Painter’s annotation: When I first built the sitting wall, I hadn’t imagined it would hold memory. I only needed somewhere solid for them to land. I didn’t know it would become a kind of ledger—each peg a mark in a shared language. I didn’t know they’d remember it more precisely than I did.

The Peg Is Real

Élian returned in early light—before my coffee had cooled, before I’d let myself touch a brush or speak aloud. The kind of morning where the light feels too new to disturb.

He didn’t announce himself. He never does. He appears the way certain new ideas do, nearly full-formed but with no clear point of origin. You look up and they’re already there, watching you watch them.

He landed on the lowest peg of the sitting wall again, the same one as before. But this time, he faced me directly.

No posturing. No display. Just that level gaze birds give when they want to know how long you’ve known how to see. That quiet scrutiny that isn’t testing—it’s measuring.

I stood by the easel, my hand resting on the top bar, not moving toward anything yet. He didn’t fidget. He didn’t shift. He waited—not in the way a person waits, with expectation or tension—but with the kind of stillness that contains its own answer.

I reached for my sketchpad. No plan, just instinct. Silver point. Not charcoal—too imprecise. I started with loose lines. Gesture only. Let the weight of his body find its own balance in my wrist.

He held the pose longer than most finches ever would. That told me something. That he had chosen the peg. That he remembered. That he was here for something more than likeness.

But I rushed. One stroke—too sure of itself, the line of the wing, cutting fast across the page like I already knew it. I didn’t.

He dropped from the peg, flew a slow, deliberate circle in the center of the room. Once. Twice. Then he returned to the peg. Same one. Same spot. Same stance.

Not a mistake, then. A correction.

He was encouraging me to start again.

I adjusted the line. Softer this time. More uncertain. I let it tremble a little, not from doubt but from awareness. From trying to see what was actually there—not what I thought should be.

He stayed.

I don’t know whether he could see the drawing. I’ve never understood fully what birds perceive in human marks. But he moved closer—subtly, feather by feather—until he was near enough to feel the heat of my hand on the paper. Near enough to choose trust over reflex.

That day I didn’t try color. Didn’t even think about it. I didn’t reach for linen or the good paper. I kept to the sketchpad. Quick studies. A curl of claw. The arc of a scapular feather. The slight splay in his tail when he resettled.

I didn’t direct him. He gave me the shapes, and I took them, as quietly as I could.

I let the lines arrive without force.

At one point, he turned his head left, then held that angle for what felt like minutes. I drew it, fast but not rushed. He didn’t correct me.

That was when I knew we’d begun.

When the light shifted — amber pooling on the floor in slow ellipses—he was gone. Not with sound. Not with flight. Just… not there anymore.

I didn’t say anything. I just cleaned my pencil. Closed the pad.

Later, while I was rinsing a brush for no real reason, I noticed something under the easel.

A feather. Small, curved. Less yellow than I expected. More like the burnished gold you find on antique frames — the kind that only glows in shadow, when no one’s trying to look at it.

I left it there until nightfall. Then I picked it up and laid it across the peg where he’d stood.

The next morning, he returned. Same time. Same peg. And again the day after.

That’s when I added the second peg. Not beside the first—slightly above it. A new step. An invitation.

Or maybe just an acknowledgment: I had seen him, and I was getting ready to see him better.