Dawn

Earlier chapters of all this include 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5. And as long as I'm posting stuff, this week's Prompt from Poetigress was the word "sisters."

     Voices woke me just about dawn, and not the usual grousing of 

my housemates about who should or shouldn't be in the bathroom at 

whatever time it happens to be.  No, this was El Brujo talking, 

something quite unusual for that early.  "--not as crunchy this 

year," she was saying.

     "True, that," came a rough voice.  "When you gotta eat 

eggshell just to get roughage, I mean, shouldn't bones be plenty?"

     "Roughage?"  El Brujo gave a raspy little cat laugh.  "You 

worried you're not geting enough fiber, chica?"

     The other voice laughed, too, more than a bit of cawing in 

it: a crow, I realized, but not Jefe, the big crow who'd been 

showing up more often lately.  I flopped around so I could face 

the window and saw El Brujo across the way stretched out easily on 

the De la Vega's roof, a crow that I might almost call petite 

perched beside her.  This crow flapped a wing against El Brujo's 

shoulder and said, "Regular's important, Gata.  Us birds, we know 

that more than anybody."

     "Honoria!  I'm shocked!"  El Brujo touched a paw to her 

chest.  "I always thought that was more a pigeon thing, working so 

hard to poop on human cars and clothes and such."

     "Naw."  The crow was female, I realized suddenly, though I 

had no idea how I knew.  Something about the voice, about the way 

she held herself, about the ruffle of feathers around her neck: 

I'd always thought of crows as masculine before, but this one, it 

couldn't've been clearer if she'd had eyelashes and a bow around 

her head.  "A lady don't like to talk about it, of course, but--"  

The crow grinned, a smile curling the base of her beak.  "Good 

thing we don't got no ladies here, huh?"

     "Oh, I don't know."  A flick of her ears, and El Brujo turned 

her head to stare down at me, her eyes half-closed.  "August 

there's always been such a delicate lad."

     The crow cackled.  "Like my brother, right?  Fulla piss and 

vinegar his own self, but let me start talking like I'm not a 

porcelain doll, and he gets all--"  She puffed her chest feathers 

out, started strutting around in a way that I completely 

recognized: she was doing an impersonation of Jefe.  "'Honoria!'" 

she barked, and she even did a pretty good version of his voice.  

"'Don't be common!'"  She deflated and became just herself again.  

"Like we're not crows!  Like we're not the most common bird in the 

whole freakin' sky!"

     El Brujo reached out a paw and nudged Honoria in the side.  

"There's nothing common about you, chica.  Nothing at all."

     Another little crow smile.  "You too good to me, Gata."  She 

spread her wings, then, and leaped into the brightening sky.  "Get 

back on duty, there, then, 'fore your boss starts saying 

you ain't a lady!"

     I raised my voice.  "You keep regular, Honoria!"

     She laughed as she flapped past the window, then the silence 

of dawn took over.

     "Really, August."  A sniff across the way, El Brujo rising to 

her paws and stretching; she bunched her legs up and sprang over 

to the windowsill, sat down, and began licking a front paw.  

"There's no need to get vulgar."

And then, as you might suspect, comes 7.