Communion

We don’t mind eating bread with blood on it. We’re not so high-flying that we can’t eat a little blood. The gulls snatch up everything in sight. Out of people’s hands, sometimes right out of their mouths. Just classless. We’re not so low that we would need to take a meat stick from one of those baby people, but a little bloody bread never hurt nobody.

Particularly when it’s that bread with the special seeds in it. The woman with the red fur on her head used to bring us that dark brown bread with the seeds. When she first showed up in the big white building, she would give us a different type of bread everyday. She got up every time the Sun did, went somewhere for a while, and when she came back, she had the feed. One day it would be the twisty bread covered in the white stuff that looked like seeds, but wasn’t. The gulls were always going on and on about that white stuff. We ate it anyway. The next day, it would be the small, round, crunchy bread. Thrak is no longer here because, one time, he had seen the redhead crumbling it up like she normally does when she’s about to give it to us, and he got too excited. He headed straight for the human building, and smashed right into her clear wall. Happens to the best of us. Whenever any of the humans come out to where we are, to give us feed or inhale from their burning sticks, they have to slide open their clear wall first. For several feedings after, we left crumbs of bread on the road in honor of Thrak’s memory.

Some time later, the redhead brought a male with black fur to the white building. Some of us sat on the wood bar outside of her clear wall and watched as he prepared feed for her. He came very often after that, bringing flowers and other useless things that no one could eat, and for some time, there was no more of the dark brown bread with seeds. Soon, there was no more from the redhead at all, and we had to settle for the just the small seeds that the old woman from the brown building would throw to us. We all agreed that these seeds were bland, however, and silently longed for the day when the redhead would begin to bring us feed again.

And then, one day, she did. The small, round, crunchy bread returned. She brought us a new kind, puffy and soft, like the bags humans fill with the things they don’t want. We were so thrilled, that we even shared the twisty bread with the gulls. At least that’s what we told ourselves when they took it from us. The black fur man was still coming, although he was no longer bringing useless things. He would be there after the redhead had risen with the Sun and gone away. She would return, and they would squawk at each other, flapping their people arms.

Soon after, she brought a new male to the building. He had yellow fur, and the black fur one was nowhere in sight. We were perched on the wood bar when the redhead walked in, a familiar bag of feed in one arm, and the yellow one close behind. They cooed and rubbed, much like she used to with black fur. She left him and began crumbling our bread. As she crumbled in the feed prepping room, black fur entered. They began shrieking and cawing, thrashing and flailing their arms around like before, kind of like Thrak after he had run into the clear wall. Black fur and the redhead began to squawk mostly at each other. Akin to a coon who had just attacked one of those puffy bags the humans put outside, the yellow one left without the others seeing. We gazed longingly at the feed, crumbled and ready for us, and back to the squawking people. Just then, black fur picked up a great square box and brought it down onto the redhead. We do not know what the great box was, only that the redhead would prepare her own feed in it from time to time. She laid still on the ground as black fur threw the great box and fluttered around in a panic. He began grabbing things and stuffing them inside one of those puffy bags. When he reached for the bloody bread, we clucked in alarm, imagining we would have to somehow get the coons to dig it out of the bag for us once it was put out. He froze with the feed in claw, and instead headed for the clear wall. He slid it open, stepped out toward the wood bar, and naturally, we took flight. When we were safely on the road, black fur gawked back and forth, side to side. Then, much to our delight, he threw the bread down to us. It was the dark brown kind with the special seeds.