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“I thought I’d find you up here.” Diaval climbed the last few branches into the entrance of her nest and rested his hands on his knees as he attempted to catch his breath. Since regaining her wings she’d moved into one of the higher caves that burrowed into cliffs bordering the east side of the moors, one that was near impossible to access on foot, but he guessed that was the point.
She didn’t turn to face him, simply continued in the task of preening the sections of her wings that she could reach, straightening out her feathers so that they sat in neat rows ready for flight. “This is my nest Diaval, it’s hardly a difficult deduction for you to make. Ravens are smart, are they not?”
He scoffed; taking the comment for what it was, which was her inexperienced attempt at teasing.
He’d realized long ago that what at first seemed to come across as harsh, scathing remarks, was often just her way of trying to be humorous. It was just another way her isolated existence became painfully apparent, she was positively hopeless when it came to conversing with another sentient being.
Once he’d recognized that, she was more endearing than anything.
Oh, she could send anyone she pleased cowering with just a glance when she wanted to, including him, but on the most part she was just misunderstood, and a little socially inept.
Over time he’d learned to give as good as he got, and if anything, come to find her rather funny.
“Your new friends are looking for you.” He told her once he could breathe steadily again.
“I wouldn’t go as far as to call them friends.” She drawled. “Truth be told I spoke to very few of them.”
“Naturally.” The corner of his lips turned up into a slight smirk. “But in case the horns and the wings escaped your notice, Mistress, they’re like you. Perhaps you should make the effort”
“Last I checked being ‘like me’ does not automatically make them my friends, I don’t see you frolicking around with every raven you see.”
“I don’t frolic.” He muttered petulantly.
He didn’t need to see her face to know she was rolling her eyes. “Vein bird.”
He studied her for a few silent moments as she continued to preen, wincing along with her as she pulled out one of her broken primaries. He liked to watch her as she tended to her feathers; she got this look in her eyes as she worked, like she couldn’t quite believe they were back. That, and it was fun to watch her struggle to reach that spot just between her shoulders.
In the short amount of time he’d had to observe the others of her kind, he’d learned that they were very sociable creatures. The atmosphere was currently a strange one, joyous over the union of Aurora and Phillip, and consequently the Moorfolk and the humans, but also sorrowful due to those they’d lost during the battle. Diaval had watched them as they reunited with one another, regaled their own battle stories and comforted those who were wracked with grief.
One by one they'd settled after the celebrations and groomed each other, baring their wings for others to tend to, they’d spent hours easing bits of debris out of each other’s wings and chasing away the dust and ash.
That, as far as he could tell, had been when his Mistress had taken her leave, most likely in an attempt to escape her peoples attempt to groom her. She never had been one for unnecessary touching.
He’d always considered Maleficent to be a bit of a lone wolf, but now he wondered if perhaps his mistress wasn’t meant to be such a solitary creature after all.
Perhaps she belonged in a pack… a flock? Diaval wasn’t sure what the correct terminology was, but what he was certain on, was that she wouldn’t them near her wings anytime soon. He’d had a hard enough time with that himself, and he’d been by her side for almost two decades.
That level of trust didn’t come easy to her, but then neither had regaining her wings.
Adrenaline alone had gotten her through the battle against Stefan, and once that had worn off her reclaimed wings had caused her more pain than rejoice. Her flight muscles had all but wasted away after years of neglect, and she’d been horribly ill and burned dangerously with fever for days following the battle.
There’d been talk amongst the pixies about whether it was best to remove her wings a second time, whether the decaying muscle was what was making her so unwell
Knowing that loosing her wings again after finally getting them back would devastate her, and knowing that it was what his Mistress would have wanted had she been well enough to argue, Diaval had tried to convince them that the sickness would pass.
There’d been a moment however, while he was lifting her head to pour water passed her lips, and pressing a cool cloth to her forehead to try and calm her fever, that he’d started to wonder whether they were right.
He’d worried himself sick, but just as he’d begun to loose hope, her fever broke and she’d started to get better.
She’d been a much easier patient when she’d been half conscious.
Her wings had been weak at best and had pulled painfully on her back and shoulders before she managed to build the muscle back up enough to keep them upright. Moving her arms had been painful, so for the first few weeks he’d had to help her dress, and steady her as she tried to walk and relearn her old center of balance.
She hadn’t liked that one bit, had snapped at him and fought his assistance at every step, but in the end had very little choice but to let him close, let him touch her, which she’d never allowed before while he was in his human form.
It had taken a lot of stubbornness on his part and a fair amount of goading over how dreadful her wings looked before pride won out and she let him tend to her.
She’d been tense the entire time and Diaval had braced himself to be thrown to the ground by the force of her magic, but it never happened. Instead she’d sat stiffly, jaw clenched and hardly breathing, and he’d noticed after a while that she started shaking.
During the seventeen years he been in her service he’d never seen her scared, but as he’d arranged her battered feathers back into position, he could tell she’d been truly fearful.
He’d been as gentle as he could, but her feathers had been brittle, broken, and caked in dust, and many had disintegrated in his hands. He’d also had to remove a fair few that were beyond saving.
It had come easier for her after that first time, although she often flinched whenever he moved too fast, or pulled a little too hard, even now. They’d settled swiftly into a nightly routine, and after a lot of care and attention on his part, slowly her feathers grew back in and her wings were restored to their former beauty, glossy and such a rich, deep brown they were almost black.
Regaining the strength in her flight muscles took longer, as had her confidence; she hadn’t flown again for months. But the day she did Diaval had soared right alongside her as she flew over the moors and into the headwinds.
It had been the first time he’d heard her laugh and seen her smile with pure joy.
He himself had been wrought with anxiety, as he’d effectively nursed his replacement back to health. She no longer needed him to be her wings.
It hadn’t worked out like that though, they’d never had the conversation, she simply never sent him away and he never left, after all, where else would he go?
She could fly circles around him these days, and he often found himself in awe as she maneuvered her vast wingspan through tight turns at high speed. What she could do in the air was closer to dancing than flying.
However, there were days even now, after a long flight or a battle like today, when he could tell they still caused her pain, she’d rub uncomfortably at her shoulders or wince when she moved a certain way, as she did now, reaching for the wrap that covered her hair. It was moments like this when Diaval wasn’t sure if she’d ever fully heal from Stefan’s betrayal, not just physically but emotionally.
He walked over to her and she turned towards the sound of his footsteps. “What?”
He held his hands up towards her. “May I?”
She observed him for a moment and he watched the familiar debate play behind her eyes as she registered his implied actions as a threat and wrote them off in the same thought. She turned away from him and dropped her wings, and he took her non-protest as an invitation.
He closed the distance between them, reaching around her wings to touch her shoulder lightly before pulling gently at the fabric that surrounded her horns. Her hair fell loose down her back as he unwound the binding and he combed it out gently with his fingers.
She looked less intimidating when her hair was down, softer somehow. Perhaps because most of the time when her hair was down she was settling ready for sleep, it was dusk and the light wasn’t as harsh, and she was too tired to keep up the act of insensitive tyrant.
He liked her with her hair down; she was less like the tormented soul he’d come to know and more like the woman who had saved him from the famer’s net and his filthy dog. It was that side of her, the kind fey who healed the moors and protected its inhabitants; the mother who had awoke their fledgling with true loves kiss, which he’d come to admire the most.
He was sure others would as well if she only let them see that side of her.
“Perhaps you should give them a chance.” He ventured, tucking a few loose strands of her hair behind her ears.
“Who?”
“The dark fey”
She laughed at him the way she did when she considered what he said was stupid. He’d learned a long time ago not to take offence, as she often had a tainted view of the world. “No, Diaval.”
“And why not?”
“They’re entirely too noisy and have zero respect for personal space for a start.”
He laughed and shook his head. “Well then, we best move now, can’t be dealing with noisy neighbors.”
She turned and scowled at him. “You don’t understand.”
When she turned away from him he moved to sit back in her line of sight. “I think I understand you better than you’d like to admit.”
She avoided his gaze, choosing instead to thread the ends of her newly freed hair between her fingers. Finally she sighed. “They’ll expect me to converse with them, socialize, make whatever it is you called it… small talk.” She said the words as though they were a foreign language. “As though being one of them makes it effortless, but it doesn’t.”
“You talk to me.” He pressed but she rolled her eyes at him.
“You don’t count.” He deflated a little at that, she’d never once treated him as lesser because he was a raven, but perhaps on some level she did see him as just that.
A bird.
She must have caught the change in his expression because she continued. “It isn’t difficult for me, to be around you… or Aurora. Not like it is with others.”
He felt oddly touched by that.
“Well, you have known me for over twenty years Mistress. You were bound to warm up to me at some point.” The corner of her lips turned up in a half smile before she caught herself. “I guess what I’m trying to say is, you should give them a chance. I’m not saying it will happen straight away, but it can’t harm to have some others of your kind to talk to.”
“I’ll think about it.” He raised a condescending eyebrow at her and she huffed. “I’ll try.” She conceded and Diaval considered it a win.
“If you could also try not to start another war for the next ten years or so that would be marvelous.”
She turned on him, aghast. “I think you’ll find it wasn’t I who started this one!” She told him haughtily. “I suppose next you’ll admonish me for my actions at the dinner table?”
“Actually, I was impressed at how long you held your temper.” His answer stunned her enough that she wasn’t able to stop her smile in its tracks, instead she looked down and away.
“Oh come on, like you don’t enjoy the action.” She challenged.
“I don’t.” He scoffed. “I enjoy being turned into terrifying animals, and you don’t have to wait for a battle to do that.”
She gaped at him but there was still a hint of a smile in her eyes. “You speak as though turning a raven into a fifty foot dragon is an easy feat, well it’s not, it’s complicated magic let me tell you.”
“The dragon was fun.” He sighed wistfully, and sensing she was in a better mood moved behind her to tend to the spot on her wings that she hadn’t been able to reach. She let him and he began to pick out the bits of rubble that had accumulated during the battle.
“And was being a bear everything you hoped it would be?” There was a playful tone to her voice now, one that he didn’t hear very often.
“It was better.” He admitted with a grin. “Although I still preferred the dragon, there’s something comforting about still having wings.”
“Hmmm.” She hummed in agreement, leaning, perhaps subconsciously into his touch. “Hopefully things will be a little quieter from now on.”
“Aurora has seen to that.” He agreed.
“Our little Beastie.” She smiled fondly.
“Our little Beastie.” He echoed.
It had been a strange experience seeing Aurora walk down the aisle and exchange vows with the prince. He’d helped raise her, kept her warm and fed, watched as she’d learned to walk and talk, and stayed up through the night when she’d burned with fever, but all of a sudden she wasn’t the little one he once knew. The fledging whom he’d grown to love as his own, was grown up and taking the first step into a life of her own.
It wasn’t how he’d pictured his own life going when he was but a lowly raven, although before Maleficent’s magic, his raven thoughts hadn’t been half as complex. He vaguely remembered the instinct to find a mate and rear chicks of his own, and he guessed he’d done that in his own unconventional way. Aurora wasn’t a chick and Maleficent would turn him into a mealy worm if he ever dared call her his mate, but they were his girls and he cared about them both dearly.
His life had taken an unexpected turn the day he’d met Maleficent, but she had also opened up his life to new experiences and emotions that he’d never even dreamed possible, not to mention he would have long since left this earth had she not intervened.
He had a lot to thank her for.
“I really did miss you.” His hands paused in their task, buried deep into the soft feathers at the base of her wings; she had scars here, sections where her feathers wouldn’t lay quite right. Her words had taken him off guard, just as they had the first time she’d said them, when she’d risen from the torn up earth miraculously unharmed.
His first instinct was to joke it off, or tease her as he had then, but there was something in her voice this time that made him think better of it, a vulnerability that he’d only ever heard at Aurora’s bedside when they’d thought the curse had stolen her from them forever.
He knew her well enough now to know that any admission of affection didn’t come lightly. When Maleficent loved, she loved fiercely, and while that was a wonderful quality to have she had learnt the hard way that it also left her open to a tremendous amount of hurt.
And so the walls around the moors weren’t the only ones she’d constructed after Stefan’s betrayal, she’d also built a fortress around her heart that was near impossible to infiltrate.
Aurora had managed it; it was a strange twist of fate that the one to start bringing down those walls was the daughter of the very man that was responsible for them in the first place, but there was no doubt that Maleficent’s love for her ‘little beastie’ was true.
And Diaval felt somewhat honored that he seemed to be the next person she’d chosen to let in.
He leaned closer, slowly so as not to startle her, and lifted his hands to rest on her shoulders, when she didn’t shrug him off or bat him away with her wings, he inclined his head and rested his forehead against her hair. It was soft, like spun silk and smelt like the fresh morning air she flew through during her dawn flights, before she secured it beneath her wraps.
“I missed you too.” He said softly against her hair
And he had, he’d missed her tentative smiles and quick wit, and the way her eyes would glint with mischief when she was up to something not quite allowed. He’d missed their bickering almost as much as he’d missed the quiet nights they’d spend together, watching as the sun dipped below the horizon and painted the sky beautiful colors before the moon rose and stars dotted the inky night sky.
She didn’t shy away from his touch or react to his words, but she wasn’t sending him away either, which was more than could be said for any other time he’d been this close in human form. Diaval decided to see how far he could push his luck and lifted his head slightly to brush his lips against the back of her head.
The moment his lips had touched her hair, her shoulders stiffened and he was a raven again, flapping his wings to try and soften his landing, It was no more than he’d expected really, she’d always been more comfortable around him when he was a bird, freer with her affection when he was anything that wasn’t a man.
If this was what she needed to relax around him, then he could make it work. He just hoped that one day she’d realize no matter what she changed him into, whether he was a bird, or a bear, or a dragon, or a man, he was always Diaval, and he would never hurt her.
He half jumped, half flew to perch on her shoulder, his wings sending her hair flying in all directions. He rubbed his head against her cheek and tucked his beak beneath her chin, and although she was reluctant at first, slowly she gave in to his antics and leaned her head against his. She sighed softly, her breath ruffling his feathers and Diaval felt a contented smile tug on her lips.
It was times like these that Diaval wondered whether his dreams of something more between the two of them weren’t too foolish after all, but even if they were, as long as she was happy, so was he.