There was something different about the woman standing a few
tables away from me. As she gracefully sat down on the wooden chair, I thought
I heard the clink of metal and a quick glimmer of steel and something like a
sword at her waist under her coat. Her face was weathered and her hair braided
back firmly behind her head. She picked up the glass of water offered with a
nod of thanks and with hands weathered and strong.
She was one of the Sparrows. I suddenly realized she must
be one of them from the Sparrow Underground. I saw the sacks of seeds tied
discretely at her waist just visible under her coat and wondered at seeing her here in the city so far from
the forests and the wild. I had always heard the stories, but never seen a Sparrow
in person. People said birds landed and spoke to them. People said they knew the words to whisper to bring fish teeming back to rivers and how to coax plants out of barren soils. They said the Sparrows
could make the deserts bloom again, great forests regrow, and springs burst back to life in the drylands. I had no way of knowing how many of these stories were even
remotely true. I had always dismissed them myself. Until now. Seeing her
sitting there, I could almost make myself believe the stories were true.
As I was watching her with all these thoughts swirling through my head, she looked up straight at me. My breath caught in my throat. She smiled, raised her glass in my direction, a subtle half greeting, half salute, before finishing the water in it. No one around me seemed to even realize she was there. I wanted to get up and sit beside her and ask to hear her story because everything in the way she moved told me she had a story and a good one at that, but I wasn't so bold a person in those days. She thanked the man at the bar who had given her the water and stood, her dusty traveling coat falling to her sides. She glanced in my direction and untied a small cloth satchel from around her waist. She deliberately placed it on the table, nodded at me with a hint of a smile flickering across her face and left.
To this day, I still kick myself for not having had the courage to go talk with her. I did pick up the satchel of seeds she left me, though it was several years before I finally found out what they were. That was the first time I saw a Sparrow, but it wouldn't be the last.
