Word Count → 1309 :: Bonding time.

Vesper did not look up from fletching arrows when the raven landed on the shoulder. She wound the sinew around the shaft and turkey feathers, completing the fifth of her arrows before setting it aside; better fletchers would perfect them, although she’d learned the task easily enough when she knew what was needed. Only then did she reach up with a finger to stroke the bird’s throat and chest, distracted.

“Everything okay?” Stark croaked, hopping down onto her arm. His claws pricked her thin fur as he adjusted his stance.

She surveyed the dark woods around them, the red-stained dark trees of the hollow and the black shapes that shifted in the upper branches. She shrugged her shoulders and picked up a naked arrow shaft, looking it over before setting it down and sighing. “Everything’s quiet. I’m just waiting for the next attack. It’s only a matter of time.” The archery stands were coming along well, but she knew that a rain of arrows would only deter the wolves for a while. They’d attack another section of the borders then, or simply drive in under fire without regard for what the coyotes did. She remembered the deep hatred in the dead man’s red eyes then, and shut her own cornflower blue ones.

The raven flapped back to her shoulder to run his beak through her mane comfortingly. It was beginning to grow out, some strands spilling onto her shoulders, but she couldn’t be bothered to rip it out again. She didn’t care enough about the scruffy, shaggy mess it was, not when there were important matters at hand.

“I can handle battle and bloodshed,” Vesper said then, staring into her lap. “I can maybe even handle war. But I don’t know what I’d do if…if one of our own died.”

“Death being part of war,” Stark reminded her mildly.

She frowned in frustration. “I know. I’m being a child.”

He cawed then, such a loud and raucous sound that she shrugged violently to dislodge him from her body. Her ear pressed back into her mane, she glanced at him with narrowed eyes and curled lip. Bobbing his head from his position on the ground, he only cawed again more softly and peered at her with his beady eyes.

“Boy being child,” Stark confirmed warmly. “Boy saying two turns after hatching? Being child.” He bobbed his head again and began to preen his glossy violet-black feathers idly. “Can afford fearing, grieving. Boy not being ancient, blind wise raven, yes?”

The scarred woman snorted. “I probably won’t live long enough to be blind and wise,” she replied coolly. “I needed to grow up fast, and so here I am.” Looking at him, though, she could tell that he was not going to relent the point. But it infuriated her—her age did—and she did everything she could to put up with it. Sometimes the tears came on suddenly, like when Blind had died, or she was giddy and girlish for the briefest of moments. She liked the image she’d spent months crafting herself, and a setback like that always shook her. She wished she was older, wished she had seen more, wished she could be used to it already.

“Can be father,” Stark said, and ran his beak through his chest feathers to indicate himself before hesitating. He seemed at a loss for words, either because of the canine vocabulary or because he was flustered, although she had never seen him flustered. “Can be,” he repeated, and tilted his head. “Can—boy understanding?”

“You’re old enough to be my father.” Vesper nodded, and then suddenly she was curious of this little bag of feathers before her. “Stark… I know nothing about you,” she murmured, and reached out to let him hop onto her arm again.

He puffed himself up, feathers ruffled, before exhaling. “Born beyond. Not far, not near. Boring life, easy, food coming and going.” He shifted his feet. “Finding mate,” he said after a moment. “Having young.” He looked off into the trees, the shadows of his flock, although she was suddenly unsure if he would call it his. “All good, then wolves coming. Wolves ignoring bird, bird no trouble, but… Wolves killing. Sickness, cold taking two chicks before, wolves taking last…boy.” He unfurled his wings. “Stark coming to Inferni, spying. Getting older, forgetting some hate, getting wiser—helping you.” He poked her gently with his beak.

She looked softly at him, knowing that there was much left unsaid behind that stunted explanation. “What was your son like?” she asked. “The ones the wolves killed.”

“Scrawny, picking fights, proud and stupid.” Stark quorked. “Like Vesper.”

She was startled into a smile, although it quickly slipped away into the darkness as she stared at her claws. “I’m sorry that—that all that happened.”

“Boy not sorry,” the raven said with a harsher jab at her ribs. “In past. Understanding that, getting wiser.” He flapped his wings, landing on a branch above her; she had to crane her neck to look at him. “Now,” he croaked, and stretched his neck. “Stark praying no coyote dying this war, but happening in time. Always dying, always happening. Just—boy fighting and scouting, ravens spying, clan winning.”

The coywolf scratched awkwardly at her missing ear. “What if—” she began, needing to cling to him for an answer this time, her childishness be damned.

Stark croaked darkly. “Wolves dying, and Stark eating their flesh.”

She blinked, and understood. She felt helpless all over again, but it was the kind of feeling that she could do nothing about—and she could accept that. Wolves would fall if any of her comrades did, and once the earth was finished drinking up all the blood and the ravens were finished plucking out the eyes of the dead, then she could figure it out, and grieve. One death had rattled her, but perhaps like with the killing, more would cease to matter—or not cease to matter so much as cease to destroy her. She would always grieve, and deeply, if any of her friends were to die, but she was too strong to break.

The raven cawed suddenly and shook himself. He chortled as a loose feather fell, but Vesper only twirled it and grinned. With a glance at the sinew she’d used to tie the fletching, she grimaced thoughtfully. She had her rosary to remind her of this war, to remind her of everything, but she needed something to remember Stark. Tilting her head, she worked to tie the feather to her silver earring.

Stark studied her for a bit, and then he flapped down to the ground. “Speaking of better things now,” he announced, and looked her over for a minute. If a bird could smirk, she was sure he was smirking now. “Stark asking about boy’s lady friend.”

The mottled hybrid narrowed her eyes at him. “I don’t follow.”

“Not being blind. Boy making eyes at Myrika when not looking, and Stark tired of all flirting.”

Vesper had no delusions about her feelings for the pretty Praetorian, but hell if she was going to discuss this with a bird. “I’m not flirting.”

He cackled. “Right—so pathetic, cannot call it that!”

She swiped at him, but he flew away easily, alighting on a tree branch. For a while she allowed herself to forget her troubled thoughts, racing through the forest on two legs and on all four after the raven, bombarded with relationship advice at every corner.

And, for the span of a fuzzy moment, Vesper allowed herself to think that she wished Stark had been her father—but the moment passed, and she saw sense as she left him to hunt, and he quorked a farewell far warmer than anything she’d heard before.

She didn’t really need to wish. He was there.