Chapter Text
The Watcher, who will later be known as the avenging protector, starts life as an orphan—a moth without a guiding light, and a moon with nothing to reflect.
She grows up with starlings as parents and other bird-hybrids as friends. She learns how to preen wings and straighten feathers instead of waxing membranes and moistening antennae. She knows how to care for her moth-needs in isolation, the apparent last of her kind left in this world.
She’s had countless careful warnings drilled into her brain about the dangers of hunters. And she watches as the people she lives with hide from the second noise sounds and travel in groups for a chance to fight back.
She thinks it's stupid. It’s so obvious that there are hundreds of bird-folk in the woods, and it just takes one report to wipe them all out. And she wants to live. So, she hides her features behind a red cloak, the last thing of her parents she has. She settles near the edge of the forest, living closer to the humans than the rest of the hybrid-folk.
At one hundred and twenty moons, she’s too young to be this independent, but she does it anyway. She learns how to hunt and prep hides, building a cover story for her existence on the fringes of the town. Unlike the others, she mingles with the humans, creating a tentative trust with the suspicious townsfolk.
Hides traded for bread, venison traded for dairy. She grows to rely on the town for her sustenance rather than the birds. Sure, she adores them, but she’s too scared of everything going wrong to leave out the possibility of a raid. She learns how to farm he most basic of crops, potatoes and carrots mainly, and eventually gets a chicken of her own.
It takes time, years really, but slowly the humans begin to trust her. They call her ‘Red Hood’ after her cloak, and based on a fairytale, the humans like to tell. There are some elderly folk who dote on her, slipping her sweets and teaching her how to read and sew. Even then, she never removes her cloak.
The town knows her as ‘Red’ or ‘Hood’, but her real name is Pearl, short for pearlescent, after the sheen on her moth wings. But she won’t tell the others that, it’s too different, too memorable. And she simply wants to be a background character. Sure, she’s building bonds with the townfolk, but the elderly are getting older, and soon something or other will take them. The ones who run the market don’t care for her, as long as she provides high-quality wares.
It happens while she’s in the market trading furs and hides. She watches as a huge platoon of soldiers rushes towards the forest. It’s obvious what they’re looking for: hybrids. She sends a silent prayer up to the sky, hoping that at least one person makes it out, especially that one canary who brings her nuts and fruit sometimes in the middle of the night. She regrets never learning their name.
Pearl doesn’t believe in the pantheon of Gods, but she has a special place in her heart for the moon goddess. If any of those overlords were real, it would be the one in charge of innocence and protection. So she prays, hoping that there would be at least some mercy spared to those who had taken her in and raised her.
She waits until the soldiers leave, well into the night, to head back home. To her ramshackle little cabin, which she found abandoned and cobbled back together. Thankfully, nothing was touched, probably thought to be a ghost house rather than a person’s home.
She collects the excess furs and hides she’s hidden away over the years; forty-eight moons' worth of furs ought to trade for a decent collection of supplies. Pearl sizes up her belongings, snagging only the most necessary. She brings the small collection of books she has, though, knowing she might never get the chance to obtain more.
She sets out the next day, trading all her excess furs and hides for dried fruit, meat, and bits of flour. She doesn’t have a map, but it’s not hard to see where the soldiers came from; their horses left hundreds of marks in the path.
So Pearl follows the soldiers, hiding her hybrid traits under her hood and carrying a bag of supplies that were slowly being eaten. It’s a long journey, at least an entire moon. She loses count after a while, too exhausted to think of the time passed.
When she’s finally reached the Capitol, she wants nothing more than to sleep for an entire week. But she can't. Her food supply will run out within days, and she needs a way to sustain herself. Sure, coming to the most hybrid-intolerant place in the entire kingdom wasn’t the best idea, but it also gave her a sense of security. No one suspects a hybrid to waltz into the city where they are hated the most.
Pearl asks around for work, but all she hears is farmwork and grunt work, not something she would like to do. Eventually, an innkeeper tells her there's work at the castle and to head to the King’s chambers to apply. She’s not stupid; there’s no way the King himself would accept applications for workers, but she deems it worth a shot and heads up there anyway.
She hesitates before entering the castle; she’s not too sure the people inside would take too kindly to someone inquiring about work. Especially if she could be seen as competition. But she also really needs this job. She’s stuck in contemplation before she notices a figure working away in the stables. Bingo!
Her first impression of the stablehand is the sharpness of their eyes, bright, brilliant blue, with the coldness of someone who has never felt love before. The second thing she notices is that they are wearing a skirt. An odd choice, really, but who is she to judge?
The stablehand doesn’t seem to notice her, so she calls out.
“Hey mate, do you know where the king’s chambers are?” She winces internally; her moth accent is still unbelievably thick and affects every word she says. The stablehand drops their brush in surprise, and she feels a little bit bad.
They turn around to fully face her, and she takes them in. Sandy blonde hair runs thick, unruly, and long, framing a slightly tanned face. They are probably older than her, even with baby fat still clinging to their cheeks, at odds with the coldness of those ice-blue eyes. They are short, far shorter than her.
But they don’t seem to have registered her greeting, so she decides to speak up.
“Mate, you good there?” Her accent is just as thick, but she chooses to step forward, closer, hoping to get at least some sort of reaction. Up close, their sweater is a brighter shade of red when compared to her hood, and the soft dark gray of their skirt is covered in hay and dust.
They still seem hesitant, and she doesn’t know why, but instinct tells her to remove her hood.
“I’m Pearl.” She says, deciding to trust this strange person with her real name. “I’m trying to look for a job here.” She gives a small smile in hopes of assuring them.
The stablehand’s face remains impassive. “Won’t be at the King’s chambers.” Their voice is light, but gruff, obviously dismissive. But she doesn’t want to walk through the castle alone, so she pushes forward.
“I was told to go there.” She fiddles with her fingers, “Would you mind… showing me where I’m supposed to go?”
She’s surprised when they nod and motion for her to follow. She smiles again and pulls up her hood to hide her antenna.
Pearl rambles a bit on the walk there, but it’s just nonsense, nothing important about her life. Eventually, she stops talking, and awkward silence descends upon them. So she looks around, taking in those fantastically ugly stone walls and the absurd lack of heating within the building. Even her jungle shack was more homelike.
The stablehand stops by a door and motions towards it. “In here, the head maid deals with all the hiring. She’s stressed because of the tournament, so you might be able to get an easy job without an interview. Act innocent and open your eyes wide open, she likes that for her maids. Listen to every word and refrain from talking back. Act meek. You’ll be fine.”
She doesn’t expect this barrage of words from the near-silent stablehand and beams at them. They smile at her back.
“Where can I find you later?” She asks, with the sly intention of befriending them. “If I get the job that is… If not well, I don’t think I’ll be welcome here.”
“The stables. Bring apples if you come.” And with that, they leave, rather briskly but not without a glance back at her.
She calms her nerves a little before rapping on the door.
“Come in.” It’s an older woman’s voice, gruff like the stablehand’s but without any of the subtle warmth that she now realizes their voice had.
She enters, reluctantly, and acts meekly just like her new friend told her to.
“Why have you come?” The head maid is old, with graying hair and stress wrinkles marking her face. Pearl stands at attention in front of her desk, unsure of whether she’s allowed to sit or not.
“I come looking for a job, ma’am.” She assumes the head maid prefers to be called with an honorific, so she tacks that on at the end. What follows is a rapid-fire sort of questioning, which she assumes is the interview.
“Can you cook?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Clean well?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Sew?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Alright, you're hired. Go to the kitchens, you’ll work there for now.”
She’s a little winded from such a fast-paced interrogation; she barely remembers to say a “Yes ma’am. Thank you ma’am” before she leaves the room.
That’s it, she, Pearl, got a job in the hybrid-hating castle. She spends maybe a minute more celebrating her victory before heading off to the kitchens, mainly using her nose as a guide.
When she enters, it's empty. She’s a little confused but spots a pile of dirty dishes in the sink and sets to work on them. There’s no one here to tell her what to do, so she just works on whatever she can.
Once the dishes are done, she moves on to cleaning all the pots and pans, before heading out to grab firewood to feed the fire. There isn’t all that much to do besides that, so she decides just to head out and chop some of the firewood. Since no one’s around to see her, she feels a lot safer on the off chance her cloak moves so much from the movement that her features show.
After the firewood box is full, she’s at an absolute loss as to what to do. The dishes are all done, the pots are cleaned, the firewood is full, and the water bucket is full. There’s nothing else to do.
She heads out into the halls, trying to find someone else to help her. Eventually, she bumps into another maid out in the hall.
“Hey, I’m sorry to bother you, but would you mind telling me what to do?”
The maid turns and smiles back at her. “Sorry, can’t show you around cause I’m busy. However, if you’re new, your room will be located at the end of the upstairs hall. That room's empty and you won’t be sharing, you lucky duck. Grab whatever food you want from the kitchen, as long as it isn’t the fresh meats. Don’t piss anyone off, and if you have nothing to do, just leave; no one will notice.”
“Thank you so much!” The other maid nods and returns to their work, and Pearl runs back to the kitchens. She doesn’t want to leave early on her first day of the job, so she just stands around, dilly-dallying a bit until she sees a procession of carts coming towards the castle. She slips out and joins them, choosing to fade into the background rather than make herself obvious.
There's an upsetting amount of dirty dishes to do, and seemingly no one is willing to do them. So she takes it upon herself to wash all of them. She can’t risk being fired on the first day of the job.
It takes hours to wash them all; the other maids feign ignorance and head to their rooms early. The moon is almost to the center of the sky, far too close to midnight for her liking. She gives up on washing the dishes and heads off to the storage to scrounge up some apples.
Pearl’s lucky enough to snag a basket of shiny red apples, so she heads out to find her new friend. She sees a blurry figure in the distance and supposes it's them, so she calls out.
“Hey, mate!”
“Hey, Pearl.” Her friend sounds exhausted but still manages a small wave. She follows behind the horse they’re leading, snatching her cloak when the wind threatens to reveal her nature.
“I brought apples!” She lifts the basket, “I stole them from the kitchen after they sent me there to clean.”
She gets a smile from her friend in return. They spend time in silence, and Pearl gets to know all the horses in the barn. It's pretty slow, methodical work, but she enjoys it more than washing dishes alone. It reminds her of nights spent on the rooftop of a wooden shack, teaching a certain canary how to read and sew.
She never learned that canary’s name, and she doesn’t want to make the same mistake again. So she pipes up, albeit more hesitantly.
“Hey. I… uh, never asked. What’s your name?”
She’s surprised when they respond that they don’t have a name. But it’s a fun surprise. Some part of her is giddy that she’s found a kindred lonely soul, but she squashes that down in favor of picking out a name.
“Oh. Well, let’s get you one!” She pauses a bit, lost in thought. “Hmmm, what should it be?”
“I don’t really care.” She doesn’t expect that at all, but she’ll stay with that.
She doesn’t have all that much experience in naming things. Her only frame of reference is her name, which comes from her wings. So she supposes, she’ll pick one for them based on their traits. She ping-pongs between naming them after those frigid blue eyes or the soft toussled wheat-colored hair, wondering if it’s offensive to name someone after a plant.
“Well, your hair looks like grain. We could call you that.” Pearl almost expects it when they drop their brush and just stare. It’s not a fantastic name, but you can’t blame her; she doesn’t have many options to begin with.
“When I said I don’t care, I didn’t mean give me a stupid name.” They pout and huff, and Pearl laughs. She never knew friendship was so… easy.
“Fineeeee….” She drags the word out with a pout, feeling lighter inside than she ever had before. She gets a giggle from her friend, and she smiles in return.
“I’ll rearrange the letters for you. Giran or Grian? I’m too lazy to make up any more names.” She’s trying not to laugh at this point, especially because she does have a backup name in case they don’t like either of those.
To her surprise, they pick one almost immediately.
“Grian sounds alright.”
So she’ll call them by that name, Grian. Pearl tests it on her tongue, “Grian, Gri-an.” It sounds right, and it sounds like home.
When they part at night and she trudges up to her room, all she can think of is the softness she feels inside and how right everything feels.