I nearly veer off the road after seeing the three ravens fly above my windshield and have to grip the steering wheel to regain control again, my heart races at the sight of the three together.

"Three?! Why are there three?" I exclaim, aghast and breathing heavily. This is an omen, I think, a feeling of dread floods my veins.

Nothing good ever comes from the number three. It's awkward, it interrupts, doesn't divide evenly, and creates an imbalance. To my ADHD-OCD-every-other-diagnostic-acronym-with-accompanying-prescription-mind, the concept of imbalance just wouldn't do. Imbalance leads to disorder, and disorder leads to chaos. Imbalance needs to be re-ordered. Something I am good at. "Re-ordering things," I whisper, smiling at the thought of my Tupperware drawer at home.

Now two, that is a good number, neither too large nor too small. Nothing is left behind, so neat, and simple the number two is. "Almost perfect," I say cheerily to the radio.

The sun greets the day over the horizon with its bleary and muted tone, accompanying me on my long morning commute along the rolling highway. Despite traveling this road every morning and every evening, the drive never seems to get shorter. Especially in winter when it's always dark.

"I hate driving in the dark," I remind myself aloud, as if somehow voicing this would make the drive any less boring or reduce my anxiety. That's why I almost miss them, the three ravens. There shouldn't be three, though. Two is perfectly fine, I know who the two are. They are always there, those two, watching, leap-frogging their way through the skies, following my commute from above. Each morning I mutter separate ‘good mornings' to them both, acknowledging their unique existence, my ‘watchful wonders,' I call them. I thank them too, for watching over me. I must keep them busy, with all my comings and goings.

I notice then that, lost in the province of my thoughts, I had managed to press a little harder on the gas pedal. "Whoopsies!" I exclaim. "One-hundred kilometers an hour is the optimal driving speed for highway commuting," I recite to myself aloud, mimicking the voice of my father as I ease the weight off my right boot-clad foot. I look at the time, 0707h. "Crap," I say, vowing to put a quarter in my ‘swear jar' later today when I am home. I am running late. I hate running late; it throws off my whole day. I have a very regimented schedule I must follow, and at this point in my morning, I notice I am two minutes behind schedule. Sigh. There goes my day. I roll my eyes. "Double crap." I say aloud, tallying up my total swear jar owings now to fifty cents. "And it's not even eight o'clock yet," I lecture myself.

My mind keeps skipping back to the three. "But who is the third?" I ponder anxiously, thinking of who this could be. "Three, three, three, three..." I hum out loud in time to the music playing on the radio. "This isn't a good sign," I frown, "not good at all." Concentrating hard, I rack my brain, listing off who could be this third raven, "Granny? No, not yet; her bracket is not ready to be closed. Henry? Not, he got through covid just fine," I query aloud, as if somehow putting voice to my thoughts might shed more light on the identity of the third. I cannot think of who might be ready for their set of dates to be complete.

The roads are slightly snow covered, the wind blows snowflakes across the highway surface in a way that makes it look like blowing smoke, creeping along in wisps, signaling that something most interesting might be lying just on the other side. At this hour, there are few cars on the road "I feel like an owl!" I bemoan to no one in particular, a martyr to my own cause. The windows are icy on the inside from condensation, I should have waited for the car to warm up a bit more before driving, I think, the gauche certainty of perceived wisdom prevailing over safety and common sense.

And this is why I don't see the patch of ice in time to slow down. Suddenly I know who the third is.

It is me.