I found her in my garden as I came home from work, under my Blackberry plant. It seemed like she had been flapping about, stealing my berries and had gotten her wing caught. Stuck in the thorny stems of one of the vines that had grown a little off the cane. At first I had no idea what to do. She chirped piteously, and shied away from me when I tried to approach, twisting her wing further and scratching herself on the thorns. I thought about leaving, pretending that this hadn't happened. She would manage to free herself eventually, wouldn't she? But I knew that even if she could, she wouldn't be going anywhere on that wing. She could walk along the ground, I supposed, but that would make her easy prey for anything that thought she might look appetizing; hawks, foxes, even a house cat could probably kill the little thing without her wings to save her, and besides, it was my fault for not pruning those thorns more regularly. She probably wouldn't have gotten stuck if not for my laziness. So I got down on my hands and knees and made my way under the thick tangle of branches and vines, acquiring quite a few scratches of my own. The little thing quailed at my approach, and I winced to see a part of her wing, already torn and bloody, tear a little bit more as she struggled against the vine. "No. Sh. Sh. Sh. I don't want to hurt you. Sh. Sh." I cooed, and the little creature stilled. It looked back at me with intelligent, solid azure eyes, like two polished stones. She had pupils I thought, but they were nearly the same color as the rest of her eyes and I couldn't quite tell what she was looking at. Her face was smeared dark with Blackberries, and she still held one, half eaten, in her tiny grey hand..... claw. This was a bird. Pretend it was a bird or you won't be able to do this, I told myself. It wasn't a... a... it was a bird. I took my pair of metal pliers and moved towards the blackberry branch, to try to cut it, but the little thing screamed at its approach. Its wide eyes went wider, and she began to struggle even harder than she had before. "No!" I said. She would kill herself if she kept this up, the thorns were digging not just into her wings now, but her back and sides. Bluish blood ran down her pale grey wings, onto the tiny green dress....No. I meant into her feathers and down her fee--claws. I pulled the pliers back, and threw them behind me, still making gentle, soothing noises. She calmed, breathing heavily, and I went about tugging at the vines, wishing I'd had the foresight to bring gloves. Several deeply cut fingers later, I had her free of the main branch. An entire vine was stuck through one of her wings, though. I would take that out in the house. I wondered how in the world she had managed to get herself that stuck. It didn't seem like something that would happen easily, even if done on purpose. She whimpered as I wrapped a towel gently around her tiny body, but otherwise made no move. I extricated myself from the bushes and stood, hunched over the hurt creature laying daintily in my hand, looking furtively up and down my back yard. Then I looked into the bundle. The.... Bird.... Stared up at me, a fear in its eyes I couldn't quite comprehend. A fear of me was there, certainly, but it seemed like I was a secondary, minor worry compared to whatever else was bothering her. I slipped inside my house, wishing, not for the first time I had some sort of roommate, someone I could confide in, someone to confirm that I hadn't gone utterly insane.... Again. But no, my parents had bought me my own house in the suburbs, or, at least, rented it to me. I'd have to pay them off eventually, but with the meager salary I earned working as an accountant, it wouldn't truly be my own house for a long time yet. It was a nice place, but it was big, and it was far from my family, and it was lonely. But I, Michael Crumb, was of the Crumb family. Even if I was the least of us, it wouldn't do for me to have anything less than extravagant, whether I could afford it or not. And so I was all alone. I put the creature down on the counter and began rummaging around in my kitchen drawers, of which there were many, all filled with assorted bits and pieces of this and that; the head of an old doll I'd never seen before, dead batteries, rubber bands and the charred remains of an ill-fated attempt to fix a toaster myself. Eventually I found what I was looking for, a little eyedropper, plastic tweezers, antiseptic, and my little bottle of anxiety pills. I'd taken the pills today already, but I was... obviously distressed. These would help, they always did. They stopped me from seeing crazy things, things that couldn't possibly exist. I hadn't had... what my mother called 'a sighting' for years now, all thanks to these pills I took every morning. As soon as I downed them, without water, I turned my attention back to the other things I had collected. I picked up the plastic tweezers and turned to the little creature. I could practically feel the pills working. A comfortable haze settled around me, warm, familiar. It had to be some kind of bird. Or bug. I would nurse it back to health and return it to the wild. I approached it again, and as I did it made a tiny, upset 'Aww' noise, like a newborn baby, and the haze around my mind blew away, leaving it feeling raw and vulnerable, like a turtle deprived of its shell. "Holy shit. Holy Shit it is. I'm regressing, I'm seeing things again, the pills aren't working." I whimpered, staring at the little winged... creature. I still couldn't admit to what I was seeing. I wanted to crawl into my bed and shut my eyes until everything made sense, but the little creature was still bleeding in the rag, and whatever it was, I was the only one who could help it. I found a shoe box, filled it with toilet paper, and put the little thing inside like I read you should do for a wounded bird. I began plucking thorns out of the little things body, hand on her waist, trying to prevent her from struggling, but she seemed to have no problems with these tweezers, and did nothing save shut her eyes and grit her teeth. She seemed to understand I was trying to help, and obligingly turned her body so that I could more easily reach the thorns embedded in her. Then I began to apply the antiseptic, which she clearly did not like or understand, wriggle and hiss as she did, and bind her larger wounds with strips from a boiled piece of cloth that had once been a towel. Then I began the delicate task of removing the vine from her wing. It seemed a sensitive spot, the little thing cringed every time I touched it, but she bore with me, screwing up her face and helping me push it out with her little hands. With a final gasp of relief on my part, and a hiss of pain on the little creature's, the blackberry vine came out of her wing after several tense minutes. I bound it as gently as I could, and when I was finished the little thing began to babble at me in what sounded like a cross between the chirping of birds and the whirring of insects. She looked up at me almost expectantly, and we stared at each other for a long minute. I didn't know what to say to that. The little creature seemed disappointed when I didn't respond, and pointed at me. "Human." She said, making it seem like an accusation. I stared at her for a while longer, decided for the sake of my sanity that she had not just spoken to me, turned around, took the eye dropper, filled it with orange juice (I hoped she drank orange juice, she seemed to like berries well enough), put it in the box next to her, squeezing it to give a brief demonstration on how it worked, and put the top back onto the box. She protested in that strange language of hers, but weakly, and after a moment I heard a sucking noise as I assumed she helped herself to the juice. "Bed." I said, leaving the kitchen in a daze, trudging across the cold tile floor to my bedroom, the smallest room in the house, but the warmest and the one I felt most at home in. I just wanted to go to sleep, maybe in the morning the... she would be gone. I was seeing things again, like I used to. I didn't believe in fairies. I hadn't for years.