The Pick-up Chapter Nine: The Ally Appears
The night deepened, heavy with silence. Even the waves seemed to hush, as if the ocean itself was listening.
Raven’s hand tightened in mine. Her pupils were wide, reflecting the faint shimmer of the harvest moon.
That’s when it came.
A low whoomph of air displaced, like the wingbeat of something impossibly large. A shadow passed over the sand, blotting out the starlight for an instant.
We both looked up.
The raven was immense its wingspan stretched wider than the road we had traveled to get here. Each beat stirred the air in gusts that carried the scent of cedar smoke and desert sage. Its feathers shimmered not just black, but with hidden colors indigo, violet, emerald, as though woven from the night sky itself.
It landed on the cliff above us with a force that rattled small stones loose. Its eyes glowed, not red, not gold, but a shifting spectrum that seemed to pierce straight through the skin into the marrow.
And then It croaked. Once, twice. The sound vibrated like a drum in the chest, too deep, too human.
“Entangled,” it rasped.
“Bound.”
We froze, breathless, until the great head tilted, and with one sweep of its wing, three glossy tailfeathers drifted loose, spiraling down through the air.
They landed at our feet.
Saniyah, still calm, still unreadable, only nodded once.“The ally has spoken.”
I reached for the feathers, but before I could touch them, the raven croaked again, louder this time, words broken but undeniable:
“Remember… the fire.”
And then, with another thunderous beat, it lifted into the dark, vanishing into the western sky, leaving only feathers, echoes, and the pounding of our hearts. In the space where it had stood the three giant tailfeathers seemed to merge and blend, transmorphing into the shape and form of a rather large crow, standing in the center of a circle of pebbles of various colors.
She peered around, moving her head back and forth, turned it on it's side, to gaze directly at Raven and me.
"Remember", she squawked, then hopped three steps, out of the circle, still holding our eyes. Again the squawk, reminiscent of the ally's voice, "Remember the fire". But I did not.
And who or what was "entangled, bound" I did not know or had yet to remember. Or discover.
I didn't remember having a memory.
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