Clay Pigeons.

It was three days since you last called. No, I should clarify, since you answered. Since you answered your damn phone and stopped breaking protocol.

And it’s not like you didn’t know the rules. You needed to check in once every day. Not every twenty-four hours. Every day. Thursday before midnight, and then Friday, just as the day turned, counted as two check ins. Yet you never stretched it like that, always called at noon sharp, another day where you were human and in vicinity of your landline.

Mark had been huffing and puffing since day two. But I assured him this wasn’t like you; that something big and horrible and terrible must have happened. Maybe you were laying prone on the floor of your living room, and I was sheltered here wondering why you weren’t calling, while I should have been the one calling for help.

By day three I was spiraling. You were caught in a trap. You were dismembered and possibly disemboweled. You had lost all sanity and feeling.

Mark warned me that twenty-four hours more and we would need to call in Control. I snapped and informed him I was perfectly aware of that, as well as I was perfectly aware of what Control would do to you.

I pleaded with him to give me your address. It was against every rule in the book, but I was sure he would understand, after all you had been so diligent with it all, we never had to ask you for anything, you always did your check-ins and checkups by yourself.

The phone kept ringing.

By day four he relented.

The first thing I noticed was the curtains. They were green, and closed shut. A flyer was on your porch, flapping furiously in the wind. Its pages turned, advertising deals in meat and shampoo.

Your house was small, with flaying blue paint, and a wraparound porch. You had plants, and their leaves were dropping in thirst.

I knocked on your door twice. You had one of these old looking knockers, leaving the smell of iron lingering in my fingernails.

I don’t know what I expected, a hovel perhaps or a burrow hole, but everything looked very human to me. Or maybe it was all an act, and you were living in the garden hut.

I circled the house, looking for any signs of life, and found none. Windchimes were swaying softly in the distance, filling the air with a clicking sound. It sounded like a clock counting down.

I knew I shouldn’t, and under any other circumstances I wouldn’t, but I pressed my nose to your windows, one by one, hoping for any movement or sound from within. I found myself scanning the air for the smell of your dead body, but then I stopped. Maybe I was giving you too much credit. Maybe it was all and act, and you were all the way to the border by now.

Mark had given me the security key. All Agency approved houses had one, even though you never knew. It must have been horrible to know that someone could enter your house at any time. Or at least that was what Mark had said when I asked him, and then chose not to ask anything more.

The door creaked, letting in an arc of sunlight. The first thing I noticed was the mirror on the floor; shards spreading in almost a perfect diameter.

The second thing I noticed was the pigeon.

It flapped furiously around the couch, leaving talon marks on the fabric. The couch matched the curtains, was the first thought I had. The second one was that it was you.

“Veronica?” I asked, and my voice trembled, because this didn’t make sense.

And then the pigeon talked; and it was you. “Amelia?” And the pigeon couldn’t cry, but I swear I heard its voice break. “Amelia, I can’t turn back.”

I closed the door behind me and reached for the light switch. “What do you mean you can’t turn back?”

“I can’t turn back,” you echoed, and flew to the mirror. Your image multiplied in each shard, until three, four, a flock of pigeons were staring back at me. “I don’t know why, I-” You paused for a second, and hoped from one tiny foot to the other. “I can’t remember how I look like anymore.”

“Veronica, this is nonsense,” I said, because I had to stick to Protocol, it was our only chance to avoid Control after all. “Have you tried your memory exercises? You have been so diligent with them.”

The pigeon huffed. “You think I don’t know that?”

And something about it startled me to my core, there was this animal, barely reaching up to my ankle, yet it was you. The fortysomething woman to survive the Shifting experiments, turning from a mole to a lion in the blink of an eye, and then back to human again. You had survived the monitors and the testing, and the labs, only to be stuck as a pigeon. This was ridiculous.

I got to my knees, because frankly, it was embarrassing to have to look down to see you. “Veronica, Control will be here in less than six hours. We need to prove them you are lucid, and most of all, human.”

Maybe it was because you were less than a foot tall, but your voice was very small all of a sudden. “I am perfectly lucid, Amelia. As for human-” There was a sound that might have been a laugh. “I simply don’t know how to be that anymore.”

“Don’t say that!” I gasped. “At least don’t say that out loud!”

There was a long silence. And then, “Can I trust you?”

I almost laughed. You could turn into a bear if you wanted; tear me in half. I broke into your house. I have been monitoring you every single day for the past five years. I was trying to beat Control in its own game. The windchime kept ringing.

“I can help you if you want.” I all but ignored your question. I had been nothing but a surveillance camera to you for half a decade. “But you have to promise me that you will turn back.”

“Help me how?”

“I can call the Agency for you. You can do the speaking.” I paused for a second. “This is the reason you haven’t called, right? Because you don’t have, um, limbs? You can’t pick up the phone?” I sounded irrational even to my own ears. Of course, the pigeon couldn’t pick up the damn landline. It had no hands.

“You would do that?”

“I would. But only if you promise to turn back by nightfall.”

Your voice cracked. “I don’t know if I can promise that. I don’t know how to do that. I- I don’t remember my own face.”

“Nonsense,” I called again. “I will help you remember your face just fine.” And I picked up the landline. Mark was confused but relieved. Remarked how I had worried for nothing, and maybe I hadn’t reached you yet, but as soon as you show me, you had to tell me to turn back and stop being such a fool. That everything was okay, and you were fine, and everything was fine, and nothing would go wrong ever, ever again. He sounded like a preacher, promising heaven to killers. In short, a whole load of bullshit.

When he finally hung up, you flew up to the curtain rod. “Why would you do that?” you asked, and it was a brilliant question, because I hadn’t the slightest idea myself.

“You know what Control would do to you otherwise.” My voice was small. I had to look up to you now.

You huffed. “The Collar. I know.”

Everyone knew. It was a terrible, horrible thing, blocking any Shifting until deemed appropriate again. Stuck as a human forever. Surely not such a terrible fate, as I had been stuck as a human from the moment I was born; and would likely remain one forever. Yet, why be a human forever, when you could be a different beast every hour?

Yet, why be human at all, a small voice always echoed in the back of my mind, but once again, I pushed it down. Envy was one thing, self-hatred was another.

“Now, let’s find your face!” I clapped my hands, sounding like a schoolteacher. This encounter had to take a pleasant turn somehow, even if I had to grab it by the reins to do so. I had never seen your face myself. To me, you were just Veronica, a first name on a paper, and occasionally a voice in my ear. You were also a string of numbers and letters, a barcode detailing you as one of the few survivors, but you didn’t need to know that. “Do you have any family photos, phone backgrounds-?” my voice trailed in the quiet of the house.

“He hit me.”

It all went still. “Excuse me?”

“He hit me.” Your voice is steadier now. “He hit me, and I needed a way out. I figured I could fly, but then he shot me.”

And this is when I notice that every feather on the floor is laced with your blood. And the smell I had been ignoring is there. It is tangy and metallic.

You laugh. It is a desperate sound, coming out more like a croak. I had never heard an animal make a sound like that, yet here you are. “I guess you could say I asked for it. Turned myself into a clay pigeon. A perfect target for him to shoot at.”

“Nonsense,” I snap. “Don’t talk like that about yourself.”

You keep talking, as if I had never interrupted. “It was as if a slate had been wiped clean. I had been diligent with everything. I had been walking around the minefield, tiptoeing mostly. With the Agency, with the calls, with him. He wouldn’t let me Shift. Said it was unnatural, that it was better if I embraced my true self. Which of course was me being human.” A croak escapes your beak again. “I hadn’t Shifted in five years. This is my first time flying since I met you. And do you know what is the funny thing? I had been human for so long, yet I don’t remember my own face. I was just his extension I think.” Your feathers are puffed, and you reach down, nibbling on a feather on your chest. “And the worst thing is, I am afraid. I am afraid to try to Shift back again, because then what happens with the gunshot?” You are speaking as if I am not there. As if you are addressing an audience of thousands, giving a pragmatic lecture on anatomy. Your voice is devoid of feeling, and I have an overbearing need to reach out to you. “What if it pokes open a hole on my chest, what if it cuts off an artery in my leg and then I need to amputate it?”

My voice is gentle for once. “Let me see.”

I didn’t think you would, yet you fly down, and land on my arm. I draw in a sharp breath; I had always dreamed of a bird landing on me like that, ever since watching it in old, animated movies. Your feathers are stained red, and when I reach for your right foot, you tremble.

“It’s okay,” I whisper, and because you are a pigeon, I reach and stroke the feathers on the top of your head. “It’s okay,” I repeat, mostly to myself, because while I have studied animal medicine, I am surely not a human doctor. You might be lucky, it looks like nothing but a scary flesh wound, but you are right, I have no idea what this means for your human body. “What is your favorite color?” I ask, and you angle your head to the side.

“Orange, I guess. Although I never gave it much thought.”

You are light as a feather. “Why orange?”

“I love the sunrise. All is dark, and then there is orange, and then there is a new day.”

“That’s a lovely answer,” I say, because I need to tether you back to yourself. “What do you remember of your mother’s eyes?” And then I curse myself because you grew up in the Academy, what would you know of your mother’s eyes?

Yet, despite everything, you answer. “They were brown, I think.”

I talk you through your memories and your dreams. We recall your training and exercises. Your memory drills and Protocol compliances. Who you were before and who will you be after. Animal and human anatomy. Femurs and phalanxes. Muscles and arteries, and how your brain expands, and how your heart beats.

We spend all night talking. How you are a human, but you don’t have to be one. How you want to be one. How it is worth taking the risk.

And then there is a flash, and you are on the floor, dried blood on your side.