from the rook story time prompts! 9. Rook saying goodbye to a friend.
Heya Mer!!! Can I get you a serving of some Kytharia backstory with a healthy side of angst this fine eve? :D
Kytharia, not yet Mercar (note: Kytharia is nonbinary and uses she/they pronouns)
Kytharia hated it when Magister Flavinia kept her here. She could have born it, she thought, if she wasn’t all alone. She could have born the constant blood letting, the constant cuts, the constant ache in her bones as life was pulled away from her like the pilling on a carelessly washed knit blanket. She would have born it all if she wasn’t all alone. So mostly she just lay in her cot in silence, trying not to scratch at the scabs forming on the thin cuts along her forearm.
It was a tiny room close to the Magister’s experimentation lab, containing only a small cot, a chamber pot, and a tiny window. The room itself was mostly underground, and so the window, while nearly at the ceiling inside, was barely a foot off the ground, so all she could see was the feet of people passing in the villa’s courtyard.
Well, the feet and the birds.
She loved it when it rained. If it rained hard enough the water would spill down from the window into the room, running into the drain along the wall. When it rained Kytharia would laugh, and push her face under the water, be it trickle or waterfall.
But in truth, the best part of the rain came afterwards. It came when the world had settled back down, and the puddles had formed. That was when the birds came to drink and wash. Kytharia would press her cheeks up against the bars like a child at a sweets shop, straining to get as good a look as possible. Mostly it was pigeons which came, but sometimes she would get a visit from Her Friend.
Her Friend was here now, splashing amongst the settled waters. It was a small thing, which would have fit in the palm of her hand. Its feathers were a bright yellow, and when the sun hit it through a sunshower she could almost imagine it to be a kind of living gold.
She hadn’t named Her Friend. It seemed wrong to, as surely it had something it called itself, some vision of what it was or what it should be. She didn’t want to intrude on that. So, she called it what she did know it was. Her Friend.
As she strained further against the bars, it hopped just a few inches closer, and opened its mouth to sing. It wasn’t a song, not in the way you would get with strings or flutes. No, it was more rhythmic than that, high pitched like a bell held in the hand so the notes were cut short.
But Kytharia thought it no less beautiful, tossing the rhythm back to Her Friend through clicks of her tongue. It cocked its head when it heard the sound, hopping a few precious hops over, eventually deciding to throw the rhythm back to this very large and strange bird that she hoped it thought of as Friend.
She was about to click out the rhythm once again, but heavy steps sounded in the hallway behind her and Her Friend scattered away with all the care of a leaf on the wind.
Kytharia didn’t speak, but sighed out her goodbye to Her Friend. Slumping down onto the cot, she tried not to pick at the scabbing cuts that her owner had sliced down her forearms.
