Faramir opened the door to a spectacle so improbable it seemed, for one suspended instant, some fevered imagining born of too many long hours and too little rest.
Kíli stood at the threshold, his form arrested and half-obscured by a storm of living feathers. The hawk clung to him as though he were some wind-bent tree, her talons ensnared in his dark hair, her wings beating with a frantic, muffled thunder that echoed, in miniature, the distant sky.
A breath escaped Faramir. Not quite a laugh, but dangerously close to it, followed by a swift return of composure. His mouth curved despite himself, though his gaze – when it steadied upon Kíli – was coloured only with concern.
The door swung wider behind him, ushering them into the faint, clean sting of antiseptic and the warmer, homelier scents of polished wood and tea leaves.
“Come in, before she does you a lasting injury,” he said, low and even, pitched not only for Kíli but for the entangled creature, no less sovereign for her distress.
“Scoria,” he murmured. He moved with care, as one accustomed to approaching fear without startling it. Slow hands, unthreatening, his presence unimposing. “Easy now. Let’s get you sorted.”
His fingers settled with practiced gentleness near the base of her legs, testing the tension of her grip, searching for where feather and flesh and hair had become intertwined.