WREN
The sound woke me. Scraping. Dragging. Something heavy being moved across stone.
I counted my breaths in the darkness. One. Two. Three. The sound came again, from somewhere below. The library.
I found him in the corner where the two tallest shelves met, surrounded by chaos.
Furs. Cushions. Blankets I hadn’t seen before, pulled from storage rooms I hadn’t explored. He was arranging them with a focus that bordered on frantic, his wings half-extended, feathers catching the lamplight as he worked.
He didn’t notice me in the doorway. Or if he did, he couldn’t stop.
I watched him drag another fur into position, smoothing it with hands that trembled slightly. His movements were precise despite the trembling. Deliberate. He knew exactly where each piece needed to go, even if he couldn’t have explained why.
The walls of whatever he was building were made of books.
I stepped closer. He’d used the heavy volumes as foundation. Law texts, encyclopedias, the massive histories that took two hands to lift. Above them, technical manuals and scientific treatises formed a second layer. And lining the inner edge,within easy reach of wherever someone might sit, poetry. Fiction. The novels I’d been reading this week.
He remembered which ones I’d touched.
“Tavrin.”
He went still. His back was to me, wings rigid, and for a long time, he just stared.
“You should. Not be awake.” The words came out broken, separated by gaps where language failed him. “I am. This is.”
“What is it?”
He turned. His eyes were pure gold in the lamplight, pupils slit, and something in his face looked almost ashamed.
“I could not sleep. After what happened. I needed to. Build. This. I did not want you to. See.”
“Why not?”
“Because.” He stopped. Started again. “Because I do not understand it. And I cannot. Explain. What I do not understand.”
I walked toward him. He tracked my movement, body tense, like he wanted to reach for me and was physically restraining himself.
The nest was beautiful. That was the word for it, even if it felt strange to apply it to a pile of furs and cushions and books. Beautiful in its obsessive care. In the way he’d curved the walls to create shelter. In the way he’d made a space that was soft and warm and protected on all sides.
“The books aren’t damaged,” I said.
He blinked. “What?”
“You organized them. By weight at the bottom, reference in the middle, and the ones I’ve been reading at the top where I can reach them.” I touched the spine of a poetry collection I’d finished yesterday. “Even in the middle of whatever this is, you remembered that I’m short.”
“They are yours.” His voice dropped, rough and certain. “Your books. Your space. I would not. Damage. What is yours.”
The old Wren would have cataloged this as danger. This Wren leaned closer.
Instead I said: “How does someone sit in it?”
He stared at me. “What?”
“The nest. Where do the cushions go? How are the walls supposed to shelter?” I held his gaze. “I want to see.”
Something shifted in his expression. Not understanding, exactly. More like permission.
He reached for me. His hand engulfed mine, burning hot, and he drew me forward into the structure he’d built. The furs were softer than anything I’d ever touched. The cushions cradled my weight as he guided me down, arranging me against the curved wall of books with a gentleness that made my chest tight.
