Bird Wings

Chapter 12

(Part 2)

Hawk went flying on his own after he brought Wren back to the cave, and she didn't see him again until late afternoon. He brought her some fruit to eat and still looked slightly upset. She waited for a while, watching him flick at his feathers in a clumsy attempt at preening. Birds made keeping their feathers neat look so easy, but nothing she had seen Hawk attempt during her time with him had made his wings look anything less than scruffy. He stayed silent as time passed, and his mood only seemed to darken.

Wren went over and crouched down facing him. He didn't look up.

"Are you mad?" She asked.

He didn't answer. Finally, she reached out and touched a finger to the furrow that had moved in between his eyebrows.

"Seriously, can't we talk about it?"

"I don't know why I'm upset. I should be happy about what you told me today, or, well not happy, I don't know. I shouldn't be upset though."

He leaned back against the wall, abandoning his wings, and looked at her.

"Why am I so upset?" he demanded.

"Maybe one of us has to be." she suggested, hoping to make him laugh. "It's your turn."

"I feel like I broke you. All those people down in the village would be horrified by what you said today."

"Why does what they think matter?"

"It used to matter to you!"

"Lot's of things used to matter to me that weren't the right things for me to be caring about! I can't believe how much time I spent thinking about what I would do differently than my mother when I had my own house, when you were up here by yourself."

"Now neither of us has a house!" he leaned forward to add more weight to that statement. "You're talking like I made your life better when it is so obviously worse."

"Isn't my mind more important? You said it yourself, it's like I was asleep before. I'm happy now that I have something more important to spend my time on than just what everyone down there has been doing for generations. To me that's more valuable than what I used to have."

"What are you doing now that's so important?"

"Well," She felt a flush. She hadn't expected him to challenge that point specifically. "I'm... with you now. I'm keeping you company."

"For what?"

"You didn't deserve the life you got. Is it really so upsetting for me to understand that and to want to be where I can do something about it?"

He was getting a tragic look in his eyes.

"You should know that there's nothing either of us can do about me, and what I am. Keeping me company isn't some kind of noble calling. Wren, I hope you know that you are absolutely wasted on me."

"No I'm not! You deserve to know me just as much as they did."

"I literally don't though. They're your family. They're your people. I had nothing to do with you and you didn't ask to have anything to do with me. I literally ruined your life. If you stay with me you don't get a happy ending, you don't get anything more than this crap I have to live with. What if I get hurt again, and can't fly anymore or come back to you? You'd starve to death up here. You're a prisoner here, you don't see that anymore?"

"I think it's a happier ending for me to help you than just live for myself down there. No one in the village needs me like you do, so isn't it good for me to want to be here, where I'm needed? Isn't that a good life to live?"

"Your life is not worth mine!"

"How can you say that? Our lives are worth the same! We're the same!"

"No we're not. You have chances I never did, and you used to see that. Maybe it was selfish of you but at least it wasn't delusional."

Her eyebrows went up.

"You think I'm delusional?"

"You are if you think you can change anything for the better for me."

Wren looked away, hurt and offended. After a long pause he reached out and took one of her hands.

"I just don't like the idea of you making sacrifices for me. You're sweet and it's sweet for you to want to help me, but I don't want you to forget that you're an outcast with me when you're up here, not a saviour."

"You would die if you were alone." she looked him in the eye fiercely. "You'd go to a dark place inside your head and you'd never come out. It's not wrong for me to want to keep you from that, and it is wrong for you to think that it would be okay for that to happen."

He didn't try to deny it. There was one main thing Wren had come to understand that had allowed her to forgive him for kidnapping her, and it was that. He had taken her out of a last desperate grasp at life, because he was in real danger and could not last any longer on his own. She could not fault him for valuing his own life.

"Let's leave this alone for now, okay?" He asked. "I need more time to think; so let's talk about something else for a while."

Wren was feeling dangerously close to tears, so she was ready to change too. She smiled and squeezed his hand before dropping it.

"Did you ever watch the village festivals before?" she asked.

***

Uh oh, I smell things going to shit.

-Laura