Raven's Will

38. What Happened to Your Face?

How are you feeling right now?

The page was blank save for the question at the top. It had taken Jett some time to sound out the words and understand their meaning. Reading didn't come easily to him. It never had.

Even when his mother tried to teach him his letters so many years ago, he'd struggled to sit still and focus, finding the birds hopping on the ground or chirping from trees to be far more interesting. When she died, he hadn't cared to practice his letters any more.

So now he sat, staring at the stack of papers. It wasn't a stack, really - there were only three sheets, and each had one question printed on it. His task for the day was to answer them. Homework, Seb had said. It hadn't seemed so bad when Seb dropped them off this morning, but now an entire hour had passed and Jett felt utterly lost.

Reading was one thing. Writing was another.

How was he supposed to answer this? Some of the words he didn't recognize, but the examples provided gave him an idea of what was expected.

How are you feeling right now? Describe it, using internal and external sensations. For example, are you frowning? Smiling? Do you feel queasy? Relaxed?

The question sat in his mind and burned like coal. How was he feeling? He scoffed. He felt that this was silly. Pointless. Why did he have to sit here and answer useless questions when he could be out there, doing something, anything, to help.

The urge to get up and try the door arose, but he didn't act on it. It was locked. He'd checked after Seb had left the last time, testing the handle, tugging, pushing, rattling the heavy slab of metal with as much strength as he could muster. It hadn't budged.

Instead, his gaze tracked over to the new object sitting on the table and some of his frustration faded. Seb had brought it this morning, nestled on a tray between a bowl of oatmeal and a glass of milk like it was part of his breakfast.

A piece of his suit. A forearm guard, a small armor piece that snapped into place above his wrist with a long opening to allow for the wing spikes. It was entirely useless on its own, but Jett didn't care.

It was his, and he had it back.

The object's smooth white surface gleamed golden in the lantern's light. It was the only spot of brightness in the entire room and compared to simple, minimalistic things provided to him, it clearly was out of place, almost as if it didn't belong here.

But it did, because it was his.

He reached out and gently brushed his fingertips across it. A smile tugged at his lips. It was only a small part of his suit, but Seb said he'd bring another piece once Jett finished with this homework. At this rate, it'd be a matter of days, or maybe a couple of weeks before he'd have the entire thing back.

The smiled faded as he returned his attention back to the stupid pages in front of him.

How are you feeling right now?

"Annoyed," he muttered. Then on a whim, he drew a circle on the page. Two dots became eyes, and a wavy line for a mouth. To clarify that it was a face, he drew on some little ears and several short lines for hair.

"Hmm." He frowned a little. It didn't really look like an annoyed face. It didn't look happy or mad, either, so it was definitely somewhere in between. It'd have to do.

The rest of the question was a bit confusing. Something about describing how he felt, which seemed kind of pointless. After some thought, he drew some more on the paper, adding arrows to indicate certain areas. The page quickly became a mess of scribbles and messy drawings, but hopefully Seb would be able to make sense of it.