Sam was looking forward to a peaceful Friday evening after a busy week at the lab. The house was quiet, Jill was bound to be in the garden as it was her day off and the weather fine.

The back door was open and Jill jumped up from a flower bed and rushed up to the patio to greet him.

‘What’s the excitement, have you found a rare butterfly?’

‘Mother’s been!’

Sam was taken aback. His mother-in-law had died three weeks ago, peacefully, in her 98^th year. He thought Jill was coping well.

‘Jill, what do you mean?’

‘I found a white feather.’

‘You surely didn’t believe all that stuff your mother used to talk about?’

‘You didn’t believe, I kept an open mind. Mum said she would send a sign if she could.’

‘A feather left by some moth eaten pigeon…’

‘A perfect pure white feather floated down just as I was tidying round that shrub Mother gave us. At least let me show you.’

Jill moved across to the kitchen door, reached in for the lop sided jug her mother had made at U3A pottery class and pulled out a very large snowy white feather.

‘Okay, not a pigeon but a handsome swan. Did you see any flying overhead?’

‘No, we’re miles from any river.’

‘Well, all sorts of things get blown in the wind. If she wanted to send a message why not something useful or tangible.’

 ‘I imagine its not easy being dead, especially if you’re new at it. Besides, there must be rules, otherwise we would all be inundated with messages from the other side.’

‘Jill, we don’t get messages from the dead because they are no more. It’s the Twenty First Century, we’ve grown out of all that stuff.’

‘You scientists don’t know everything, I felt so peaceful out there in the garden, knowing Mother was happy.’

‘That’s your serotonin kicking in. A sunny day in the garden always makes you happy and you were also thinking about your mother. I’m a physicalist what you see is what there is, that’s it. Your mother is still with you, but in your memories.’

‘We can both see this feather, how do you explain that?’

‘Your guardian angel flew over, ha, ha, dropped in to help with the weeding.’

‘Why don’t you test its DNA in your lab?’

‘I will, might even contribute to our current bird studies. Right, I’m going up to check my emails before dinner.’

Sam looked out of his office window at the patchwork of little back gardens below. He told himself he was appreciating the colourful display Jill had created in their back garden, not looking for swans or angels. He noticed something new in next door’s garden, a large colourful playhouse. The new young couple had only just moved in and already Jill had discovered they were expecting their first baby, a bit early to be buying expensive Wendy houses… then he noticed movement on the overgrown lawn. Chickens, so that must be a modern state of the art hen house, hopefully fox proof. Shouldn’t be any trouble unless there was a cockerel to wake them up. At that moment there was a fluttering amongst the drab brown and speckled hens as a proud rooster strutted out. A dashing snow white rooster with a scarlet cockscomb. Sam dashed downstairs to tell Jill the mystery was solved.

Jill was excited to see the new livestock, but held the long straight flat feather aloft triumphantly.

‘This did not come from a rooster, magnificent as his curling tail feathers are.’

Sam arrived at the lab early on Monday morning; frivolous use of the facilities was frowned upon and he did not fancy telling the others he was checking for angel DNA. But the quicker he could identify the feather as belonging to a swan or an albino peacock the better.

The results made no sense, the feather was apparently freshly shed, clean and undamaged so the results could not be corrupted.  The DNA looked like none he had ever seen before, certainly not belonging to any bird. If anything it was closer to homo sapiens, yet different, not to mention the fact that there were forty six pairs of chromosomes. He had already started from scratch again and achieved exactly the same results. Far more study would be needed to venture any theory as to what sort of creature this feather came from. He could be holding unique scientific information, but how could he tell his colleagues, what should he tell Jill?