I wake to a tickling sensation on my arm, irritation pulling me from the warm embrace of sleep. Eliot grunts beside me as I shift, his fingers flexing against my chest like he's trying to hold onto me even in his dreams. "Stupid feathers," I mumble, blindly searching for whatever's poking me.

My fingers brush against something smooth and slightly curved - definitely not part of our cotton sheets. I pry my eyes open and lift my hand, holding a single black feather between my thumb and forefinger. It glints in the early morning light, impossibly soft yet with a rigid structure that speaks of flight.

"The hell?" I whisper, turning it between my fingers. We don't have any feather pillows or blankets. Parker's allergic to down, same as me. And yet... here's a perfect black feather in our bed.

Eliot makes a disgruntled sound and burrows deeper into his pillow. "What's wrong?" he mumbles without opening his eyes.

I hold the feather above him, rotating it so it catches the light. "Found this. In our bed." When he doesn't respond immediately, I add, "We don't have feathers anywhere in this apartment, remember?""

Finally, Eliot cracks one eye open, squinting against the morning light. His gaze flicks from the feather to my face and back again. For a moment, something unreadable passes across his features - something like recognition.

"Huh," he says simply, then rolls onto his back, staring at the ceiling.

"'Huh'? That's all you've got? There's a mysterious feather in our bed and you're just... 'huh'?"

Eliot turns his head toward me, his expression completely serious now. "It's Parker's."

"Parker's? How could it be Parker's?"

"She sheds them when she's not sleeping well," he says, like this is common knowledge.

I stare at him, waiting for the punchline. When none comes, I can only manage a disbelieving laugh. "Parker sheds feathers? Since when?"

Eliot studies me like I'm the one saying something ridiculous. "You didn't know?"

"Know that my girlfriend is apparently a bird? No, Eliot, that particular fact somehow escaped my attention!"

He sighs, scrubbing a hand over his face like this conversation is exhausting. "She's a Raven. Capital R.""

"A what?"

Before Eliot can answer, the bedroom door creaks open. Parker slips inside, her movements silent as always. She freezes when she sees us looking at her, something like guilt flitting across her face when her eyes land on the feather still clutched in my hand.