Ravenwings (Imaged + Completed) [1st in Trilogy]

Part I - The Raven: Chapter 1

I kicked at a rock that was in my path.

I missed it.

I was just walking in the woods beyond my backyard on a late spring day, enjoying the sun. This was not necessarily by choice; I lived with my grandma, an ancient iPhone, and an even older, slower computer. So on summer break, in the middle of nowhere, with little to otherwise keep me entertained, I often gave up and went for a walk as I frustratedly contemplate the meaning of my existence. Yay!

I'd gone farther along the faint trail than usual today. I was bored. Nothing to do. Why not go farther? Why not climb the whole damn mountain? Maybe I'd get lost. Then I'd have something to worry about besides my clinically insane grandmother.

I found myself drifting away into my imagination in an effort to enhance my monotonous surroundings. A squirrel running across tree branches was actually a forest-dwelling ninja elf that protected the wildlife. A face-shaped cloud was an evil ghost that haunted the woods. A hunting stand was actually a well-disguised spy outpost. A bird tweeting desperately into the creaking trees was a shapeshifter trying to sound a warning of an evil hunter.

I was content listening to the birds and my own fantastical storytelling for as long as I pleased, when...there, on the next hill.

What...what was that?

My heart skipped a beat and I jumped behind a tree, terrified. Oh my god, a dead body!

I froze. What do I do, what do I do? I wasn't even sure if they were dead. CPR? Even then, who the hell would be miles into the wilderness, passed out cold? What if it's a serial killer? No, probably not. Famous last words...

But they hadn't moved at all. Perhaps the victim of said serial killer.

I peeked back around the tree.

Wait a second... It was a young boy, probably about my age; mid-to-late-teens.

I could see his bones jutting out from muscles that his starving body had been sapping away from. He lay on his side, facing me, with long black hair messily tumbling everywhere and hiding his face, clogged with horrible tangles and mattings. 

He was shirtless, his warm tan skin laced with red and pink scarring, and his black shorts were muddy, bloody, and ripped; so unkept and dirty and gnarled that for all I knew, he lived out there. Or just died out here.

Holy sh*t, what happened to him? my mind gaped. What was that burn on his neck? That scarring by his left eye? Those marks lacing his torso? He looked like...he'd been tortured or something.

He looked to have something black and feathery behind him, like a blanket that had meant to cover him had fell to behind his back. But...what threw me off so badly was that he was trapped in a net.