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The problem with having been a crow in your previous life- and a magically sustained crow at that- is that you are not familiar with the concept of a human diet. You are not familiar with the concept of food being more than worms and insects and small amounts of fruit, if Esther was nice enough to give them to you.
So when you start to get certain warning signs- light-headedness, cold sweats, a strange hollowness inside of you- you don’t know to clock them for what they are. You don’t know to notice that they are not normal.
You have no idea what being a human is like. You have no idea that it is far more wrong to have a hollow stomach than hollow bones.
And you know better than to beg. You know better than to request. Asking gets you accused of arguing. Begging gets you punished. Requesting gets you reprimanded.
And you don’t know what exactly the punishment will be here, in the Dead Boy Detective Agency, for being too human. For being too alive.
Edwin and Charles don’t eat. They don’t consume. They exist, trapped in an amber fractal of time, suspended away from petty things such as the need to acquire nutrients. They don’t need to be reminded of your new body’s wants and cravings, especially when Charles, off-handedly, will make a comment or two about missing eating, with the sort of wistfulness that you sometimes feel for your missing wings.
So you’re not going to rub into his face the fact that you want food, too. That would be rude. That would be wrong.
(That would get you Consequences. And since this is the one place in the world that might allow you to stay, that might allow you to stay without forcing you to pay prices that you don’t know if you can afford, you are going to do anything to avoid Consequences.)
There is gray spotting your vision. There is an ache in your stomach that is threatening to send you to the ground.
But you still continue to assist in research, even when the words are swimming, even when your stomach feels louder than your heart currently is, beating out a faster, more reckless beat than it ever would have dared when Esther’s magic was sustaining it.
So you place the book in front of Edwin’s hands on the desk and you move back to your seat perched on the tiny stool by the shelf in the corner.
(They’d offered, a long time ago, to let you sit on the couch, but there is still too much bird in you, even after all of this time, and sitting on the couch seemed too strange a thing to do. So in the corner you went.)
Your stomach gurgles, this loud, unmistakable thing. You’ve gotten used to the noise, that aspect of humanity, but Crystal frowns. “Monty,” she says, “Have you eaten lately?”
“Of course not,” you scoff. Why would you have? You weren’t given permission. You weren’t told to. And you certainly weren’t going to ask. “Why would I?”
Edwin and Charles’ heads both whip in your direction, eyes going wide with concern. “Monty,” Edwin says, and his voice is demanding, “When was the last time you ate?”
You cast your mind back. When did you get here from Port Townsend? You foraged in the dumpster that day, you remember, before you arrived, before Edwin and Charles and Crystal became your masters, the controllers of your life. You ate worms and the remnants of some sort of bread and what seemed like fruit.
You haven’t eaten since.
You’ve drank water, a few times, when it rained, when you went to use the restroom, to relieve these human urges, and you turned the faucet on and you filled yourself up as much as you dared, because Esther never stopped you from grabbing water when you were a crow, no matter how much she wished to control your every other habit. Thirst seemed a natural enough instinct to alleviate.
“A week ago?” You offer, and you hope that will please them all. That your obedience will please them all. That they will understand that you have been listening to them, and their requirements, and maybe they will see fit to bind your life with theirs, to share their magic, to maybe alleviate some of this ever-present ache.
But instead, horror splashes across all of their faces as yet another one of those cramps rips through your stomach like the claws of a greater god- maybe the Cat King, stretching his hand all the way from Port Townsend to London- and something clenches inside of your skull. Maybe it’s the Cat King’s hand again. Maybe it’s your own human body rebelling. You can’t be sure.
You pride yourself on your sense of balance. Your ability to perch. Your ability to endure.
But as a wave of dizziness washes over you, trying to drag you down, your hand shoots out to grab the edge of Edwin and Charles’ desk.
To your consternation, though, you miss. You miss, because you are falling down, because you are human, because you can’t fly in this body, because this body will not let you be free, because you are plummeting down, down, down, as the darkness takes over, dragging you beneath the floorboards of the Agency office, as someone lunges forward and someone yells and-
And the last thing you remember, before you go under, is the feeling of a gloved hand cradling your head, leather beneath the edge of your hair, steady fingers stopping your head from hitting the ground.
You don’t remember anything after that. You don’t remember anything, because you are gone, because you won’t remember anything until you wake up.
But for a moment, just a moment, the first moment in your short, brutal life, someone is touching you gently. Someone is holding you tenderly.
And that carves out a hunger deeper than the actual starvation ever could.