The silhouette of a woman shuffled through the dimly lit residential streets past the point where the newer brick row-houses gave way to older single family homes and olde quaint shops. Dolores, the paper woman, paused shortly and scanned the sky. The cool night air and thick clouds portended rain, and she knew she did not have long to deliver the gift. Having been constructed of paper had its advantages, but sometimes the drawbacks outweighed them. Water, fire, wind, and sand, all needed be avoided with great caution for the woman and her husband. Being caught out in the rain was not an option.
Deloros quickened her pace and traveled another few blocks before stopping under a crookedly hanging eave of the dilapidated saltbox butcher shop that sat across the street from her daughter's house. In her thin but sturdy hands, she clutched a small cage in which she'd placed an origami bird. The rain began to fall. Summoning her courage, Deloros left the safety of the eave and deftly dodged the rain as she made her way across the lane. Having crossed unscathed, she squeezed herself and the cage through the broken mortar at the base of the house.
The room before the paper woman was mostly dark, the only light coming from a flickering flame in an adjacent room whose doorway stood open. The woman wafted into the room, making sure to stay in the shadows, stopping next to a figure asleep on the floor. Deloros gently place the cage on the floor and examined her beautiful daughter.
Her daughter, born of paper like her mother and father, had grown into a real woman of flesh and blood. So many nights Deloros lay awake agonizing over why her daughter was not like her. What was it that had caused her to change? A once happy and loving house now lay barren, stripped of its fruit. Her daughter, the light of her life, changed forever in what seemed like an instant, never to be what she was before. Standing next to her sleeping daughter now the memories rushed back, an unbridled confluence of sights, sounds, smells and emotions that caused Deloros to gasp and fall to the ground.
The girl awoke to the muffled sobbing of her mother. It was not a thing any normal person would have noticed, but Emily still had a sense for things of the world she had been ripped from. She'd never meant to change so much, she never noticed or felt the change. It wasn't until she looked at her reflection one day that she realized how different she was and how far she'd come from where she started.
"Mother," Emily spoke the word quietly so as not to awake her husband in the next room. Deloros looked up into her daughter's eyes. Those eyes, flesh and blood. So different and yet the same. The room was quiet again as they both sat entranced at the sight of each other.
Finally Deloros spoke smiling, "Happy Birthday," she said and lifted the birdcage to her daughter.
Emily took the gift in her hand. She did not need light to know how meticulously the origami bird had been crafted. It was perfect. Nobody alive had the skill to craft paper the way her parents did.
Deloros, who was painstakingly memorizing every detail in her daughter's reaction to relay the moment to her husband, whispered shakily, "Open it." She and her husband may have crafted the bird, but the final card to play was her daughters.
Emily's face became flush as she nodded. With shaky hands she slowly lifted the latch on the cage and reached inside. She ran her finger along the paper bird’s wings. The paper was thick and pulpy, but its bone white edges were sharp enough to cut the the girl's skin as she carefully withdrew the bird from the cage and placed it in her open palm.
Anticipation filled the tiny room, moist air hung thick and all was quiet but for Emily's shallow breathing. In one incredible instant of indescribable transformation the origami bird became flesh and blood in the palm of Emily's gentle hands. The girl drew the bird up to her lips and blew warm air through its brand new bone-white feathers. A gentle rustle of feathers and a cough, and hot blood began to course throughout the the birds body. Emily could feel the tiny creature’s feint breathing on her skin. She let go of all the pent up anxiety in one long sigh and smiled at her mother who stood transfixed. "Thank you," Emily said as she rose to her feet. The bird was safely nestled in Emily’s warm hands, and the girl began to softly sing to the it as she turned and walked into the lit room.
Deloros had to pull herself out of the spell she was under. She would never get used to seeing her daughter's skill at work. Now as she looked through the open doorway, where the lone flame still flickered, she saw her daughter's shadow silhouetted on the wall of the adjacent room. As Emily moved within the room her shadow seemed to grow smaller as if the woman was again becoming the little girl that Deloros had raised. Within that fleeting profile she finally saw what she had truly come for, and she wept at the vision of her daughter that she remembered best.