A crow preens its feathers. Each one a glossy, dark-mirror shine glinting like wet ink in sunlight. Fluffy down flies away from him— caught-and-released by a sudden wind.

I watch from my jar, surface clouded as the water darkens with dust. It’s hard to see him nowadays. His sleek silhouette blurred behind a curtain of filth, a barrier between me and the only other living creature trapped in this moment. I inhale through my gills, savoring the bitter-salt taste as it fills me, burns me like smoke. It's in my lamellae, under every scale. Sand in my eyes. The silt like a slow, everyday torment that no amount of _breathing _will ever fully cleanse.

Watching him makes it all the slightest bit easier to bear. He works diligently, sharp beak plucking at dirt and grit lodged in every crevice. It's a sight I've watched a hundred times before and yet: it still fascinates me.

His elegance is unrivaled. A kind of beauty that would make my fingers twitch with the urge to touch, to trace his lines, to find the secrets hidden beneath those plumes.

But my own limbs are little more than useless fins.

Envy flares in my gut for a brief moment, sharp and acidic. Yet it's quickly doused by the reality of our situation. His being, his flight: divine. Something so close and yet unreachable. It's an impossible thing, asking my useless fins to envy what belongs to the angels. But beneath the jealousy is a deeper feeling — awe. Awe at the chance to _witness _such pure, unfettered freedom just a foot away.

And at least, in this cage, I get to watch him preen.

The bird spreads its silken arms— a final flick, and they settle neatly back into place. Cocks his head in my direction; purposeful. Calculating. Hops over twice, clawed feet clicking softly against the glass that separates us.

It's odd, this feeling. As if the angel is _studying _me, as curious about me as I am about it.

Opens its beak and a harsh, grating noise escapes. "Got a bit of a staring problem, I've noticed," the crow states with a raspy chuckle. His words roll out gravelly, a smoker in their deathbed choking on glass. The sound so strange, so _wrong,_ it takes a moment for his comment to register.

I try to dismiss it, wrapping my tail closer around myself as I respond. "Didn't mean anything by it," I insist, voice soft.

“Didn't mean it in a bad way, Finch." He echoes.

Once, I was shiny. A goldfish any seven year old would have wasted their allowance on at the fair. Now? I'm a different creature. Scales dull, movements slow. Exhaustion, or something worse, wearing me down. A specter sinking slowly to the bottom of the tank.

_"I hate when you call me that."_

It slips out before I can stop it. An admission of something deeper. The way he uses words, the way he speaks... it's as if he's always meaning more than what's actually said. "I'm no saint," I add, words bittering as they leave my mouth.

Sinners have scales. The holy have feathers. A play on color, sure… but I can't help wondering if that was what he meant _all along_. When he saved me from hell, risking even now his place amongst the ranks of heaven, I can't help but wonder at the way he regards me. The way he speaks to me, nurturing, as if I weren't _less_ than him; not a lesser _species_, but a lesser _being_.

He treats me with a care and attention I don't deserve. A tenderness that feels almost reverent.

_Why,_ I wonder in those quiet moments. What possible reason would a creature of heaven have for caring about a sinner like me? It goes against everything I know. Everything _I'm supposed to believe in._ Heaven, its linearity, its purity, its rules.

"Maybe I'm your own little hell."

The words are a half-joke, falling flat beneath his familiar humor. But there's something else lurking there, too; an undercurrent of something unplaced. Fear? Recognition? Whatever it is, it flashes through those intelligent eyes, gone as quick as it appeared.

But I can't shake that moment. I can't forget the look he gave me just then.

"That's a hell I wouldn't mind."

The words fall out without thought, but it rings truer than I expect. Because really, is there a hell worse than being trapped in a glass prison, watched over by something so beautiful it _hurts_?

I'm stuck in a jar, of all things— and yet I wouldn't want to be anywhere else.