The cold bit tersely against the winter wind, staining the bleak Moors with the severity of a bitter, lingering remark. The single, stark cry of a black raven crossed the otherwise desolate sky, the bird soaring until the lonely sound dissolved into the dark forest, an inky rumor too dark to circulate far. The raven cloaked itself in the twisting blotted branches of the woods, swooping into the snowy forest glen with a practiced silence. His black eyes reflected the ice like obsidian, frozen in winter's merciless breath. December was angry, cruel to the villagers that shivered in icy huts across the valley; casting a hollow shadow in the Moors every year, only ever outdone by its faerie guardian. Her name was always on the wind, its quiet whisper a shiver of the forest:
Maleficent,it said.
"Diaval, you're late."
She stepped out of the shadows like a specter, dark horns curling from her regal head, eyes narrowed with just enough menace and just enough regality to make the winterbuds bristle in their frosted bushes. Maleficent waited, elegant and just a touch twisted, her long black cloak trailing her. There was a puff of sooty smoke, and a tall, pale young man replaced the raven by Maleficent's side.
"Oi! Can you give a bird a warning?" Diaval said, grimacing and shaking the snowflakes from his black sleeves.
"When have I ever?" Maleficent responded, her expression unchanged. She sighed sarcastically as the raven-turned-man rubbed his hands together, the crescent scars on his chest, neck, and head raised with goosebumps.
"It's too cold this year. Something's wrong," he noted. Diaval glanced at his mistress, vague concern and suspicion etched into his sharp, angular features. Maleficent glared at her companion, red lips pursed.
"Nothing is wrong." She turned around and paced the glen, her footprints glazing over with ice as she walked. "So? What of the east river?"
The hint of a smile shone on Diaval's crow like face, realization settling in his mind.
"Ah, I see. It's the girl. Aurora. Her sixteenth birthday is nigh."
"I sent you to examine the state of the river, Diaval."
"You love her."
A sudden blast of ice froze the glen with the forceful thud of the faerie's stick, throwing Diaval back several meters. Maleficent whipped around, her strikingly alive eyes wide with malice, and to her longtime confidant's perceptive eyes, fear.
"I do not love," she insisted, green magic swirling angrily in her fist.
"The river has frozen. In all the history of the Moors and magic, the east river has remained free and flowing. It's you, mistress. You care for Aurora, and you know there's no stopping the curse."
Diaval spoke freely, knowing his voice was clear and unwelcome in Maleficent's ears. "Only you can help her, you know." He searched her alarming and alarmed eyes and waited for the inevitable poof of his transformation. Maleficent opened her mouth as if to speak to him, but the wave of her hand sent Diaval into a puff of jet black feathers. He cawed at his mistress respectfully, and then left in a flurry of snow. Diaval surveyed the dreary white and black of the valley, finding that an uncomfortable chill had settled in his ruffled chest. He let loose a bitter, lonesome caw—Maleficent still had room in her anguished heart to love, and she ran away from what Diaval knew she wanted. What he himself could never have. Somewhere in his raven heart, he ached for love, to feel and be felt. The loneliness did not leave him hollow—rather, it dragged him down the sky, the persistent, dull thud of his heart growing heavier and less birdlike each time he took flight. He beat his wings, wondering, eyes fixed on the outskirts of the forest where a small cottage lay nestled in the snow.