Seth and the Prometheus Guild

Catching Birds

The girl was around his and Mary Ann's age, but not as tall as the other girl. Unruly, dark curls spread over her yellow-clad shoulders and her skin was a darker brown than Francesca's, reminding him of acorns.

She looked human except for one detail: small antlers like those of a young roebuck protruded from the wild mass of her hair. Maybe one of those strange human head decorations - Francesca had startled him once quite badly, when she was wearing a feather bedecked hat. He'd thought an especially hideous bird had decided to nest in her hair.

The girl was leaning on the crumbling balcony, her back turned toward Seth and her palm outstretched, facing a number of plain sparrows sitting on a low-hanging branch.

Seth could have told her that birds, especially ones that small, were miserable prey. Difficult to catch, because they were twitchy and took flight at the slightest hint of movement; not really tasty because they had so little meat on their toothpick bones that instead of chewing and swallowing, one was occupied with spitting out all the feathers and fluff that tickled the throat in unpleasant ways. But the girl was the first human he actually observed hunting on her own, and he didn't want to distract her from her efforts. Even though her methods were quite strange; was she impersonating a tree, in the hope the birds would fall for it?

In the same second the ludicrous thought ghosted through his head, one of the small nuisances actually fluttered down from his perch, settling on her palm. Maybe they aren't that difficult to catch after all.

Curiosity getting the better of him, Seth stalked closer, expecting the girl to kill the bird at any moment. Instead, she just stared at it, happiness radiating from her face.

"Break its neck, before it flies away," Seth advised her.

The girl's heartbeat spiked. Gasping she whirled around, one of her hands protectively laid over her chest. The bird, not a fan of the abrupt motion, was already gone, frantically flapping its wings and startling all his companions into flight as well. In seconds the branch was bird-free.

"Too late," Seth said.

Upon seeing him the girl's eyes widened for an instant before she furrowed her delicate brows. "Who are you? And what are you doing here?" Before Seth could answer, she continued: "No one is allowed so close to the uncharted zone."

"You are here," Seth pointed out quite correctly.

The girl blushed. "That's different. And what did you mean anyway, breaking its neck? I wasn't going to kill the sparrow!"

"You want to eat it while it's alive?" Seth asked, a little confused. Why bother if a simple snip off the fingers would twist its head clean around? Though flighty and annoying, birds were at least easy to break. He should probably keep it in mind, now that he was confined to this puny human form.

The girl blinked at him. "Why would I want to eat it?"

"You're not eating it? Why catch it then?"

"I wanted to test my - who are you anyway? I've never seen you around before."

"Seth."

She waited for him to continue, and when he failed to do so, the girl tried to prompt him. "Seth and ...?"

This was not how this particular human ritual was supposed to go. Seth had been part of it often enough to know by now. "You tell me your name now."

The girl narrowed her eyes. They were quite an unusual color, a light grey, contrasting with her otherwise dark coloring. "You still haven't told me what you're doing here."

He didn't know how to explain it correctly, so Seth simply said: "Because you smell like home."

"Like home?", the girl repeated. "What does that mean?"