Chapter Text
What’s the difference between crows and ravens?
They’re both birds with dark feathers and equally ominous tidings on their wings, aren’t they? And yet, her family decided they were not made of crows. They did not make their roost in a crow’s den nor did they bow their heads in the streets and scrape in flocks of many cawing birds.
No, at most, they picked one to be their equal and that was that, nobody but their family allowed to sit atop the Bluff they made their nest on. The rest of the common people under its grand shadow, much like they lingered and hid under the shadow of her family’s wing when there was as much as a hint of a threat - for a raven was far larger than a crow and thus most suitable in being a protector.
At least, that’s what they seemed to have led themselves to believe, seemingly forgetting that a raven was called to carrion much like any other. That it was not below pecking away at something that’s already been hunted, that it was no better than any other scavenger.
Just as quickly as they liked to claim to protect their flock, they would feed on it without hesitation once it fell. Once, not if - they never decided to be sheepdogs. Somehow, they tied themselves closer to ravens and it was not some bird noble above all others, nor was it lesser by any means, but still they forgot and tried to masquerade a feathered thing for a lion when it was far too late for that.
Maybe that’s why the call manifested in her, why her blood burned and boiled and spat, hissed like the feral things they took after. Not to be tamed and pruned until it, and she in turn, fit the image they so sought to present. Until she was carrying the box they wanted her to pick up without complaint and shoulder the weight even though she had plans of her own - to be something more than a warbling thing in a cage that so contradicted their very nature.
Wasn’t it right?
Wasn’t it her right?
She was not made to be some feeble thing, bowing to another when he so clearly had no desire, no ravenous thirst, no aching want to keep and conquer, to acquire, to hold, to fight until his dying breath for its sake because he was his city’s and the city was his?
Instead her father cast her out, not exactly, not technically but she still found her wings bent and broken, even if she didn’t lower her neck in apology because there was nothing to be sorry about.
And still, by the very fact he hurried her away and discarded her for lesser, he simply made her more of a raven by the bird’s very nature because it was crows that lingered in cities and maybe the distance would simply hammer that in further until she was ready to take what was hers.
Until he understood there was only ever one true raven left amongst the Blacktrees.