(Artist’s note: these paintings are in progress still.)

It began on a day so still the garden trees leaned closer just to hear it better. One of those strange, tea-warmed afternoons when time drips from the undersides of leaves, and the clay pots hum a little in their sleep. And that, yes, that was when he came.

A tiny flutter. No call. Just a wee presence. Sudden (but not quick), quiet, kind of like memory surfacing. He was there on the window ledge, not arriving but… appearing. As though he'd been watching for some time and had finally decided to be seen.

The Azure Flycatcher.

His feathers shimmered like river-moonlight — mercurial, hard to pin down. Not quite blue. Not quite silver. Something between, or beside. He was smaller than I expected. Too small, maybe, for the weight he carried.

And his eyes were sharp, old. Not old in years, but in knowing. That kind of tiredness you see in long-traveled birds. Not weary exactly, just… distant, like something had unspooled in him long ago, and he’d never wound it back up.

He tilted his head toward me. I felt, without knowing how, that I shouldn’t speak first. So I didn’t.

He stepped into the studio as if it were a chapel. No rustle, no sound, just a slow, deliberate movement toward the sitting wall. He adjusted a knob with one foot, nudged a eucalyptus sprig into place with the other. Then turned to me, not the canvas, not the tools. He turned toward me and said:

“Before you ask, I am not allowed to give my name.”

I’ve heard many strange noises from birds, like the silent screech from the first bird to visit me regularly, but this — this stopped something in me.

I’ve thought about painting birds, — kestrels with broken wings and redstarts, finches large with joy, owls that appear too burdened to fly, and doves who are easily forgotten. But never — not once — had one spoken, never mind refusing the very first truth of a portrait: the name.

I nodded. “All right,” I said. “Can I call you Azure, then. Just for my notes.”

“No,” he said. But gently. “That name belongs to the wind by a river. I have some of its color, but none of its meaning. Give me nothing. Not even that.”

There was no sharpness in him. No pride. Just... insistence. And something like fear, or maybe caution.

So I didn’t press it. Not then. We began.

He didn’t sit for long — never did. Ten minutes, maybe fifteen. Then he’d vanish behind the studio shelves or out into the hedge. Once, he disappeared for three weeks, and I, well, I thought that was it. The panel was put away in the drying cabinet.

But he did come back. Slightly thinner, I think. Or maybe it was the light. It had been gray those days, and he blended in so well it was hard to know what was vanishing and what was just shadow.

He never talked to me about where he went. I didn’t ask, of course.

And yet, as I worked, something crept in. A tension. My brush trembled near his throat and wavered near the eye. Not fear— no. More like awe, or the hesitation you feel before entering something holy, which, of course, is strange considering how tiny he is. The last time I felt like that was on entering La Cappela Sistina,

He watched me work, but never the progress I made. Not until the fifth session. That morning, he perched on the highest peg, the one birds avoid unless they remember something the rest of us have forgotten. Light from the tall studio windows struck him just so brilliantly it felt... staged, but I hadn't orchestrated a thing.

I asked, “Will you sit? I am approaching the final layer?”

He didn't answer right away. His eyes flicked to the ivy, watching its leaves bounce in the freshened wind.

Then: “Do you know what it costs to keep a name hidden for a century?”

And there it was. The breath behind the silence.

I hadn’t seen it before — but now that he said it, I could feel the slow wear in his feathers, the deliberate fold of his wings. The breath that didn’t quite fill his chest.

“I didn’t know,” I said, quietly.

He looked down. Not casually. More like... he was remembering some branch that no longer held him.

“A name,” he said, “is not a sound, not really. It’s a spine. It keeps your shape. But if too many know it — if too many remember you— then the name starts to fray. It becomes something worn thin. Like a coat passed between strangers. You forget where your shoulders are.”

He paused. Balanced on one foot. “So I locked it away. From owls. From sparrows. From my mate, even. She asked. Twice. I said nothing.”

He didn’t say this with regret. Not quite. More like he was stating a fact that once hurt, but no longer stung.

“I kept it like fire,” he said. “Low, but alive.”

I didn’t speak. There was something in the air that warned against it.

Then I asked, and maybe I shouldn’t have, “So why come here? Why let yourself be painted? A portrait stores things. It fixes them.”

He looked at me fully, for the first time that day.

“Because something’s leaving me,” he said. “Not feather. Not wing. My name. I've buried it so deep, for so long... it’s begun to lose its way back to me.”

That silence came again — the one that isn’t absence, but presence waiting.

“I thought,” he said slowly, “that if someone saw me truly — if someone held what was left — it might return. The name. It might find me again.”

That was all. That’s why he came.

Not to be remembered. But to remember.

I didn’t answer. Just turned back to my easel and began to mix. Colors that didn’t have names. The not-blue. The barely-silver.

My hands worked quickly. Not rushed. Just... without pause.

I painted until dusk. He didn’t move.

When I turned, the last glaze still catching light, he was behind me. Closer than ever before. Almost beside me.

He studied the painting.

“That,” he said quietly, “is not how I look anymore.”

“No,” I replied. “But it’s how you are. Underneath it all.”

His voice came softer still. “You have returned my name to me.”

And then somehow, without sound, he spoke it. It wasn’t a word as we know a word to be. Not exactly. It was a pattern of light and scent. A breath that held jungle fog, rain on dark stone, the hush of dawn where no leaf stirs. I can’t repeat it. Not properly.

But I heard it. And it stayed. Not to be spoken. Only held.

He stepped forward, placed one claw gently against the frame — not touching, but near. His eyes were bright. Brighter than I’d seen them.

“That is how I will remain,” he said, “in the Hollow Wood.”

I nodded. “That’s your wish? That the painting go there?”

He nodded. “When I am gone. The Queen will know. She knew me once. When I was sharper in flight. I served her. Quietly.”

I almost asked what happened. Why he left. But something in him said: not that story. Not today.

“Will you come back?” I asked.

He didn’t answer. Just looked at the portrait. Then at me.

“You painted more than wings,” he said. “You painted the part I thought I’d lost.”

I hadn’t noticed the grief until he turned, and the floor caught his shadow in full.

The window was open. Had it always been?

He paused at the threshold. “Don’t call the name,” he said. “It knows the way now.”

And he left.

—

The days after were quieter. The kind of quiet that follows something significant. I didn’t paint. Just sat. Watched the light. Listened to the eucalyptus hum and forget things.

Sometimes I thought I heard him. The small scrape of claw on wood. The hush of old wings shifting. But it was just the stillness learning to fill itself again.

Then one morning, early, cold, bright, an envelope appeared outside my window. Woven pine needles. Elderberry leaf pressed flat. No words. Only scent.

From The Hollow Wood.

Inside: a feather. Given, not fallen. Curling gently at the edge, but still glimmering with the light I’d tried so hard to catch. And a note, in a hand like roots made script.

“His portrait will hang in the Star Hall, in an honored position. You may come when the ice breaks.”

—Luthiél, Her Feathered Grace and Keeper of Hollow Wood

I framed the feather. Hung it by the empty peg he used. I don’t dust it. Each spring, I wait for the ice to break. Each spring, I remember a name I cannot say and the bird who came not to be seen, but to find himself remembered one last time.