Painter’s annotation: Once a peg has been chosen, it seems to carry the memory of the bird who perched there, long after they’ve gone. But it’s the space between pegs where the air holds tension. That’s where decisions are made.

The day was clear, windless, sharp with early cold. I hadn’t opened the window yet. I was warming my hands over the kettle when I heard the tap.

Not wings. Not claws. A dry, deliberate tap — once, then twice — against the studio glass.

She was outside. On the frame. Not in a hurry. Not unsure. Just present.

I opened the window slowly. Not wide—just enough.

She didn’t fly in.

She waited.

And for a moment, so did I.

She watched the inside of the room as if inspecting something she’d ordered weeks ago and was now seeing in person for the first time.

Then, without fanfare, she stepped through.

No darting. No fuss. Just a single glide and a correction of her wings, then she landed on the sill.

She looked smaller in this light. More subdued. Less like punctuation—more like breath. Her markings were the same, of course, but the contrast had softened in the morning haze.

She made no sound.

I didn’t speak either.

She stepped to the edge of the sill and hopped once onto the smaller flat file.

Then again — to the knob at the end of the workbench.

Her path was deliberate. Measured.

She paused there, flicked her tail once. I stepped backward, instinctively giving her the room. She didn’t watch me — just turned toward the sitting wall.

It wasn’t Élian’s peg she flew to.

And it wasn’t the cracked peg from last time.

It was the space between them.

She hovered for a breath, then settled—not on a peg, but the flat beam between the two wooden stubs, where there was no perch.

She gripped the narrow ledge with her claws. It didn’t look comfortable. But she held it.

She had created her own place.

A new line in the map of the wall.

And for the first time, I saw it: not just a place to pose, but a constellation of decisions. Where Élian sat. Where she had refused to sit. Where no one had ever perched.

She looked at me — briefly, like a question half-formed—and then forward again.

I didn’t reach for my sketchpad.

I opened the box of cut paper scraps. Found a square no larger than my palm. Rough edge. Cold press. Not meant for permanence.

But that was the point.

I made a single mark — dark gray, just the arc of her body against the grain of the wood. No tail. No eye. No feet. Just the line that told me: she’d made a new space.

She left without signal. A light push from her feet and she was gone.

But when I turned back to the wall, the space between pegs didn’t look empty anymore.

It looked claimed.