Novel
Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Plague does not concern ravens. Even if it did, Novel is hardly paying attention anyway. So she does not run for safety like so many others do, instead continuing to live in blissful pretense. Truth be told, she knows. Ever curious the raven girl, she sees, spying from the safety of her tree tops. But she simply cannot be bothered to care, even as they shiver from fever and cough their lungs onto the earth, she only watches.
Just like today.
She might never have taken more than a cursory glance at him had he not stopped before her tree. The cat that paces between his feet does not disturb her. They are silly creatures that she likes to taunt, but no true danger to her. This one would not reacting to her teasing though, she thinks. It seems terribly anxious, twisting and curling around the boy’s legs like that. Too focused on this sick horse to be any amusement to an easily distracted raven-girl.
When the pale stallion does not move on, instead staring at her tree with a feverish gaze, she tilts her head curiously, watching him from her lofty perch. When he suddenly rams his head straight into the trunk, she hops backwards in surprise, wings flapping wildly as she lets out a loudly disgruntled squawk.
Leaping down, she flutters to the ground, her body already shifting and morphing before her feet touch the leaf-littered loam. Her ears pin against her nape, a delicate, sunset mirror of his irritable expression. “My tree,” she announces petulantly, her voice rising from a croak as she tries to remember how to use equine vocal chords.
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortals ever dared to dream before.