I put out bits of bacon for the sparrows. Frederick says I am spoiling them.

I ask him why that matters, and he just shrugs. “It will matter when they return to their homes,” he says. “The others will reject them for the smell of dead pigs on their breath.”

Christina Murphy’s flash fiction has appeared in a range of journals and anthologies, most recently in Fresh Ground: Coffee House Flash Fiction Anthology and Astarte Journal of Fantasy.