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

Part I: Chapter 3

I'm pretty sure Raven was claustrophobic.

It took all the coaxing and armloads of food in the world to convince him to enter my front door and climb up into the attic, and he still clearly hated it.

While Grandma slept on the sofa, I spent half an hour setting the attic up. I cleared a ton of space out, pulled up a mattress from the basement, and made his bed, then got him set up with power via an extension cord. The entrance to the attic was the missing ceiling of a storage closet just outside my bedroom, so I had to haul ass to get a mini fridge up there too, which I stocked with food.

All the while, he was crouched in the shadowed corner, watching me like a cat, his eyes glinting as he stared at me, deep in thought. His jaw was clenched, his fist was squeezed until his knuckles were white. 

He was glaring at me so intently he was hard to read... What was he thinking about, looking at me like that? He had obviously been abused, so I couldn't help but wonder if he was dangerous. Welp he grabbed you by the neck when he met you so yeah no sh*t he's dangerous, and here you are anyways.

"Alright," I tried to just ignore his stare, "so here's your bed, all nice and comfy with sheets and blankets and everything, the fridge right here has some food for you. I didn't totally stuff it full though, because eating too much after being so hungry can be really bad for your digestive system..." I'm rambling again... "I'll come refill it when I have another chance. I put a chair by the shutters for you to sit in."

His trance broken, he relaxed his clenched fists and looked from me, to the chair across the attic, and back to me...then raised his wings a little, and crawled over towards it on his hands and feet over the rafters that made up the floor.

At one point, he tried to stand. We had a very large attic, and there was plenty of room for it, but he was exhausted from the walk. His legs buckled underneath him.

I immediately took a step forward and caught him, but my touch only scared him more.

His wings flailed and beat against the floorboards as he tried to escape my help, so I let him go and jumped back.

He had fallen on his back and he immediately scampered to crouching several more feet away.

"Sorry," I apologized awkwardly. "I'm...not sure how to help..."

He gulped, jumpy and tense.

"Just...if you step in between the rafters you might very well step right through the ceiling, so I'm just trying to make sure you get there. Can I gave you a hand?"

He glared at me and shook his head.

"Please? I'm just trying to help."

He looked away from me. He knew that. But...this was probably as much of a fear-of-being-touched as it was that he had lost everything. His wings, whatever home or life he ever had if he even had one. But after all he'd been through, he'd managed to preserve some of his dignity. So I left him at least that, and backed up so he could do it himself.