A/N — Written for Houses [G] themed and mother/daughter
This didn't turn out how I wanted ... at all
[650]
She pushes, scratches, using beak and talons to escape. She doesn't know why or how, but she feels a need to leave here.
There are others with her when she escapes; she can feel them moving and hear their chatter. One is much larger than the others, but she can't tell anything else. Not yet.
The larger one moves around more than the others do, bringing them food and settling down on them every so often. She eats all the food given to her, though it is not a lot, and learns to sleep when she feels the now-familiar weight.
She opens her eyes ten sleeps later.
She wishes she hadn't.
They are all bigger, more active. She had known this before, but it is different seeing it.
The others get more food, more attention, and she feels a burning in her chest, a tightening that makes her breathing short and her heart face. She notices the larger one — the mother, she decides — favours the largest, the strongest.
There is another she had not known of; the one who brings the food — she calls him the father — but he brings less and less each day, and she is always the last to eat.
He takes longer between each visit, until eventually he does not return and the mother must leave the nest. The mother returns with even less food than the father had; she does not get to eat before that sleep.
The others pay less attention to her with each passing day, as she becomes weaker and weaker whilst they become stronger.
They begin to climb out of the nest, exploring the nearby area, but always within the mother's eyesight. The mother clicks her beak when the wander too far, and they always come scampering back with haste.
She is the last to climb from the nest, the last to explore, but she is fast to learn. She learns to hunt through sheer necessity; learns to hide at the first sign of danger because she does not think the mother will protect her. And, when the others start to stretch their wings, she is not far behind.
And then, the mother is gone. They do not know where she went, although the others are adamant the mother will return. She does not share their belief and so, somehow, she becomes their primary hunter.
But the sleeps are cold, and the mother has taught them of the many predators. Their numbers dwindle until it is just her and the largest two of the others, but even they do not last long.
She hops across boulders and rocks, not knowing where she is going. She cannot protect the nest alone, and without the shared heat it provides no additional warmth, so she knows she must move on.
She travels for many sleeps before she is unable to go any farther; before she does not have the strength to get up, and only then does she close her eyes and let the blackness take over.
.oOo.
She awakens to chaos with no idea how she got there. There are others here, but they are not like the others; not like her or the mother or the father. But they are similar, and they tell her not to be afraid; that the people here are kind and that they won't be behind the bars for long.
She is told they are going somewhere better.
.oOo.
When the giant takes her away from the not-others she will want to fight it, but the bars render any attempt useless.
He will take her to the boy, though, and the boy will remind her so strongly of herself that she will do everything she can to protect him. And she will do for him what the mother would not do for her.