Corvid Lost

Chapter 10: Trust is not easily gained from some.

CW: brief mention of animals healing from injuries, nothing graphic is described. Threats are spoken but not gone through with.

Techno was the first to wake within the station.

He always was.

The change in schedules from the new arrival had no effect on him.

He stretched his arms out, tying his hair back into its usual braid as he slipped into his uniform. Always pressed and spotless, no matter how badly stained or wrinkled it would get. How he managed to maintain it, he would never admit.

How he did most things, he would never admit. It was amusing to see the utter bafflement on his coworkers faces when he had done something within a certain amount of time, or that didn't seem possible.

Everything could be done, if one thought around the box it was in.

He did a quick inspection of the grounds just before dawn, checking the electrical and water, ensuring all the hinges on the doors were oiled. All the windows were in decent shape. No cracks had formed in the walls and no burrows had been dug beneath the station's floors.

Well, except for one.

Techno paused in his inspections to kneel before the only hole beneath the building, and made a little whistling noise, scratching at the edge of the burrow.

The gnarled, one eyed face of a very old, very dusty tabby cat, poked out of the edge of the burrow with a faint brrup of greeting. Before wriggling its way out from the under the building, purring as it bumped its head against the man's hand.

"Mornin' Lincoln." Techno cooed, giving the old tom cat a light scritch behind the ears.

The old thing had been at the station since before he had even been assigned here, since the previous rangers had lived here, and would probably be here long after he was gone. Realistically speaking, there was no way a cat would live that long. But then again, the desert was a strange place full of unexplainable things.

Such as a man with bird wings. he thought as he made his way to the back of the station, where a small set of pens and huts had been set up, followed by the old tom cat as he did.

Techno gave a sharp whistle as he arrived and immediately a series of heads poked around fences and out of huts, various noises of happy creatures flooded the air as he gathered up the foods for the animals at the station.

The three mules, the only transport for deep desert retrievals of lost tourists, jostled against one another in their pen for his attention as he hefted a large block of hay to them. The one boar, its eye missing from a roadside accident, nuzzled his leg. The multitude of song birds rescued from heat stroke or run-ins with windows all swarmed about him as he refilled their water.

It had taken ages to gain their trust, but to the other rangers it had almost happened overnight, Techno smirked.

"The hell did you do?! Tame them?!" Wilbur had been incredulous when he had seen the pinkette hand feeding one of the falcons they had rescued. "You're not supposed to do that! You have to keep them wild!"

"Oh they're still wild." Techno had admitted. "I'm just their favourite."

It had always been like that, he had found most animals just liked him. For one reason or another. He never went out of his way to pet any of the wild ones they brought in, they all just eventually trusted him enough to be near him, or even nuzzle up against him.