“OK,” said Taryn, “I don’t know who this is or how you’re doing it, but ha ha, hilarious, joke over, no thank you.”

“She can’t see us?” It was the first voice again, one she thought seemed a little friendlier.

“Of course she can’t.” The other one seethed with impatience, clear even while invisible.

“Seven,” said the squirrel in a voice Taryn didn’t expect a squirrel to have.

“Seven,” echoed a sparrow, in exactly the voice Taryn expected it to have.

“She’s only a three. She can’t even conceive of us.”

“Are you talking about me? Because I’m right here. No need to be rude.”

“See?” Impatience morphed to smugness.

A crow glided down from a branch, landing gracefully atop a chainlink fence by the sidewalk. It looked at her with one bright black eye, and then tilted its head as though studying something above and slightly behind her.

“Seven,” it said as if it was introducing Masterpiece Theater, and then it pointedly glanced back at the air, then her, then the air.

“We should have tried a crow,” the exasperated one said, “at least then the universe would stand a chance.”

Until next time…