A wart appeared somewhere between the blinks of light and dark. It flexed and became a nub. The blinks stretched out into intervals—the dark for rest and the light for growth, it seemed. The nub became a nob that whorled out and out and up. Then she was she.

She ached everywhere with delight. Joy that pulsed up from her feet. She pushed against it in spasms, almost manic with curiosity. _^AM, came the pulse. _{^{AM AM AM AM AM}} it came, a great throbbing answer. It echoed through her like thunder. And so this was _^AMAM. These were the first days, and she forgot them as soon as they passed.

The intervals stretched, the nights growing longer and the days colder. She learned to seal herself against the change and sleep.

In her second year, a damp and cold skin grew up around her. It sucked upon her until _^AMAM rose in a bitter gout to disperse it. Too dry was not good; too wet was worse.

Another passage—a season; she learned the space around her was peopled. Animals came and went, but she did not. _^AMAM did not.

Here and there were those like her, but she was an outlier. There were no nearby sisters, no confidantes to sway with in the breezes. Above her, a tiny cousin, barely awake. Below, a trio of gossiping nobodies who ignored her. And inward, two elderly ladies.

By her third year, the two old ones greeted her in the dawns. Cordial or salty by turn, the short one was nocked at her tip, bulbous, and by far the most talkative. The other was tall and typically tart. When the air was alive and racing past, making her bough swell, they might parse their scales against the wind, eking little melodies and buzzing airs that charmed her. One scale at a time! How was such a feat done?

Down below, the lower world was a restless place, rearranging itself from day to day. The blur slowed at night and resumed after dawn. Two immense shells rested there—one would burst into a brilliant, unlikely azure in the morning sun. The other, gleaming night-in-day, would abruptly cough and roll away, returning in the evening.

She felt a great looming crowd of her own somewhere beyond this.

“Little outlier, scales tight,” the shorter sister would say. “Don’t you taste the rain coming?”

Seeing that she would listen, the sisters told her other things. They told her the animals that changed skins were powers. They lived in great odd shells and put on new colors nightly. They ruled over fire, kindling it out of nothing.

“Here we lie on a limb of our little domain. There they dwell in their witchy shells.”

“Ephemera,” sniffed the tall one.

“Midges and mayflies,” the short one agreed.

“Are we powers?”

“Oh, a bit older than that,” the short one muttered.

“Wood comes from stone and water. Not flesh,” the tall one said.

Storms gave her the wildest delight she knew. They tossed her flailing and swooping through the air like a sparrow. And _^AMAM pulsing below an awesome lore: “_^RAIN . . . _^RAIN . . . _^RAIN . . . _^RAIN . . . _^RAIN.” Lashing her over and over through the bough spray until every scale knew delirium.

She was fascinated by the powers. There was one little one whose movements charmed her. High upon its wall, the shell had an opening, and she could see into a cave-like place. There he often careened against things or lay quietly. He was magical—as night descended, his little space would burst into brightness, as though he had captured the sun. There he changed colors. A blur of sky blue in the evening became ripples of green and white the next morning.

The sisters seemed to sense where her attention lay.

“Bend closer little outlier. We learned much from a great aunt who passed winters ago. We added our own knowledge to what she told us.”

“You could stand to learn a bit, she means,” the tall one said.

“Drink deeply in summer. Fast in winter,” the short one began.

 “A hangover means you overdid it.”

“Open in the wind, close in the rain and snow.”

“But don’t piss in the wind.”

“Sweat _^AMAM when the days first turn cool.”

“You’ll smell better.”

“Wiggle your peduncle once a day.”

“And do it when the boys are watching.”

“Early summer’s pollen tastes the best.”

“Ahem.”

This went back and forth for some time, and her attention nearly drifted away.

“Finally, this is what you already know. It’s all you need.”

“Then why tell me?” she asked.

“Because you think there is more.” 

“How do you know that?”

“Because we thought there was more.”

“There is more. You make the wind sing. Can I do that?”

“La dee da, listen to her,” the tall one said.

They said there were only two things to learn. First, she must feel the wind and anticipate its moods. That was a simple thing of instinct. The second was a different matter.

 “Listen to the pulse in your rachis,” the tart one noted, “and in just one place.”  

“You must think hard upon it,” the other added. “Then—flex in that place! Do this every day.”

“Who taught you?”

“Humpf, no one. Taught each other.”

“Time and practice. Feel the wind against your rachis, sense its pressure, and by the smallest of turns, force it to sing through you,” the short one explained.

“Maybe he’ll notice you,” the tall one said innocently.

She listened for her pulse and thought hard. For days she tried—and tried. The effort would lead to her whole side clenching or splaying. Other times, a trio of scales would twitch feebly in unison. Mellow autumn winds gave her ample time to practice. Her twitches became unfurlings, five at a time, three at a time—two.

Winter, spring. The great currents and cloudbursts were meant for blissful sailing. He darted likewise below her, each day reborn in a new skin, bright as a cardinal one day, gull-white the next.

She knew his shouts, his abrupt movements, his sudden stillnesses when he seemed to do nothing but crouch over the ground. She felt the joy he took in his movements. Like the sweat of _^AMAM, he was ineffable.

There were others like him that came and went. They were raucous little things that would disappear around the side of the shell, returning minutes or days later. After two more summers, she knew his little tribe well. There were three others—a sandy-headed tall one, one that squealed oddly, and one that reminded her of a black-haired fox.

One gusty afternoon, she drowsed under the spell of the tall sister’s melodies. With each swell came a razzing crescendo that trailed off into silence or a flickering warble.

She came awake to a burst of chatter from the great shell—the goose-honk-and-dog-bray sounds she recognized as their voices.  

Three powers had gathered below her.

One of them stretched a stick upwards.

When the short one burst in a spray of scales, the other screamed. The braying rose to a crescendo, and then the three powers went away.

The tall one fell a few days later. She had closed and never opened again.

That autumn, the loneliness seemed like it would swallow her. She hailed the tiny cousin above her, now grown into a brown teardrop, but it was torpid or dumb with shyness. With no one to talk to, she worked her tentative melodies alone, trying to tease them out of the wind’s edges in the hypnotic way of the sisters.

He would appear at the end of the day in his space just when it burst into light. He might lean out of the shell with a smooth, dark stick perched over the air. Then he would go still and somber. The silence would pop, and sometimes the needles around her would hiss. She came to ache for these moments and fall into bleak reverie on the evenings he didn’t appear.

One evening a yellow bead struck her side, shearing an entire scale off. It wedged perfectly against her core, impossible to dislodge, leaving part of her exposed.

“Pollen,” she told herself.

He might rest there in a beautiful quietude until full dark. Faint bray-honks of other powers came inevitably. The magic illuminations burst and disappeared with his retreat. Here a pure white, there a tinted shade of clay or dandelion.

Then it was her eighth winter and the snow came early. It nestled against her side, invading her core with cold. She saw him less, and a film of white frequently opaqued her view of his glowing space. The freezing wind brought creeping deadness each night.

She opened and allowed the cold to seep down to her rachis, down into her brittle peduncle. He was only a blur of red and white with a streak of something darker. She flexed.

As it came up, she leaned into the wind, letting it shriek through her. A buzzing that rose into a warble, then a wail, swelling and receding. Then two notes, shaking her body with discordant vibration. She bent them up and down, leaning and twisting as her frame shook.

His face came clear as he pressed against the frost—she could just see the O of his mouth.

A gust, a gentle snap, and she tumbled into space. The soft square of yellow light traced spirals up into the night.

B Myers writes pure barmy from a safe location in Michigan. Some of his most egregious whoppers can be found in 96th of October, Archive of the Odd, Cast of Wonders, and The Disappointed Housewife.