p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px; text-align: center;"emDouble-Checking/em/p
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;"The meeting had already begun by the time Diaval arrived. Moorland meetings were nothing like the war-room caucuses of Stefan's kingdom, where a select few gathered in a dark room to receive battle plans. Here, meetings were open forums held democratically with minimal formal organization. Due to the unsettling subject matter of this particular assembly, the Moorfolk gathered in small, timid clusters, whispering between themselves. Maleficent supposedly mediated at the head of the clearing, standing near where her old throne used to be, however she appeared consumed in conversation with a fairy, one Diaval did not recognize. His mistress caught sight of him from the corner of her eyes and discretely beckoned towards him./p
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;""Diaval, this is Morrow," she said as her former servant approached, cautiously. "She is one of the oldest fairies in the Moors."/p
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;""Strange that I've never met you before," he said, taking in this new, tiny creature. He felt like he should shake her hand or, perhaps kiss it (human men did that to ladies, right?), but her's were so tiny and frail he feared crushing them./p
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;"She appeared around the same size as the three fairies that watched over Aurora, but unlike them her body seemed positively shriveled, worse than the oldest of raisins. For some reason he'd entertained the belief that fairies didn't age, but one glance at her and he knew they did; her face displayed more crisscrossed lines than a whole head of cabbage leaves. She wore a modest lavender colored gown made of what looked like tulip petals stretched over her painfully arched back. Another petal covered her head, less like a lady's cap and more like a nun's veil. Still, one could catch her dusty white hair peeking out like corn silk from underneath./p
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;""She prefers a life of solitude so that she may dedicate herself to the care of the Moors," explained Maleficent./p
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;"emStrange,/em thought Diaval, emshe looks far too clean for a hermit./em/p
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;"Maleficent turned her attention back to the fairy, "Morrow, I believe—"/p
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;"The old fairy cut her off, her dragonfly's wings carrying her away from the Great Fairy and over to the man in black. She began a slow circle around his head, making Diaval slightly nervous and thus keen to follow her orbit. Maleficent placed a hand on his shoulder, causing him to turn back and face her, surprised at her sudden contact. She shook her head once; emno. /emHe was to stand still for this inspection, apparently. Maleficent let go of him as Morrow came full circle. Next, the little creature came at his nose, placing her miniature hands, no bigger than a brussel sprout, on his forehead. He closed his eyes and felt honeyed warmth under her palms, like the sun after rain. She pulled away a few moments later, allowing him to open his eyes again. Her brows knitted together and her cloudy gray eyes searched his pitch black ones for a moment before she flitted backwards to speak to Maleficent again./p
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;""He is a raven at heart," she whispered, her voice tiny and slightly forced, as if she hadn't spoken in a long time. It reminded him of the voice one has the morning after a sore throat, scratched and carried on a breath./p
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;""Yes," confirmed his mistress, cautiously, all too aware of her confidant's condition./p
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;""Ravens," Morrow began, with the air of a person ready to unleash some knowledge upon their listener, "are carrion birds. This, plus their dark feathers and harsh call, created mythos that they had a special connection between this world and the next," she breathed. "This perception is not unwarranted; ravens are connected to the dead in ways even they are unaware of. They walk the line between the realms, and can feel any imperfections in the boundary. You say the imbalance affected your friend more than the rest? I believe this is because the imbalance occurred in a realm your friend is more attune to than the others, the realm of death. Has someone died recently?"/p
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;"The Great Fairy and the Raven looked at each other, eyes wide./p
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;""I would look into that," Morrow whispered finally, noticing their faces. Silently she floated away, into the woods, her job complete. The two didn't notice she'd left. Maleficent swallowed thickly, a sick feeling in her stomach./p
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;""You need to go to the graveyard where he's buried," she urged, avoiding his name, a note of desperation in her voice. "Check his grave and find out if anything … happened." She finished./p
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;""Of course," he answered, his concern increasing at Maleficent's visible fear. To have one who is usually a pillar of serenity show her cracks was unsettling at the least. He took a step back and returned to his winged form, still slightly dazed at Morrow's suggestion./p
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;""Be careful," his mistress cautioned. She suspected dark magic at play here. Her magic, the kind that drew from the earth, would never allow her to do something that would upset the balance, but she knew of others who did not follow her code. These sorceresses gathered their power from darker sources, often absorbing the powers of others for their own benefit. She feared that Diaval, a raven imbued with her own magic, would be made into an ingredient for some witch's stew./p
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px; text-align: center;"*~*~*~*/p
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;"In the daylight, the graveyard actually seemed pleasant, that is, if one forgot that it functioned as an underground storage lot for the dead. Actually, the landscape reminded Diaval of a garden, with flowers placed next to many of the stones and a few trees speckled here and there for shade. There were even a few benches for mourners to sit and cry on. emMore like a park, really./em/p
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;"He circled above the property a few times, looking for freshly turned dirt. Surprisingly, he found at least four tan rectangles scattered amongst the rich green./p
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;"emI guess what they say about the ripple effect is true,/em he thought,em even for deaths./em/p
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;"He landed on a headstone in front of one of the fresh plots and studied the basic wooden cross marking it. Two boards wrapped together with twine at right angles; emsimple enough/em, he thought. Across the horizontal beam he found a smattering of dark markings burned into the wood, little black loops and crosses, arranged in indiscriminant bunches that he couldn't make sense of. He couldn't read./p
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;"Checking for bystanders, he hopped off the headstone and changed into a man. His earlier fly-by alerted him of a small lodging at the other end of the cemetery, presumably where the undertaker or groundskeeper lived. He began walking toward it, brushing off a few black feathers, hoping the man inside could help him locate the King's grave./p
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;"Diaval felt a ball of anxiety form in his stomach at the prospect of speaking to another human. The only other human he'd ever spoken to was Aurora, and she knew of his true, feathered form. This man (or woman) did not know. Would he have to try and act human then? His stomach clenched with nerves at the idea. What did humans act like? From what little Maleficent spoke of them he'd gleaned that they were dirty, greedy, liars, but Aurora was a human and she wasn't like that at all. Diaval too was human (at least physically) an increasing amount of the time and liked to think he embodied none of these traits. However, he decided, that may have been a fluke in the system due to his animal origins. He contemplated employing these personality traits for his farce, but found himself running out of time as he edged closer to the house at the end of the graveyard./p
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;"Approaching the house now, Diaval couldn't tell if it was a residence or a business. The front lawn bore a sign with thick brown writing on it, more mysterious squiggles for the illiterate man-bird. Two windows rested inside the front wall, small squares of glass held by a metal lattice. He gave a quick glance inside as he walked by and spotted a round man sitting at a table, reading./p
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;"He decided to knock twice on the door. That's what people did before entering, wasn't it? People always knocked on Aurora's bedroom door before entering. To Diaval, it always signaled his time to either hide or leave. He imagined though that it must have something to do with privacy, a human concern he'd recently begun to understand. Animals naturally had no since of privacy. But at any rate, he knocked./p
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;""'Oo is it?" he heard a gruff voice call in a thick Scottish accent./p
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;""Phillip," he answered, suddenly hyper aware of his naturally scratchy voice, an echo of his caw. He wondered if, to normal ears, he sounded ill. He'd quickly decided on using a false name, choosing the only other human boy's name he knew besides Stefan. "I'm here to ask about the graves?"/p
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;""Well come in," the voice said, with a hint of irritation. Who would come to the graveyard to talk of anything embut/em the graves? In reality, this simple truth annoyed the Undertaker, as he really did wish someone would visit to speak of a more interesting subject than the dead. For example, he found the recent change in the sociopolitical dynamic of the country rather fascinating. But the weather would do too, if nothing else. /p
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;"Diaval opened the door slowly, peering inside. The main floor housed a table with two chairs pushed against a window, a woven rug, some basic cabinetry, and a fireplace in the back. Diaval's eyebrows rose when he saw the shelf of clean, leather-bound books in the back by the fireplace. He had no idea what the titles were, but he imagined they were something very intelligent, yet interesting. The seated man mashed his thick brows together at this queer looking newcomer ogling his home, becoming confused and slightly irritated./p
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;""Well come on," he urged, frowning. Diaval hurried with the door and made his way closer to the table, still maintaining a good distance. Middle aged and quite sweaty, the man sat with his short legs spread wide to make way for his protruding belly. His deep grey eyes, splashed with a cloudy film and several burst capillaries, probed the nervous young man beneath a thick helmet of salt-and-pepper hair. "Were 'ou lookin' for a plot? Because we 'ave some space on the south end if 'ou'll be wantin' that."/p
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;"Diaval's head tilted minutely to the side in confusion. What did he mean "a plot"? The undertaker squinted at him. This visitor was already giving him a strange vibe and he didn't like it. He looked awkward, out of place, especially with his pasty white skin and hair black as tar. He looked like one of those starry-eyed scholars, only more nervous. "Not properly socialized", that's what his wife would say./p
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;""Ah, no," he answered, "I was actually looking for a specific grave. Do you remember where King Stefan was buried?"/p
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;"The undertaker sucked his head back in disgust, baring his teeth, an awful piss yellow with brown edges, in a grimace. Diaval found himself giving a slight grimace back, a natural reaction to imitate./p
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;""That old prune? Why are you lookin' for 'im?" Now the undertaker grew suspicious./p
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;""I'm just here to, uh, pay my respects," he tried, swallowing a lump in his throat. He didn't like the look this man was giving him. emAbort, abort!/em/p
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;""You can 'pay your respects' by leavin' that fruit to dry," he said, rather callously. As an undertaker Diaval expected him to have a little more respect for the dead, even if they were revenge-thirsty maniacs. When he saw that the man wouldn't budge, he went for another tactic./p
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;""Look, if you won't help me find it, can I at least ask you to write his name on a piece of paper so I can look for it myself? I—I've forgotten how to spell it," he lied, feeling self-conscious about his illiteracy in the presence of an obviously learned man by the size of his bookshelf. The man squinted his eyes./p
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;""'ou've… 'ou've forgotten 'ow to emspell/em it?" Diaval smiled sheepishly. "It's only on every other street sign and statue!" Diaval smiled harder. The man grumbled for a moment before standing up and retrieving a small piece of parchment and a lead pencil from a drawer. He quickly scrawled some symbols on the paper and handed it over to the very strange man leaning noticeably towards him, as if poised for something. As he turned to leave, the undertaker called out to him once more:/p
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;""When you find 'em, give his stone a swift kick for me, will ya?" Diaval smiled and nodded, eager to get out of the house. He was beginning to feel claustrophobic, especially with the thick heat coming from the fireplace and the squinty glares the undertaker shot his way. His acting obviously needed some work./p
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;"He shut the cottage door behind him and peered closely at the scrap of parchment. The symbols looked like crow tracks, with some squiggles and circles thrown in. emDrunken crow tracks,/em he thought smiling. He marveled at how the humans could discern any information from this mess of lines. He pocketed the paper and made his way back to the grave he landed on earlier. He didn't notice as the undertaker watched him from his window, eyes leering at this strange individual./p
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;"Returning to the wooden cross, Diaval attempted to match the markings on the paper to the ones on the marker. Unsuccessful, he moved on to another fresh mound with the same results. On his third try, he struck gold. The markings matched well enough, and the only thing left to do was dig down and see if the coffin underneath the earth contained the late King. He frowned. He didn't have a shovel. Furthermore, even a lowly animal like himself knew that there were laws against grave desecration. He looked up to the sky and saw the sun sitting low on the horizon. It wouldn't be long now until it sunk completely below the earth's edge. He would wait for the cover of darkness./p
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;"By the light of the crescent moon and an endless blanket of stars, Diaval returned to the graveyard after a crow's dinner at one of the neighboring cornfields. He flew back to the cottage, relieved to find the windows dark, neither candle nor fireplace burning into the night. With the owner asleep, he could easily commandeer a shovel to overturn Stefan's grave. That is, if he could find one. He landed on a thin ledge of wood outside the second story's window. Diaval saw that the latch sat upright so, throwing his miniscule body weight into it, he pushed the window open just enough for him to squeeze inside. The undertaker slept in a small bed, with his similarly rotund wife lying next to him. One of them snored like a congested walrus, though he couldn't tell whom; then again, it could be both of them. Diaval wondered how the bed remained in one piece, and how they could both fit on it comfortably. He didn't linger on these thoughts though. As long as they slept deeply, he could continue his search without disturbance./p
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;"He scanned the room and saw nothing, so he hopped from the ledge and swooped out the door and into the hallway. He explored the next room, and then flew downstairs again to check the backroom he hadn't seen earlier. Still, no shovel. He did, however, spot a wooden square on the floor with a ring for a handle. He recognized this as the trapdoor to a cellar. Landing on the floor, he hopped over the crack between door and ground, feeling a bone-chilling draft rise from the depths. He imagined this door hid the undertaker's workshop of sorts, one for preparing cadavers for their final resting place./p
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;"Despite being a "bird connected to death", as Morrow put it, Diaval shivered in his feathers. He'd admit that he enjoyed carrion in the past, the leftover bits of some carnivore's hunt left to bake in the afternoon sun; but that was before he ever met Maleficent and expanded his mind though magical transformation. Now the thought of eating scraps from an hours old kill disgusted him. But at least with eating scraps, one didn't have to see the creature's face, the expression of terror it wore during its final dying breath, before devouring it. AtBut this disgust only happened during the day. At night, as it was now, terror sets in. night, when identity becomes mere guesswork in the absence of light, when the eyes cannot see the boundary between life and death so clearly, fear sets in./p
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;"In this moment as Diaval stood, a tiny, breakable crow at the entrance to the undertaker's workshop, the human inside realized he wasn't nearly desperate enough to venture below. He promptly flew back upstairs and exited the house through the window, feeling some of the weight come off his wings as he reentered the night air./p
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;"He didn't realize the gravity of his situation until now; roaming around an undertaker's house on the edge of a graveyard just a few strokes before midnight constituted nightmare fodder for any ordinary mortal, but for the shape-shifting companion of the most powerful fairy in the land, it was all in a day's work./p
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;"He landed on the glowing white marble of Stefan's grave and thought of what to do. He didn't have a shovel, and digging with ones hands is incredibly inefficient. He considered changing himself to a mole and going through the dirt to see if he could hit the coffin, but the thought of moving through the ground, tightly packed soil pressing him from every direction, repulsed him, and, if he was honest, it scared him a little too. He'd done it once before, under Maleficent orders no less, and had returned to the surface gasping for air, feeling as if he was suffocating in the dank underground. It was then that he first discovered his severe claustrophobia and Maleficent, being the fair mistress she was, never turned him into a burrowing creature again. Furthermore, as a creature of avian origins, he naturally preferred wide-open skies and fresh air; an enclosed tunnel was the opposite of ideal./p
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;"When he finally realized what he had to do, his mood dropped like a rock. If his beak would allow it, he would have groaned. Hopping off the stone, he shifted his feathers into thick fur and morphed his wings and twiggy feet into a set of four heavy paws. His beak stretched and shifted into a long muzzle; a set of thick, jagged teeth grew gleaming white in the moonlight, making him appear far more dangerous than he felt at the moment. Oh, how he hated dogs./p
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;"Pressing his wet black muzzle to the ground he began scratching and pawing at the dirt, lifting large clumps of it and throwing them behind him. An hour later, he'd unearthed a good four feet of earth and worked up a terrible sweat, but the coffin remained missing./p
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;"He sat back on his haunches. No coffin. What now?/p
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;"He got up again and pressed his oversized, wet nose to the ground. While he was in this embarrassing, hideous form, he might as well use what tools he had on hand, or, in this case, on face. He circled the stone, furiously sniffing. When he reached the left side of the grave, he caught something. He didn't know what Stephen smelled like, since he had never encountered him in dog form, but he did know what nature smelled like, and this smell was not natural. His nose prickled with the sharp, stinging scent, a stale bitter aroma that could clear ones nose and water their eyes. It could only be one thing; Alcohol. He didn't know where Stephen was, but someone else had come here not long ago. Perhaps if he followed this scent, he would find out more about the ex-king./p
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;"The meeting had already begun by the time Diaval arrived. Moorland meetings were nothing like the war-room caucuses of Stefan's kingdom, where a select few gathered in a dark room to receive battle plans. Here, meetings were open forums held democratically with minimal formal organization. Due to the unsettling subject matter of this particular assembly, the Moorfolk gathered in small, timid clusters, whispering between themselves. Maleficent supposedly mediated at the head of the clearing, standing near where her old throne used to be, however she appeared consumed in conversation with a fairy, one Diaval did not recognize. His mistress caught sight of him from the corner of her eyes and discretely beckoned towards him./p
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;""Diaval, this is Morrow," she said as her former servant approached, cautiously. "She is one of the oldest fairies in the Moors."/p
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;""Strange that I've never met you before," he said, taking in this new, tiny creature. He felt like he should shake her hand or, perhaps kiss it (human men did that to ladies, right?), but her's were so tiny and frail he feared crushing them./p
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;"She appeared around the same size as the three fairies that watched over Aurora, but unlike them her body seemed positively shriveled, worse than the oldest of raisins. For some reason he'd entertained the belief that fairies didn't age, but one glance at her and he knew they did; her face displayed more crisscrossed lines than a whole head of cabbage leaves. She wore a modest lavender colored gown made of what looked like tulip petals stretched over her painfully arched back. Another petal covered her head, less like a lady's cap and more like a nun's veil. Still, one could catch her dusty white hair peeking out like corn silk from underneath./p
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;""She prefers a life of solitude so that she may dedicate herself to the care of the Moors," explained Maleficent./p
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;"emStrange,/em thought Diaval, emshe looks far too clean for a hermit./em/p
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;"Maleficent turned her attention back to the fairy, "Morrow, I believe—"/p
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;"The old fairy cut her off, her dragonfly's wings carrying her away from the Great Fairy and over to the man in black. She began a slow circle around his head, making Diaval slightly nervous and thus keen to follow her orbit. Maleficent placed a hand on his shoulder, causing him to turn back and face her, surprised at her sudden contact. She shook her head once; emno. /emHe was to stand still for this inspection, apparently. Maleficent let go of him as Morrow came full circle. Next, the little creature came at his nose, placing her miniature hands, no bigger than a brussel sprout, on his forehead. He closed his eyes and felt honeyed warmth under her palms, like the sun after rain. She pulled away a few moments later, allowing him to open his eyes again. Her brows knitted together and her cloudy gray eyes searched his pitch black ones for a moment before she flitted backwards to speak to Maleficent again./p
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;""He is a raven at heart," she whispered, her voice tiny and slightly forced, as if she hadn't spoken in a long time. It reminded him of the voice one has the morning after a sore throat, scratched and carried on a breath./p
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;""Yes," confirmed his mistress, cautiously, all too aware of her confidant's condition./p
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;""Ravens," Morrow began, with the air of a person ready to unleash some knowledge upon their listener, "are carrion birds. This, plus their dark feathers and harsh call, created mythos that they had a special connection between this world and the next," she breathed. "This perception is not unwarranted; ravens are connected to the dead in ways even they are unaware of. They walk the line between the realms, and can feel any imperfections in the boundary. You say the imbalance affected your friend more than the rest? I believe this is because the imbalance occurred in a realm your friend is more attune to than the others, the realm of death. Has someone died recently?"/p
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;"The Great Fairy and the Raven looked at each other, eyes wide./p
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;""I would look into that," Morrow whispered finally, noticing their faces. Silently she floated away, into the woods, her job complete. The two didn't notice she'd left. Maleficent swallowed thickly, a sick feeling in her stomach./p
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;""You need to go to the graveyard where he's buried," she urged, avoiding his name, a note of desperation in her voice. "Check his grave and find out if anything … happened." She finished./p
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;""Of course," he answered, his concern increasing at Maleficent's visible fear. To have one who is usually a pillar of serenity show her cracks was unsettling at the least. He took a step back and returned to his winged form, still slightly dazed at Morrow's suggestion./p
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;""Be careful," his mistress cautioned. She suspected dark magic at play here. Her magic, the kind that drew from the earth, would never allow her to do something that would upset the balance, but she knew of others who did not follow her code. These sorceresses gathered their power from darker sources, often absorbing the powers of others for their own benefit. She feared that Diaval, a raven imbued with her own magic, would be made into an ingredient for some witch's stew./p
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px; text-align: center;"*~*~*~*/p
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;"In the daylight, the graveyard actually seemed pleasant, that is, if one forgot that it functioned as an underground storage lot for the dead. Actually, the landscape reminded Diaval of a garden, with flowers placed next to many of the stones and a few trees speckled here and there for shade. There were even a few benches for mourners to sit and cry on. emMore like a park, really./em/p
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;"He circled above the property a few times, looking for freshly turned dirt. Surprisingly, he found at least four tan rectangles scattered amongst the rich green./p
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;"emI guess what they say about the ripple effect is true,/em he thought,em even for deaths./em/p
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;"He landed on a headstone in front of one of the fresh plots and studied the basic wooden cross marking it. Two boards wrapped together with twine at right angles; emsimple enough/em, he thought. Across the horizontal beam he found a smattering of dark markings burned into the wood, little black loops and crosses, arranged in indiscriminant bunches that he couldn't make sense of. He couldn't read./p
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;"Checking for bystanders, he hopped off the headstone and changed into a man. His earlier fly-by alerted him of a small lodging at the other end of the cemetery, presumably where the undertaker or groundskeeper lived. He began walking toward it, brushing off a few black feathers, hoping the man inside could help him locate the King's grave./p
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;"Diaval felt a ball of anxiety form in his stomach at the prospect of speaking to another human. The only other human he'd ever spoken to was Aurora, and she knew of his true, feathered form. This man (or woman) did not know. Would he have to try and act human then? His stomach clenched with nerves at the idea. What did humans act like? From what little Maleficent spoke of them he'd gleaned that they were dirty, greedy, liars, but Aurora was a human and she wasn't like that at all. Diaval too was human (at least physically) an increasing amount of the time and liked to think he embodied none of these traits. However, he decided, that may have been a fluke in the system due to his animal origins. He contemplated employing these personality traits for his farce, but found himself running out of time as he edged closer to the house at the end of the graveyard./p
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;"Approaching the house now, Diaval couldn't tell if it was a residence or a business. The front lawn bore a sign with thick brown writing on it, more mysterious squiggles for the illiterate man-bird. Two windows rested inside the front wall, small squares of glass held by a metal lattice. He gave a quick glance inside as he walked by and spotted a round man sitting at a table, reading./p
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;"He decided to knock twice on the door. That's what people did before entering, wasn't it? People always knocked on Aurora's bedroom door before entering. To Diaval, it always signaled his time to either hide or leave. He imagined though that it must have something to do with privacy, a human concern he'd recently begun to understand. Animals naturally had no since of privacy. But at any rate, he knocked./p
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;""'Oo is it?" he heard a gruff voice call in a thick Scottish accent./p
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;""Phillip," he answered, suddenly hyper aware of his naturally scratchy voice, an echo of his caw. He wondered if, to normal ears, he sounded ill. He'd quickly decided on using a false name, choosing the only other human boy's name he knew besides Stefan. "I'm here to ask about the graves?"/p
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;""Well come in," the voice said, with a hint of irritation. Who would come to the graveyard to talk of anything embut/em the graves? In reality, this simple truth annoyed the Undertaker, as he really did wish someone would visit to speak of a more interesting subject than the dead. For example, he found the recent change in the sociopolitical dynamic of the country rather fascinating. But the weather would do too, if nothing else. /p
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;"Diaval opened the door slowly, peering inside. The main floor housed a table with two chairs pushed against a window, a woven rug, some basic cabinetry, and a fireplace in the back. Diaval's eyebrows rose when he saw the shelf of clean, leather-bound books in the back by the fireplace. He had no idea what the titles were, but he imagined they were something very intelligent, yet interesting. The seated man mashed his thick brows together at this queer looking newcomer ogling his home, becoming confused and slightly irritated./p
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;""Well come on," he urged, frowning. Diaval hurried with the door and made his way closer to the table, still maintaining a good distance. Middle aged and quite sweaty, the man sat with his short legs spread wide to make way for his protruding belly. His deep grey eyes, splashed with a cloudy film and several burst capillaries, probed the nervous young man beneath a thick helmet of salt-and-pepper hair. "Were 'ou lookin' for a plot? Because we 'ave some space on the south end if 'ou'll be wantin' that."/p
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;"Diaval's head tilted minutely to the side in confusion. What did he mean "a plot"? The undertaker squinted at him. This visitor was already giving him a strange vibe and he didn't like it. He looked awkward, out of place, especially with his pasty white skin and hair black as tar. He looked like one of those starry-eyed scholars, only more nervous. "Not properly socialized", that's what his wife would say./p
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;""Ah, no," he answered, "I was actually looking for a specific grave. Do you remember where King Stefan was buried?"/p
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;"The undertaker sucked his head back in disgust, baring his teeth, an awful piss yellow with brown edges, in a grimace. Diaval found himself giving a slight grimace back, a natural reaction to imitate./p
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;""That old prune? Why are you lookin' for 'im?" Now the undertaker grew suspicious./p
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;""I'm just here to, uh, pay my respects," he tried, swallowing a lump in his throat. He didn't like the look this man was giving him. emAbort, abort!/em/p
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;""You can 'pay your respects' by leavin' that fruit to dry," he said, rather callously. As an undertaker Diaval expected him to have a little more respect for the dead, even if they were revenge-thirsty maniacs. When he saw that the man wouldn't budge, he went for another tactic./p
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;""Look, if you won't help me find it, can I at least ask you to write his name on a piece of paper so I can look for it myself? I—I've forgotten how to spell it," he lied, feeling self-conscious about his illiteracy in the presence of an obviously learned man by the size of his bookshelf. The man squinted his eyes./p
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;""'ou've… 'ou've forgotten 'ow to emspell/em it?" Diaval smiled sheepishly. "It's only on every other street sign and statue!" Diaval smiled harder. The man grumbled for a moment before standing up and retrieving a small piece of parchment and a lead pencil from a drawer. He quickly scrawled some symbols on the paper and handed it over to the very strange man leaning noticeably towards him, as if poised for something. As he turned to leave, the undertaker called out to him once more:/p
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;""When you find 'em, give his stone a swift kick for me, will ya?" Diaval smiled and nodded, eager to get out of the house. He was beginning to feel claustrophobic, especially with the thick heat coming from the fireplace and the squinty glares the undertaker shot his way. His acting obviously needed some work./p
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;"He shut the cottage door behind him and peered closely at the scrap of parchment. The symbols looked like crow tracks, with some squiggles and circles thrown in. emDrunken crow tracks,/em he thought smiling. He marveled at how the humans could discern any information from this mess of lines. He pocketed the paper and made his way back to the grave he landed on earlier. He didn't notice as the undertaker watched him from his window, eyes leering at this strange individual./p
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;"Returning to the wooden cross, Diaval attempted to match the markings on the paper to the ones on the marker. Unsuccessful, he moved on to another fresh mound with the same results. On his third try, he struck gold. The markings matched well enough, and the only thing left to do was dig down and see if the coffin underneath the earth contained the late King. He frowned. He didn't have a shovel. Furthermore, even a lowly animal like himself knew that there were laws against grave desecration. He looked up to the sky and saw the sun sitting low on the horizon. It wouldn't be long now until it sunk completely below the earth's edge. He would wait for the cover of darkness./p
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;"By the light of the crescent moon and an endless blanket of stars, Diaval returned to the graveyard after a crow's dinner at one of the neighboring cornfields. He flew back to the cottage, relieved to find the windows dark, neither candle nor fireplace burning into the night. With the owner asleep, he could easily commandeer a shovel to overturn Stefan's grave. That is, if he could find one. He landed on a thin ledge of wood outside the second story's window. Diaval saw that the latch sat upright so, throwing his miniscule body weight into it, he pushed the window open just enough for him to squeeze inside. The undertaker slept in a small bed, with his similarly rotund wife lying next to him. One of them snored like a congested walrus, though he couldn't tell whom; then again, it could be both of them. Diaval wondered how the bed remained in one piece, and how they could both fit on it comfortably. He didn't linger on these thoughts though. As long as they slept deeply, he could continue his search without disturbance./p
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;"He scanned the room and saw nothing, so he hopped from the ledge and swooped out the door and into the hallway. He explored the next room, and then flew downstairs again to check the backroom he hadn't seen earlier. Still, no shovel. He did, however, spot a wooden square on the floor with a ring for a handle. He recognized this as the trapdoor to a cellar. Landing on the floor, he hopped over the crack between door and ground, feeling a bone-chilling draft rise from the depths. He imagined this door hid the undertaker's workshop of sorts, one for preparing cadavers for their final resting place./p
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;"Despite being a "bird connected to death", as Morrow put it, Diaval shivered in his feathers. He'd admit that he enjoyed carrion in the past, the leftover bits of some carnivore's hunt left to bake in the afternoon sun; but that was before he ever met Maleficent and expanded his mind though magical transformation. Now the thought of eating scraps from an hours old kill disgusted him. But at least with eating scraps, one didn't have to see the creature's face, the expression of terror it wore during its final dying breath, before devouring it. AtBut this disgust only happened during the day. At night, as it was now, terror sets in. night, when identity becomes mere guesswork in the absence of light, when the eyes cannot see the boundary between life and death so clearly, fear sets in./p
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;"In this moment as Diaval stood, a tiny, breakable crow at the entrance to the undertaker's workshop, the human inside realized he wasn't nearly desperate enough to venture below. He promptly flew back upstairs and exited the house through the window, feeling some of the weight come off his wings as he reentered the night air./p
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;"He didn't realize the gravity of his situation until now; roaming around an undertaker's house on the edge of a graveyard just a few strokes before midnight constituted nightmare fodder for any ordinary mortal, but for the shape-shifting companion of the most powerful fairy in the land, it was all in a day's work./p
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;"He landed on the glowing white marble of Stefan's grave and thought of what to do. He didn't have a shovel, and digging with ones hands is incredibly inefficient. He considered changing himself to a mole and going through the dirt to see if he could hit the coffin, but the thought of moving through the ground, tightly packed soil pressing him from every direction, repulsed him, and, if he was honest, it scared him a little too. He'd done it once before, under Maleficent orders no less, and had returned to the surface gasping for air, feeling as if he was suffocating in the dank underground. It was then that he first discovered his severe claustrophobia and Maleficent, being the fair mistress she was, never turned him into a burrowing creature again. Furthermore, as a creature of avian origins, he naturally preferred wide-open skies and fresh air; an enclosed tunnel was the opposite of ideal./p
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;"When he finally realized what he had to do, his mood dropped like a rock. If his beak would allow it, he would have groaned. Hopping off the stone, he shifted his feathers into thick fur and morphed his wings and twiggy feet into a set of four heavy paws. His beak stretched and shifted into a long muzzle; a set of thick, jagged teeth grew gleaming white in the moonlight, making him appear far more dangerous than he felt at the moment. Oh, how he hated dogs./p
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;"Pressing his wet black muzzle to the ground he began scratching and pawing at the dirt, lifting large clumps of it and throwing them behind him. An hour later, he'd unearthed a good four feet of earth and worked up a terrible sweat, but the coffin remained missing./p
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;"He sat back on his haunches. No coffin. What now?/p
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;"He got up again and pressed his oversized, wet nose to the ground. While he was in this embarrassing, hideous form, he might as well use what tools he had on hand, or, in this case, on face. He circled the stone, furiously sniffing. When he reached the left side of the grave, he caught something. He didn't know what Stephen smelled like, since he had never encountered him in dog form, but he did know what nature smelled like, and this smell was not natural. His nose prickled with the sharp, stinging scent, a stale bitter aroma that could clear ones nose and water their eyes. It could only be one thing; Alcohol. He didn't know where Stephen was, but someone else had come here not long ago. Perhaps if he followed this scent, he would find out more about the ex-king./p