Tatterdemalion
@gravemagicks
Scared. Hurt. Alone. Hungry.
Lost.
All very good descriptors for him right now.
The hunger, he was used to. So much so that it wasn’t even something he ever truly paid any mind anymore. A piece of bread, some stale water...maybe a sliver of meat or a small bowl of porridge if his master was in a good mood. That was his usual fare once a day, if that, for as long as he could remember.
What life he might have led before becoming his master’s plaything—his pet, if he could be called that much—the memories were buried deep within his psyche. Too deep to remember. The only memory of before that survived was the memory that lived in his nightmares: Of fighting, blood, pain, terror. Everything destroyed. All he had loved; all he had known. Overturned and gone in an instant.
But now he’d been freed—set loose from the chains he’d grown so used to—and he didn’t know why or what had become of his master to allow for this.
Nor did he recognize anything of his surroundings. It had been too long since he had last seen anything but the inside of the fortress his master called a nest. A stone fortress. No place for an avian to reside. He didn’t know how his master was able to stand the place.
He didn’t cry out at the first blows. Just fell and curled up where he’d fallen and wrapped his tattered wings—he’d been punished often for plucking at them and had even more often than that had feathers ripped from his wings as a consequence of his master’s ire—around himself. For what little protection that offered.
And it was in wandering the strange outside place where he’d been chased by his master’s warriors—trying to find his way somewhere he could shelter, somewhere he could rest—that he found himself at the mercy of other, stronger Alphas. Alphas not of his master’s flock. Alphas he didn’t recognize. Alphas who seemed to find his weakness amusing.
He couldn’t fly. His flight feathers had been clipped when his master first took control of his fate. He couldn’t escape.
Maybe they’d get bored and leave. Maybe they’d kill him. He didn’t know which he’d rather happen. He just knew that all he wanted right now was rest and an end to the pain.