Fairytale

8• One for Sorrow

I just can't.

I'm terrified. I'm so afraid of what is happening and I don't understand any of it.

I pull away from Bah-dley's head to sob and fall to my knees. I fall down in the middle of the street, my knees on either side of the yellow lines. Rain falls in a brutal way, bouncing off the pavement like thousands of tiny rubber balls. My hair grows heavier and heavier until my bun falls. My dark hair, soaked and stringy, surrounds me. It sticks to my face, to my arms, to my cleavage.

My face scrunches up as the night catches up to me. I fall forward, holding Bah-dley between my chest and my legs, and wail loud enough to hear over the rain.

I'm so lost in my horrors and sorrows that I fail to notice the beast that lands in the street in front of me. It isn't until it steps towards me, the sound of puddles splashing with footsteps, that I look up.

Like a beautiful yet sad fallen angel, a giant black bird stares back at me. White spreads on its underbelly and on the edges of its wings. Although its size is abnormal enough, that's not all that's strange about the bird.

Its neck extends a bit longer than a bird's typically would. It has the face of a man. It's a very familiar face. I've felt like I've seen it before in passing, but the rain is falling too hard to see clearly. Where his hair should be, are instead thin silken black feathers that fall beautifully like hair past his chin.

I want to scream at first. All the nightmares I've gone through tonight come rushing to the surface and my body immediately turns to surviving. It's his eyes however that still my screams, that pause my tears.

Deep morose grey and watching me with notable curiosity.

The massive bird, larger than a truck, walks towards me. As it does the feathers begin to recede into his body. Slowly as he travels in the stormy weather, the bird becomes more and more man. From a bird with the head of a man, to a man with a feathered body and wings for arms.

When he's only yards away, the feathers on his body recede revealing human clothing beneath. Black slacks, an unbuttoned black shirt that fully displays his chest and sticks to his human body, and bare feet. The feathers molt off, trickling to the street where they disintegrate.

By the time he stands directly in front of me only a few avian traits remain. Namely his arms as much smaller wings that drag on the ground behind him and thin sliver like feathers that are scattered in his very human hair.

My neck cranes up from my keeled over position, face still scrunched as if I'm going to cry. Up this close I can finally see him clearly and I remember why he's so familiar. Dark grey eyes stare at me like I'm a curiosity and churn with deep sorrow that seems to be a fixed feature of them. That sorrow has been there for a very long time, always in the background.

His feather littered hair is as I remember it a few weeks ago when I last saw him. His black hair clings to the tops of his collarbones and his face, a watered white streak in his bangs resembles a line of paint.

I don't care if they aren't real. I don't. I'm just so happy to see one of them again. I sob out," Corvus."

His eyes glint with something unknown when I say his name. It's hard to tell with his face remaining so stagnant.