Life involving spaceships

Most of the original feathers are gone now. In their place are ones she's found, scrounged, stolen or been given. There are neon pink feathers from hen do feather boas, and matted old ostrich feathers that she says came off a dancing girl's fan back in the '20s. No, the last '20s. There are feathers from children's craft kits, plastic quills in primary colours sticking together in sheets. The soft fluffy feathers in the depths of the wings, right up against her body, have been padded out with down plucked from a thousand pillows.

The flight feathers around the edges, the ones that need to be durable, are mostly from roadkill. The crows and blackbirds stand out, and she's made features of them, Rorshach-like. The gull feathers from winter beaches and the pigeon feathers she finds in London gutters blend in almost seamlessly with the grubby remnants of her own. Arranged neatly down the outer edges are her prized possessions: pheasant tail feathers. She hitchhikes as much as she can whenever she travels, always keeping an eye out along country roadsides. "They're so beautiful," she murmurs, stroking them with the backs of her knuckles, "and so stupid. Get a good meal off of them, too."

I ask whether all the different kinds make flying more difficult, and she stares at me like she doesn't understand the question. Her eyes are huge in her thin face, pupils wide and shining, and it makes her look high but I don't think she is. What does flying have to do with it, she asks, not expecting me to have an answer. If I wanted to fly, I would. But it's been centuries since she was last in a flying kind of mood.

She is very beautiful, and I am drunk, and I tell her these things because they seem important. She laughs and says that she knows. I ask if I can touch her wings, and they furl slightly as she pauses in thought. No, she says after a moment, but thank you for asking. Most people don't.

She watches me for a moment, not quite knowing what to do about me, and I watch her because I can't do anything else. I offer her another cigarette. She accepts, and then offers me a trade. My lighter for a feather. She gets all her favourite things this way, she explains. Her boots are from a girl who was happy to go home from a goth night barefoot. Her wig, which is vast and scarlet and glories in its own fakery, belonged to a drag queen back in the '80s. It keeps her head warm, now that all of the feathers there are gone.

My lighter is nothing special, but it's metal rather than plastic, because I like the weight of it. There's a pokeball sticker on one side of it, and years ago one of my friends scratched a cool S into the other side with a pocket knife. It's covered in scuffs and dings. I hand it over without a second thought.

She stretches her wings out wide to pluck the feather, almost completely enclosing us both. They've been trapping cigarette smoke since long before I was born, and I can barely breathe with them surrounding me. This doesn't matter.