Page 13 of Veil of Blood and Bone

I clack my beak with a croak, and she flashes me a smile, braids swinging around ample bosoms with her movement.

She ran over me with the motorized contraption. Anger should’ve blistered at the insult, the injury, but nothing came. I am… Curious.

Intrigued.

I’m not the only one curious enough to creep closer from the underbelly of those woods. Earlier I caught snippets of a figure, a dark-haired man hidden by darker limbs who cast long and unbroken glances up to the sky.

And another⁠—

Pain splits through my head, and I snap my beak again to shake it off.

They don’t matter. None of them matter. They might smile like they know me, know what the raven’s body truly hides, but I don’t know them. And if I did… their names are lost.

Consciousness swirling, I snatch up the last of the rye crust and devour it.

Knowledge, memory. They all disappear somewhere in the abyss of my mind, where everything else goes. The thoughts flicker like ash on a cruel wind before they’re gone, too.

“Helene, you’re daydreaming again,” the curly haired woman in the chair says with a laugh.

“Nah, Audra, I keep thinking I see someone in the woods. It’s freaking me out,” the blonde replies.

“Yeah, people drunk off those mead horns the Fester boys are selling.”

I hop closer, the foot the machine ran over still twinging, and snap for more to eat.

“It’s not a lot of people, though. It’s like one person. But they’re hiding in the shadows.” The blonde sounds pained.

Another croak, feathers ruffled, and she settles her attention on me. “I’m sorry, beautiful. I don’t have any more bread. Unless you want some mashed potatoes. Hey, can ravens eat mashed potatoes?”

Curls chuckles and exchanges a moth-eaten book for a pile of coin. No, not coin. Paper. “I’m not sure. Probably not. You’re not supposed to feed bread to ducks anymore, right?”

My injured foot tightens with weight, the injury that should have been an insult.

Somehow there is nothing left beyond curiosity for this creature. She’d stared at me unabashed and unafraid. Met my gaze where bystanders at this joke of a festival glanced then looked away. Cowards.

This one is different.

She radiates strangeness, an odd potency to her energy the others recognize and instinctively move away from.

Until those boys⁠—

A growl vibrates through the raven's body. Did the two in the shadows notice the attention paid to the blonde? Did it bother them as it bothers me? The Germanic barbarian and the⁠—

I stop and settle my wings to my sides.

I know them, I do, I’ve seen them throughout the scents on the wind, but why are they here? Who are they?

Is it for her? Somehow, I know her, too.

My feathers fluff, irritation bristling.

Why did I come here? To this sad little festival making a mockery of everything I know...

Knew.

I shake my head, the world brighter, and smaller and in some manner more expensive through the eyes of the raven. The woman laughs with her sister and ignores the eyes on her skin painting her with their curiosity.

They can’t understand her but the crowd watches her, mortal men in garish costumes, the stench of mead and sweat in the air around them.