Doing what little she could as a child to keep herself and her family afloat had been more a necessity than a grandiose gesture of heroism. "What do you want, birdie?" she asked sweetly, slipping her slender fingers between the bars of the cage to soothingly stroke the finch's head. The little bird certainly brightened up the room; that much, Rosetta could not deny. She wondered how the poor thing had gotten injured and hoped with all her night that it was not the work of some sadistic person with an urge to destroy beautiful things to advance some sort of sick power complex. People who were willing to mar innocence in order to fuel their unnecessary ego ranked very low in her mind when it came to respect.
The bird pulled itself to its feet with some difficulty and hopped over to the empty bowl, giving it a dissatisfied peck. "Thirsty?" Rosetta asked. She slid the door of the cage open and pulled the bone-dry bowl from inside, taking care to keep the bird well out of the way for fear that she might try to hitch a ride to the outside. Rosetta was growing quite fond of the tiny thing, but she was hardly in a mood to clean bird droppings from one of her favorite rugs. She filled the bowl and returned it, smiling as the bird pulled itself up to the edge and dipped its beak into the water.
"There you go," she crooned. "I guess I should get something to eat, too, huh?" she admitted. She headed for the kitchen and whipped up a bowl of soup that she ate with the always-lovely complement of homework to make her head whirl with confusion. She puzzled over the problems and equations long after the bowl was empty and soon lost track of time. The next time she reminded herself to look at the clock, she realized that only twenty minutes stood between her and Luka, and they were quickly exiting the nebulous stuff that constituted as the present in a single-file fashion. Rosetta took a deep breath and stood up, pushing her hair behind her ears.
"It's time."