30 Days 30 Stories, Installment 22, Bird of Paradise

There were once two lovers who dwelt in paradise. They were, as one might suspect, deeply in love and in a state of wonderful happiness. Until the day the bird of paradise fell in love with the woman. Large, colorfully and beautifully plumed, as beautiful as all the things within paradise, the bird spied the woman asleep, and as she woke and kissed the man, and in that moment his feathers rustled in a way he had never known. That night he stole her from the embrace of her lover, leaving one long, green feather in his wake, and flew her far outside the bounds of paradise, to an island of feathery trees and the bluest waters, white turreted towers of ivory enclosing rooms of carved splendor.
And there she sat, and white with rage, she would not love him.
He brought her a great grey pearl from the depths of the sea, where he had dived deep and long to steal it from the sharks and the whales and the monsters that guarded it.
But she wept, and would not love him.
He brought her the endless fire from the top of the highest mountain of the world, the fire that never went out, but lit, eternally, that which it touched and kept it always warm, and dry, and alive.
But she sat in silence and would not love him.
And he brought her, finally, the most beautiful silk that was ever made, embroidered with thread that had been spun from starlight and worked over with the rays of the sun. And it saddened him to see her form, so beautiful as it was without covering, to be covered by even such a raiment as this.
But she looked at him with the largest and saddest eyes he had ever seen in her lovely face, and she told him, quite simply, that she did not love him. She did not. And she would never. She loved her lover in paradise.
The bird of paradise fell deathly ill. his long feathers lay, wilted, upon the counterpane of silk and satin that he had prepared for her. His long neck tossed this way and that. He was ill with love.
She bent over him, and she nursed his head, she gave him water, she soothed his fever, and she sang him lullabies.
But when he awoke he saw she did not love him.
She bent over him, her eyes warm and kind. "This day," she whispered in his ear, "you have become a man. You have suffered the pain of love, and you have survived."
When he glanced at himself, he saw, there on the bed, the form of a man, and he looked at her with his still green eyes, the eyes of a bird of paradise, and a soul who had loved.
He returned her to paradise, and began his journey alone.