They were
two birds. They didn't know what kind of birds they were, because they didn't care to know and got to
spending all their time together. They may have been the same species, or not, but they didn't care. One was
yellow and the other
blue. They clung to wet branches when it rained, they sang brightly at night to confuse this one girl they knew to be awake far
too late at night. They scurried
in and out of garbage piles and around the back doors of warm and welcoming restaurants, seeking out food together. The blue one liked having the yellow one around, for he taught her the color by being so truly yellow. The yellow bird liked how the blue bird easily became the sky, just an outline pressed against only certain shades of sky, or the water. He liked that she reminded him of
water.
In an activity uncommon for birds, or at least, an activity humans never see birds engaging in and therefore assuming it was uncommon, the yellow bird and the blue bird folded their wings together as they slept, side by side and not upright, as all the other birds did. They had seen it somewhere, through some window left open by mistake, and they tried it just once and have been doing it ever since. The blue bird loved to feel her feathers folded around and through the wings of the yellow bird, and even though birds can't smile, the blue one smiled, his little beak aching in its odd placement as he slept.
One thing they never knew was that when they were sleeping, they made the color green. They didn't make it like you do in Arts & Crafts, swirling stiff trays of dry watercolors together on white paper plates with your 99 cent brushes. No, they made the color green without trying, without knowing they had. As they slept, the color green came from every blue feather that touched every yellow feather, in small straight lines, in the night. The green would overtake both their colors, and while they slept they were neither blue nor yellow but a radiant green like no green you can imagine.
The color had a life of its own, separate from its host, and it was too shy to come out when the birds were awake, for it may frighten them and then it would never get to come out. It washed over them like the loving stroke of a mother touching her child as, at last, he was sleeping softly. Once, and only once, the blue bird awoke briefly and unexpectedly and when she glanced over at the yellow bird's shoulder, she saw his feathers turning green as they brushed against hers. It would've startled her, had she not been dreaming of the color green just before, so she quickly brushed it aside, thinking it was part of the dream, perhaps a trick of light in the darkness. Green learned that night to be more careful, to listen to the birds' breath to make sure it was safe to come out.
So at night, every night, the two birds tangle up together in the dark eaves of houses, unknowingly and without concern, and make the color green.