“Goddess, must I always be surrounded by traitors and wretches?” Naeth muttered irritably under his breath, clearly referencing their impudent feathered friend and its new pet human.<br/><br/>The thing about birds is that they are mind-bogglingly empathetic. To most people they’re the small creatures that hail the new day in song, sweet little misshapen things whose limbs are either a hopping zig zag of dead, thorn bush twigs or huge feathered fans, that wouldn’t look out of place on a whorehouse dressing table that flamenco flutter through the sky. They gather at the foot of bakeries, scavenging and squabbling amongst themselves or hunker down in the cracks and crevices of the world, hiding within the carvings of churches to sleep or calling from the fingertips of trees. To most people birds are animals through and through.<br/>But Naeth, he’d travelled the hidden world between their air time and could shock you with stories. So many stories… the wee bastards!<br/><br/>I digress.<br/><br/>Imagine you are born with flocking instincts and rely on communication for survival, but also have a soulful community of voices to fight or co-operate with. A language is needed; not just a rough jotted, bullet point version of communication, but a full, precise, and sometimes highly personal, linguistic painting of a language.<br/>But what’s the point of being heard if your kin cannot understand you?<br/>Empathy is another key component to birds and it’s so fine-tuned not only can they learn the language and body languages of other birds and animals It also plays into the same mechanism that turns them mid-flight all at once.<br/><br/>The chances were one had picked out Amora over himself for a precise reason. She was hurt. She was hurting and it saw and it wanted to comfort her.<br/><br/>He observed Amora’s progress from the corner of one eye with the creeping disturbing sensation he might have fucked up. She LOOKED the part, plucky and determined, like she could go on for miles and then some. Quite an impressive visage, but the colour had fled her cheeks, her footfalls (obvious in the deafening silence) were falling increasingly out of step and her breathing was more laboured than it should have been.<br/>Fear could have been to blame, but it wasn’t a chance he should have risked and the bird pretty much clinched it.<br/>If she blacked out again he’d have normally chuckled a little and left her to walk her way home as a valuable life lesson, a proper tutor through and through, but these were DIFFERENT circumstances…<br/><br/>These woods WERE a genuine danger, that much was true. He’d built his home in the middle of them, he should know. They served their purpose fabulously and he wouldn’t trade them for all the barbed wire and guard dogs in the known universe, but they came with multiple pitfalls of savage residents and RULES that had to be followed. Pity he hadn’t the foresight to see one rebellious project running in head first screaming kamikaze and disturbing the deities of the forest and his evening in turn. . .  he might’a even torn them down.<br/><br/>His magic reserve didn’t have a pot to piss in, if she blacked out he would be at a massive disadvantage should he choose to carry her. It would disarm him in the most literal sense of the word. He could fetch a horse with a bird, but IF they COULD wander this far in to accompany them they’d already be flitting clumsily about the branches above them and chattering complaints. Even if they COULD break through whatever uncivilised witchcraft cursed this place, the thick bracken deeper along the path would snap a horse’s ankles out from beneath and break their legs by proxy.<br/>What about the girl?<br/>No.<br/>If Amora summoned her last strengths and ran back now she might pass out along the way and fall prey to something fractionally worse than himself…<br/><br/>OR maybe, just maybe, he enjoyed<span style="text-decoration: line-through;">her company</span>watching her…<br/><br/>He glanced at her over his shoulder and ground his pace right down, falling back a few steps. As his attention turned to Amora his concentration for the spell dipped and their radius of un-shadow shrunk, the haunting gloom pressed in on them, tiny tendrils of shadow creeping back in like a mist.<br/><br/>Scowling, his gaze chased over her, up and down. For a market slave the girl still had an abundance of willpower. She had<span style="font-style: italic">a front</span>. Kept real face under the scrutinizing eye of dangers and masters, but only when you affronted her morals… she wore it well. In that torn up dress, on that dainty frame, milky legs marching despite the tremble with a dirt scuffed face and impassioned eyes, blonde hair built and braided with expertise and artistry now making a wild bid for freedom, unable to look him in the eye, but not backing down either.<br/><br/>Amora looked like the rebel leader of china dolls. He half expected her to start arranging terms of a tea party treaty.<br/><br/>So distracted was he that he didn’t notice the rustle of movement in the bushes heading their way nor the quieter footsteps that followed behind.<br/><br/>Smirking to himself, Naeth stopped outright, turning on his heel and opening his mouth to tell the girl, fine, she could be carried on his back if she INSISTED on making such a damn fuss about being tired, like a baby—only he barely got through the first few syllables…<br/><br/>“Fine. If you MUST in-“<br/><br/>When suddenly a figure burst through the undergrowth and scared the living shit outta him.<br/><br/>---------                 ------------------------------               ----------<br/><br/>Running.<br/>Heart pounding. Teeth chattering. Ragged breathing.<br/>Each time the pads of his feet drummed against the mossy, treacherous earth, a shockwave bottled up his spine that would have crippled him at the knees were it not for a natural IV of adrenaline. Ahyens blood was on fire and although pillar after pillar of tree trunk blurred past in a drunken whirl of fear every other animal sense was a live wire of activity, wretchedly alive and keeping him ten steps ahead of every branch to dun, every swerve and veering path to carve through the territory.<br/><br/>The pain had dulled to a throb and so much wet heat in the crook of his neck. He was losing blood, but it didn’t compromise his pace yet and that was all that mattered.<br/><br/>An unexpected, damp shift underfoot suddenly sent him lurching forwards and into the path of a low hanging branch. It clipped his hip like a whip and for a moment he was caught by the hem of his jacket and the full force of his own momentum snapped him back by his shoulders.<br/><br/>His breath caught. Blind panic. Gravity displaced itself hopelessly and the sky was only so many spiral patters created by the moon and the branches…<br/>SMACK.<br/>The ground flew up to meet him. Pain exploded. Air evacuated his burning lungs and stars flashed across his eyes. His antlers protected him from cracking his skull, but didn’t save him from the sudden exhaustion that used the fall to get a foothold.<br/><br/>For a half a second too long all he could do was lie there blinkered and winded, losing valuable seconds. For a moment he thought of staying there, just closing his eyes and letting the inviting blackness in the peripheral of his vision creep in and cool every sharp jab of pain, but this small god was only too aware of his mortality.<br/><br/>Wait… voices?<br/><br/>Gritting his teeth, he scrambled to his feet, straining his ears and staggering back into a full pelt lurch. He could have cried when the two figures came into focus. A final burst of speed and he crashed into their small clearing.<br/>They had light. Goddess! Thank Goddess they had light!<br/>The arakyn venom was setting in and he was too delirious between that and happiness to really recognise the absence of a lamp, something about these two felt good. Felt right.<br/><br/><br/>---------             -------------------------             -----------------<br/><br/>Colour still returning, Naeth stepped aside with savage grace, leaving their battered, scrawny compadre to Amora’s less than capable hands.<br/><br/>He snorted irritably, shaking his head in distaste (mostly due to the bruised ego) as the deer spirit collapsed into his assistant’s arms, scowling at every pigeon-esque coo and the sickeningly soft tone she adopted to try and calm it. A second ago it was a hair away from becoming venison. Naeth was never good at jump scares, as a boy camp fire stories kept him up for days and building fort fortifications around his bed for months; if Amora’s eyes hadn’t of lit up in recognition he’d have leapt in, stoked up on adrenaline and anxiety and slit a new mouth in its throat.<br/><br/>“So THIS…” he glanced both social wrecks up and down as Ayhens ankles buckled beneath him, clinging onto Amora’s kimono for support, “is your great deer spirit?” he’d adopted the most decidedly unimpressed tone in his repertoire.<br/><br/>And it was a sorry sight.<br/><br/>The boy (could scarcely be called a man) wasn’t particularly big. Maybe five-six, five-seven… small enough the lightweight category at the cage fights would probably send him home with a sympathetic packed lunch to bulk him up. Nor had he the majestic, powerful build you’d expect from something that turned into what-should-have-been a fierce, wild Buck- the archetype upon which all deer should be built. Ahyen was lithe and androgynous, pale and sickly looking, even his antlers were a tragic, something to pick your teeth with, not hang above a fireplace…<br/><br/>Not at all what the brochure described.<br/><br/>And to think… he’d almost been excited to see this thing before it died…<br/><br/>Tales, stories, parables and legends filtered through those woods from the tribe of feral humans camped dead in its black heart; the place was a thriving hub of magic and spiritual energy, it was said that in some places the veil between this world and the next wore thin and that the strangest, most unspeakably powerful creatures slipped through wearing the living skins of animals and going about their mysterious business.<br/><br/>Ahyen was the name of the deer spirit… but THIS--<br/><br/>He rested his weight up against the trunk of an old oak, brushing off the dirt and bugs that had settled on his shoulder and observing the two with aloof curiosity. Ayhen had burst through the undergrowth and stumbled to an awkward, ill-controlled stop when it saw Amora, violet eyes welled with tears. It’d clutched at her arms, speaking hurriedly in the odd tongue of the spirits. A syllable heavy, but sweet sounding language, like the humans of the orient, but with odd, varied tongue clicks injecting a bizarre tribal twist to their speech. Some of those words were used in spells. All of them were bitches to pronounce.<br/>It had pulled strengthlessly at her sleeves, looked her in the eyes and begged.<br/>Yes… begging sounded the same in any tongue. It probably wanted her to run with it, escape, but the deep welts on its collar bone and neck… the thick blood pooling in every dip of flesh and running almost freely down its arm… the bloodloss cut him off with a small gasp and he crumpled to his knees at her feet, head lulled, hidden behind a veil of white hair, trembling pained breaths racking his slight form.<br/><br/>It’d been bitten and would fade away without a cure.<br/><br/>Good. Saved him one job.<br/><br/>He KNEW what a spirit warming to a human being meant, it meant that he could risk losing her…<br/><br/>Don’t ask him to explain it; it was a long story best told on a dark and stormy evening, but it almost always ended with loss. The spirits lived a life ignoring humans and demons, that’s why they could only be found in the wilderness, the derelict… they would pass by murder and not even blink, understanding it only as part of nature. No interfering allowed or required. Only sometimes they shone to them… or more to the point to one particular human.<br/>A chosen one human for every spirit that exists and they would gravitate towards them for reasons that can only liken to faith, in inexplicable attraction and trust that would normally take tens of years to build—BAM—assigned to someone they know nothing of in one second.<br/><br/>That bond came with consequences he could NOT allow for Amora…<br/><br/>But nor would she allow him to kill it, the spirit, right there and then… this would have to be played tactically…<br/><br/>“It’s been bit!” Naeth chimed, cheerfully bitter, “<span style="font-style: italic">Amora</span>,” he used her stolen name like a weapon, “see to his wounds the best you can. KEEP HIM QUIET.… I think whatever’s chased him is going to find us. I need to meditate for a few seconds, we might be in need of my magic…” his nervousness was obvious in the seriousness of his tone. It was a tactfully paced, deep, controlled  and oddly calm a voice, “Once the dangers seen to you be ready to move… we’ll make a dash to the house…”