Painter’s annotation: I started covering my unfinished work not out of secrecy, but to protect what wasn’t ready from being seen too soon. There’s a moment in every painting when the wrong kind of gaze can pull the whole thing apart.

The canvas was covered.

Not fully—just a drape of linen, off-white, stained at the edges, laid loosely over the work in progress. The portrait wasn’t ready. I knew it. He would know it too.

There was something in the eyes I hadn’t resolved yet. I’d repainted the shape three times, sanded back the cheek once. I had started layering the background, but it had no air. The yellow, at least, was right—or close. But the rest still felt like guesswork.

So I covered it.

I’d just returned from the kitchen with a mug of tea when I heard it: the soft creak of a peg. Not the lowest one. A middle peg, near the older paint.

I didn’t look right away. I wanted to know if I could feel who it was before confirming it.

I could.

Élian.

But he wasn’t alone.

There was a second bird in the room. I hadn’t heard him land. I hadn’t seen him approach. But there he was—a Black-capped Chickadee—perched quietly on the curtain rod above the covered canvas. Small, neat, composed. His chest puffed just slightly. Watching.

They didn’t acknowledge one another. There was no call, no twitch of wings. Élian kept to his peg, but I noticed the slight lift in his shoulders, the tiniest shift of tail as if rebalancing in someone else’s presence.

He wasn’t uncomfortable. But he was alert.

I didn’t reach for a brush. I didn’t sit at the easel.

I just stood there.

The Chickadee didn’t move. He didn’t blink. He stared straight ahead at the cloth-covered canvas as if he already knew what was underneath.

Minutes passed like that. Quiet. Nobody moved.

Then, very deliberately, the Chickadee gave a single short chirr—sharp but contained—and took off. Not upward, not out the window. He left through the doorframe. Just passed through it like air.

Only after the sound of his wings faded did Élian move.

He flew to the frame of the covered canvas and landed on the top edge.

He didn’t look at me.

He looked at the cloth. Then he reached down with his beak and tugged. Just once. Not enough to pull it away—just enough to shift the fold. Enough to remind me: I see what you’re hiding.

I stepped closer. My hand brushed the edge of the linen.

I paused. Not because I was unsure what to show, but because I wasn’t sure what he expected to see.

Then I lifted it.

The canvas caught the morning light along one edge. The painting looked back at us—unfinished, uncertain, still missing something—but truer than before.

Élian didn’t blink.

Instead, and without warning, he opened his wings.

Not to leave. Not to stretch.

Just—opened. Wide, slow, deliberate.

I’d never seen him do it indoors.

He held the pose long enough for me to register everything: the layering of feathers at the shoulder, the subtle translucence near the primaries, the slight tear in one flight feather near the right wingtip.

It wasn’t a show. It wasn’t pride.

It was permission.

I stepped back.

He closed his wings, fluttered softly to the shelf, and tucked his head briefly into his shoulder. Then settled. Still.

I sat down. I lifted the brush. I began again.

That was his longest sitting.

And I think it’s the moment the painting began to tell the truth.