The Crows of Crow Club
Merle wasn't quite sure when she got so attached to the human-with-the-third-leg-of-kin, but she supposed it didn't really matter. Not when night fell and she could crouch on the window sill, only shifting for the human-that-moves-like-shadow. Not when the cries of the crowding human below soothed the pain of the hole where her murder once was.
(The food was nice too)
Merle wasn't her name either actually. The human-with-the-third-leg-of-kin had started calling her that on the tenth night, and she almost couldn't remember when she wasn't called that. Almost. Some nights, when the human-shadow disappeared, and the room was empty, and she could not find her human, the lost would drown her, and she would flutter quietly, uselessly, around the room until the human-hatchling-that-is-not-yet-shadow can slip her something without the elder-that-is-not-an-elder knowing.
(The not-elder wouldn't find out anyways. Useless old thing that it is.)
(He does not deserve the title of elder, but her human bows to him, so she will hold herself back)
(She longs to pluck out his eyes)
Soon, over the long moon-cycles and long-colds a murder forms on that window sill. Merle makes her human give them each a name (a meaning, a purpose) and makes sure he remembers.
(He is not kin, but he is close enough)
(He bears a frozen image of her in flight in hardened moonlight on his third-limb)
Her human is a warrior. He fights like the devils she has only heard of in stories long torn to dust like her murder. He bears her image like a claw, sweeping down whatever stands in his way, using her as an instrument of destruction, then blending into the crowd seamlessly. She approves. When he named her, he brought her into his own murder (not that he knew that), and gave her life new meaning. He slips into the crowds of humans as seamlessly as any crow into the night. She is proud. How can't she be? He is as crow as any human that have walked under the sky, strange land-bound creatures that they are.
(But not him. Not her human-crow)
She worries. Her human-crow brought to her, somehow, a piece of hard-cold, and showed that he would be entering a world full of it, far across the water-that-never-ends. She could not accompany him. The hard-cold is what sent her murder on and she cannot face it. Her human-crow understands. He lost his murder too.
(But how she wishes that he would return safe)
She has gotten her wish. He returns safe, but there is no human-shadow beside him, and the human-that-slows-hearts bears the look of moving-on. She is furious, but her human-crow sooths her, and gives the murder a new purpose. Search. Find. Return.
(She longs to disobey, longs to destroy, but she knows, and she makes sure all her crows know too, that her human-crow is most crow-like in his vengeance, and will tear each feather off before the plucking-of-eyes)
She cannot think of when she last felt the chill of moving-on, but thinks that there is no better way to move on. She plucks the eyes of the not-elder even as she falls to the ground at his feet. Eye-of-the-right still in her mouth, she crushes it as he watches in horror with his eye-of-the-left. One last feather to be taken, before he falls.
(When she wakes, to endless skies, to clouds, and to sun and moon, hanging in balance, she weeps and caws as only a crow can. For her human-crow is still a human, and has no wings to fly)