this-is-twenteenzine

A perfectly realised fictional character- female -is celebrating her thirty-fifth birthday. She sits on a pine dining chair with a thin beige cushion on its seat. She is in her kitchen. Her feet are together, her hands in her lap. She stares intently at an elegantly simple birthday cake. Behind her, French windows glass the view of a meticulously described garden. The garden is frequently pruned and managed by tight lines of attractively simple prose. The adjectives are carefully selected; the Latin names are known. A perfectly ordinary description of a bright but cold afternoon in winter.

While the perfectly realised fictional character stares at her birthday cake, a fictional sparrow, confused by the clean French windows, hits the glass behind her.

Now. The fictional character starts, as do we. The bird lands on a slate-grey paving slab. Snow begins falling, thinly, as the fictional character shifts back her chair, moves to the windows and slides one side open. She crouches to examine the bird. The bird is not moving. She picks the small bird up in her small hands, the way one holds a shallow puddle of water.

A perfectly realised fictional character- male -enters the kitchen. As we know, he is in a bad mood, but for the sake of his wife and the occasion of her birthday, he is trying not to be. You can therefore imagine his smile. The perfectly realised fictional character- female -faces the perfectly realised fictional character- male -and extends the hands which cup an unconscious fictional sparrow- gender: unimportant. At this point, we learn that the perfectly realised fictional character- female- is called Alison, Ally, or Laura. The perfectly realised fictional character- male -is called Steven.

"Steven," says Alison, Ally, or Laura, "This sparrow ran into the glass. I think it might be dead. And on my birthday. I'm thirty-five today. Thank you for the birthday cake. It is pretty and simple and it looks so elegant on that new, white china dinner plate. But oh, Steven, the poor bird! I think it might be dead.

And on my birthday."