There's Crows In The Garden | 3rd Life AU

.: The Prologue :.

TWs: death

***

When I was fifteen, I saw my first crow.

Now, what you need to know about my childhood is that I lived on the sea. My father was a fisherman and had been taken by the ocean before I could even walk, and my mother scaled fish in a little shack on the beach with a small group of other women who'd lost their husbands to the waves. As soon as I was old enough to hold a knife, I joined my mother in the shack and helped with the crates of fish that came in each day.

My work in the fish shack is unimportant, though. What is important is that many birds visited the seaside town I lived in, and those birds were always gulls or albatrosses. Not crows. Never crows.

So, it was a shock to see the crow perched atop the roof of the little house my mother and I dwelled in. We stared at each other for a second— the bird's beady black eyes versus my own green ones. Then, the crow tipped its head, spread its wings, and flew away, up toward the mountains in the north.

That was strange, I thought, and then I went inside and promptly forgot about the crow. 

Soon after, my mother fell ill and died. When I went to tell the priest of the unfortunate death, I found a crow outside the door. It cawed and flew off.

Hmm, don't crows mean death or something? I wondered. Interesting.

I stuck around long enough to attend the funeral before setting off to see the greater world. The next years were bliss: journeying from village to village, living off the land (though I did resort to stealing occasionally), visiting great mountains and endless plains and marshy lakes and snowy forests. I'd always known I was a wanderer by heart, and now, without my mother to tie me down, I was able to live my dream. 

Whenever I spotted a crow in a village, I'd leave immediately. A few days later, when I arrived at the next town down the road, there'd be some sort of bad news about the town I'd just left. It had burned to the ground. There'd been a murder spree. A disease was spreading. Some important official had been assassinated. There was always something.

Crows mean misfortune, I decided. I'll not stick around when they're near. I'll leave quickly and get as far away as I can.

I'd never been good at doing what I should.

***

Author's Note

Word Count: 420

HI HI HI WELCOME TO CROWS!!! I'm so so very excited for this :D This is my favorite thing I've ever written at the moment and I can't wait to show you all what I've been working on for the last couple of months.

(The next two paragraphs are from after I finished writing this prologue, so a couple of things might sound a little strange because of the hop back in time)

If you haven't read my oneshot named Tell the Crows They Can Have Their Pound of Flesh, I'd advise it (its in the reading list entitled 'The Foxlore Collection' on my profile). This fic is going to be everything from that in more detail and with backstory and stuff. Oh yeah and I'm actually making the effort this time to make it a medieval AU instead of 'Life Series AU but expanded towards medieval a LITTLE bit'.

Oh also I FINALLY started watching 3rd Life in preparation for this AU! (I've been procrastinating for wayyyy too long.) I was planning to watch the full thing before starting this, but then I REALLY wanted to work on this, so I'm only 2 sessions in at the moment lol.

I know I usually publish chapter 1 when I publish the Before You Read and prologue (when I have one), but I'm actually going to wait a week for that this time. This fic is shorter than all my other ones (in the amount of chapters anyway— word count is about the same as my last full fic), so I'm trying to extend it out a little further so I have time to write the fic coming after this one.

I'll see you in the next chapter (it'll be a lot of fun, I promise) Have a great day!

-Blu