Chapter One
The Thing in the Closet
It looked like it was going to be a beautiful day that morning, but that did not stop Raven from being grumpy. Even the fact that she had not heard anything odd after that first mention of Nyarlathtep's name did not cause her to be cheery at all. The truth was that she was simply not a morning person, not to mention that it was, once again, her birthday.
After what had happened last year, she was not disposed to be cheerful at all. In fact, she was very much inclined to stay in her room and read the day away. However, around seven she heard a rather loud scraping coming from her closet, and an annoyed horse like whinny that indicated that the creature she was hiding in there was hungry and wanted to be feed and now if at all possible.
Ordering the creature in the closet to be quiet in case anyone heard it, Raven left her room and headed toward the kitchen. She was also hungry, and decided that the closet dweller could wait for its breakfast. She had given the glutton a midnight snack just last night, after all. She was growing concerned that her little secret in the closet might be getting fat; even though she made sure it got exercise. However, it was better to let a thing like that be well fed, considering that it was a carnivore that would eat just about anything that did not eat it first.
After a quick check around the kitchen area to make sure none of the others were around to ask awkward questions about why she was sneaking food to her room, Raven grabbed up a small ham and after some debate a large apple for the creature. Despite the fact that the creature was primarily a meat eater it seemed to like apples as well. She slipped the small horde into a pocket dimension that she set aside for such things so that when she went back to her room she could give the food to the creature without having to hide things under her cloak.
Satisfied that she had sneaked food successfully, for some reason no one managed to notice the fact that food would occasionally disappear from the refrigerator, Raven set about trying to find something to feed herself.
She settled for cereal, seeing as how she could not cook and didn't want to wait for someone to cook for her. Even though the closet creature could not really escape from said closet, it could make a lot of noise if it got grumpy. Raven was concerned that if the others started hearing whinnying and stamping in her room they would try to investigate. If they accidentally stumbled on the thing while she was away, like the time Beast Boy and Cyborg discovered her mirror…
He didn't used to be so restless, not when we first got here. He was content to stay in that closet for quite some time. It's only recently that he's started to act out.
While Raven was brooding over the recent behavior of her secret the other Titans came into the ops room, apparently in the middle of a strangely quiet discussion. The talking abruptly ended when they spotted Raven.
Raven had a feeling she knew what they must have been discussing. After all, it was her birthday again, and the last time it had rolled around the team had decided to throw her a surprise party. She had not enjoyed it, especially when Slade had shown up with a message from her father. She did not think that the others would want to try to celebrate her birthday again, but from the way they were looking at her she was afraid that that was exactly what they were thinking.
Her intuition proved correct when Robin came up and sat down beside her, looking a bit on the nervous side.
"Umm, Raven" he said "you remember what day it is?"
"Tuesday," she growled, trying her best to be discouraging. It did not work.
"Look, I know last year was kind of bad for you, but the others and I were talking and we that this time we can-"
He kept talking, but Raven was only half listening. She was starting to get a good idea. The ops room did not look decorated as it had the first time they had sprung a party on her, and she had a feeling that they were not going to unless she told them it was alright. Decorating could take some time. Time she could use by taking her little secret out for a breath of fresh air that it seemed to need so desperately.
"-and besides that, Trigon is gone now. There isn't anything to worry about from his end, right?" Robin concluded.
"Fine," Raven grumbled her mind busy sorting out the particulars of getting the creature in and out of the tower in broad daylight.
"Really? All right!" Beast Boy bellowed. He, Starfire and Cyborg had been closely following Robin's birthday monologue.
"At least this time you bothered to ask." Raven said, making it perfectly clear from her tone that this deal did not thrill her at all. "But if I see any pink balloons I promise I'll blow them up."
"Great, now let's start decorating this place!" Cyborg said with much more energy than anyone had a right to have at seven in the morning.
"When you guys are done, call me on the communicator." Raven said as she started to leave "I have things to do today."
"What things?" Starfire asked curiously.
"Things" Raven growled, being vague on purpose.
"But where are you going?" Starfire tried again.
"Out." Raven said as she left the room.
The others looked at the doorway with almost identical expressions of puzzlement.
"That was odd." Robin said finally "I didn't expect her to give in that easily."
"I think she's finally getting used to used to us " Beast Boy said cheerily "who knows, in two or three more years she might actually start smiling more than once every two months or so!"
No, Robin thought she is up to something. I can tell. In fact, Robin was quite sure that she was hiding something from the rest of them, as she always seemed to be. The only reason he had not asked her about it was the fact that he was confident that she would tell them when she was ready. You could not rush someone like Raven into telling you all of their secrets. It tended to push them away rather than draw them closer to you. Besides, Robin knew that Raven would never do anything to hurt her friends.
Robin decided not to worry about it. After all, there was still a lot of work to do before the party could officially begin.
They all set upon there separate tasks. Starfire and Beast Boy were in charge of decorating the tower. Most of the ribbons and balloons they had were blue and purple, but Beast Boy could not help but dig up a few pink ones to throw into the mix, just to see if Raven really would spot them and make them explode. To add to the joke he found a red magic marker and drew large red targets on each of the four bright pink balloons. He had literally bought hundreds of balloons, and he lightly tossed the balloons all over the place, so it looked like a little balloon convention. Starfire occupied herself with the ribbons, most of which merely stated "Happy Birthday Raven!", but at least three of them had odd Tamaranian phrases that Starfire insisted where appropriate for the occasion.
Robin was in charge of the cake. As it turned out he could make a very good cake. Unlike last year's, which had been at least seven layers high and had supported three different colors of icing, this new one was only three layers (but they were pretty big layers) and had only blue icing. There was one other very interesting feature though: Robin had some how learned how to make edible decorations out of spun sugar. For this new cake he created a rather large black bird out of sugar, and had placed the thing on top of the cake. He refused to tell anyone where in the world he acquired this particular skill, but it looked impressive, not to mention delicious.
Beast Boy decided not to tell Robin that his bird resembled a crow more than a raven.
Cyborg was putting the finishing touches on what he and Beast Boy were calling the Coup de Grace (you could tell that they literally thought of it in capital letters). The Coup de Grace was, in fact, a plain looking circular silver locket that the entire team had chipped in to buy for Raven. Although the thing was plain when they first bought it, Cyborg had taken the thing to his room the moment they brought it home, determined to "personalize it". As it turned out Cyborg's skill with metal was not limited to things like cars and spaceships. He had managed to find a jet stone carving of a bird in flight and had attached it to the plain surface of the necklace. And was not simply a hasty glue job, Cyborg had somehow managed to make it look like it was there from the start. The team had then poised for a group picture and put into the locket. They planned to give it to Raven as the last present, from all of them.
As for the rest of the presents, most of them had literally come from the other honorary Titans around the globe. Most of them did not know Raven that well, and so did not have any clue on what to get her. Because of this, there was a great quantity of birthday cards with no presents attached to them, but all of said cards had money inside of them. The honorary Titans had figured that Raven could use the cash to get whatever she felt like getting.
However, there were two rather large packages in the midst of the cards. Melvin and her group of child superheroes, who had grown fond of Raven during the battle with the Brotherhood of Evil, had sent a huge rectangular package of something that was surprisingly light. The other large package had come from a surprising source: Jinx and her new partner Kid Flash. This large thing was also rectangular, but you could tell just by looking at it that it was some sort of book, the perfect gift for someone like Raven. At first Beast Boy had not wanted to include it without checking it out first. He was still not completely convinced that Jinx had really turned over a new leaf and was fighting for the good guys now. He was afraid that it might be some sort of magical trap for Raven, so he was determined to open just to make sure it didn't let loose a magical tornado or something like that.
Robin had to practically order him not to do that. Robin thought that Jinx deserved a chance, even though she used to be an enemy.
There were a few other presents, from the team, and these were pilled in the middle of the room, just waiting to be opened.
For the rest of the morning, the Titans worked to make this the best party they could, unaware that Raven was spending her day with a monster.
Raven entered her room, and was greeted to the sounds of insistent scratching and banging from the closet.
"Be quiet, Mithrah" Raven growled "you're going to attract attention to yourself!"
She entered the closet, which at first appeared to only contain her spare cloaks. However, when you walked to the other end of the small room you could see a strange little symbol on the wall. Raven gestured and muttered something under her breath, and wall opened up for her into yet another pocket dimension, which she entered without hesitation. She emerged on a grassy area, about the size of the ops center which she had just left. It was small, primitive pocket dimension, it did not even have weather patterns, and the only feature in it was an oak tree in the distance.
The closet creature gave a joyful whinny, tossed its head and began to dance around Raven with an expression of love on its equine face.
Anyone from Azarath could have told you what this thing was; it was a black night horse, a stallion. He was, in many ways, similar to an Earth horse. However, he had a pair of large bat like wings, a pair of spiral horns similar to the horns of an antelope, orange eyes and sharp fangs. He was also much smarter than any Earth animal, even a bit smarter than dolphins or apes. Like most night horses he could shoot lightning from his horns. However, since he was a rare black night horse he was also capable of flight, but he was too young to have taken off yet. Raven had been trying to teach him this skill ever since she left home, but Mithrah had never flown yet. Perhaps it was because he was still a young night horse; in fact he was still practically a colt.
Raven decided to encourage him to fly right now. She pulled out the ham from the other pocket dimension and lifted it high with her powers. She then hurled the thing as far as she could, hoping that Mithrah would fly up and catch it. This did not happen, instead, Mithrah chased his food to the other end of the dimension until it dropped on the ground, then he scooped it up and literally swallowed it whole.
Raven was a bit disappointed, but not very surprised. Not for the first time she wondered if Mithrah was some sort of height fearing horse. When Mithrah trotted back to her she just gave him his apple. Mithrah loved apples, despite the fact that his diet manly consisted of meat.
Once again, Raven thought about giving up this little deception with Mithrah and showing her "pet" to her friends. When she had first joined the team she was determined to keep the horse a secret, mainly because she was afraid that they would not want a slightly carnivorous horse trotting around the tower, ready to take a bite out of someone. She was afraid that Robin would order her to get rid of him, and Raven would rather leave the Titans before she would do that. This concern had dissipated with the appearance of Silkie, Starfire's pet. If she could have a large worm as a pet than surly Raven could keep her horse. However, there was another problem. Although Mithrah was perfectly nice to Raven, he was not so nice to the rest of the world. When faced with strangers he had a bad tendency to nip and bite, and those inch long fangs could make some serious holes. Raven was afraid that her energetic friends, especially Beast Boy, would startle Mithrah into attacking. Despite the fact that he looked a lot like a horse Mithrah was no prey animal. He would rather fight than run when was startled, and he was a very large and powerful creature. She did not to see either her friends or her horse hurt, and that keep Mithrah firmly in his closet. However, if she could just get them to understand that they had to be quiet around Mithrah, at least until he got used to them…
It really was not fair to keep Mithrah cooped up in a closet, no matter how nice Raven tried to make it for him. But if he went crazy and attacked someone…
Raven just did not know what to do with Mithrah. She loved the horse as much as she had begun to care for her friends, and that was part of the problem. She did not want to have to choose between her adopted "family" and the creature that she had literally raised from the egg.
When you raise an animal you usually get attached to said animal, even if your dark powers forces you to keep every little emotion in check.
After a while, she decided it was time to take Mithrah out for a little run. He seemed restless and ready to leave, perhaps sensing her intentions. She would think of what to do with him after she had gotten him some much needed exercise.
Raven flew up to the top of the oak tree and found the saddle and harness she kept there for when she wanted to ride Mithrah. The saddle itself resembled a western saddle in shape, but lacked the distinctive western horn, nor did it have stirrups. You did not need stirrups for a night horse, their wings were so powerful you could literally stand on one and not hurt the horse, so when you rode a night horse you used the bases of their wings to rest your feet on instead of stirrups. In all other respects it was a perfectly normal looking saddle. The harness, however, was a bit different. You could not use normal reins and a bit for a night horse, their sharp teeth would snipe through metal quite easily, and would only succeed in annoying the night horse in question. Instead, the harness fit around the neck of the night horse like a collar on a dog, and the reins extended from the collar like a normal rein should. Normal reins are meant to steer a normal horse, but a well trained night horse like Mithrah could be directed with light twitches on the reins and verbal commands.
After Mithrah was saddled and ready to go, Raven lead the creature out of the pocket dimension and into her room, warning the night horse to be quite. Mithrah complied with the command, though Raven could tell that Mithrah was ready to run or fight, but preferably to fight. He came from a long line of war night horses; his ancestors were literarily bred to fight and kill things. No matter how much Raven tried to calm him down, Mithrah's instincts and genes demanded that he fight and nothing could really change those instincts. So he stamped and snorted impatiently, and only Raven's commands kept him from galloping around the room breaking things.
Raven concentrated and surrounded both herself and her horse in her spectral raven form. This way she could fly to a nice secluded spot away from people, and no one would know that she was carrying a passenger with her.
She decided on going to the desert. She doubted many people would be there, and Mithrah would find the canyons fun.
She was right, almost as soon as she had mounted the night horse, Mithrah was of and galloping like a fool. He paid no attention to minor things like heat or rocks or the occasional poisonous snake. The truth was, Mithrah loved running around with Raven on his back. For some reason which an animal could not really articulate he loved Raven and enjoyed being around her. That was partly the reason for his resent anxiety. He could sense that Raven was spending more and more time with those Others, going into battle and fighting beside them. Mithrah wanted to be fighting with her as well, though he did not understand the reason for fighting. It was not precisely jealously that he felt, but a desire to be fighting beside his herd-mother. Mithrah could not help but see Raven as a mother, since she was the one who raised him when he was a little colt and trained him when got older.
He was not sure that he would like these Others. In Mithrah's mind the only person who really mattered was Raven. He was devoted to her the way a dog was devoted to his master, but without the attitude of subservience that normally characterized a dog. He did not really want to share his "mother" with Others. In fact, he very much wanted to bite Others. However, he could tell that those Others made Raven happy, despite the fact that she did not display happiness very often. Familiarity and animal instincts told Mithrah that Raven liked these Others and was happy with them. He knew that one day Raven would want him to get along with these Others, and he was uncertain about that.
But, if it made Raven happy than he would try to get along with Others
Maybe.
For now, however, he was content to simply run with Raven over the canyons.
Raven herself was still lost in thought about whether or not she should show Mithrah to her friends. She thought that if the proper precautions were taken (said precautions to be done entirely by herself, since she was the one who knew Mithrah best) that it might turn out okay. After all, even though he was a bit temperamental Mithrah was not really a man-eater. He just had a short fuse.
She was still puzzling as noon came and went. Her communicator beeped at her, and at first she wondered what the emergency was. The she remembered the party.
Groaning inwardly, she answered the annoying little mechanical doodad with a sigh. She did not feel like celebrating at all, but she did say that it was okay, even though she did not feel like a party right now. However, she had a feeling that the others had worked hard to do this for her, and she realized that it would be wrong to blow them off. She did not have many social skills, but she understood that much.
When she finally arrived back at the Tower (after sneaking her night horse back to his closet) it was almost one. She entered the living room/ops room/sort of a kitchen, and was amazed at the change. The place had more ribbons and balloons than Raven had seen in her life. Almost immediately, however, she saw four pink interlopers with targets on their helium filled bodies and she instantly dealt with them by sending them floating straight to balloon heaven.
"Four points!" Beast Boy crowed, then he briefly turned into and elephant and made a loud trumpeting noise.
"I did say that I would explode any pink balloons, didn't I?" Raven said, trying her best not to sound amused. Robin grinned as he approached her with a bit pointy party hat. The thing glittered in an obscenely cheerful manner.
"That thing better not be for me." Raven growled.
"No, actually it's mine." Robin said with a grin "But when you see what Star has for you I think you will prefer the hat."
"Meat crown again?"
"Yep."
"Wonderful, just what I always wanted. Headgear made out of beef." Raven muttered dryly to herself. But she did not object too much when Star approached her with the…object.
In fact, a small part of her liked the attention, meat hat and all. No matter how much Raven tried to mentally squash this feeling with willpower and her mantra the feeling stubbornly persisted.
"Oh Raven!" Cyborg said in that annoyingly cheery voice of his "I found that piñata shaped like Beast Boy!" He held up the piñata. "You never got to smack it last year! Wanna give it a go now?" He offered Raven a bat.
After a moment Raven took the bat. She turned to Beast Boy and raised it above her head in an almost joking manner.
"Now, which one is which, again?" She said.
Beast Boy backed away "That's a joke, right? Please tell me you're getting a sense of humor!"
Raven's face gave an odd twitch, as if she was going to laugh but did not quite dare. However, she stopped aiming the bat at Beast Boy and turned to the piñata, which Cyborg held out for her to smack.
Something about the way she held the bat struck Robin as very odd. Strange, that is not the way you hold a bat. He thought it looks more like the way you hold a katana. And the way she is swinging it. It looks more like swordplay than anything else. If that bat was a sword…
Robin decided not to mention this little observation, after all it did not really matter how Raven swung a bat anyway. So he just shrugged and got back to enjoying himself, and making sure that Raven enjoyed herself as much as she would allow herself too.
The party was blissfully uneventful. Not once did the alarm that indicated an attack on the city clang, and for that Robin was grateful. They finally got to introduce Starfire to the infamous Pin the Tail on the Donkey game, which she somehow managed to win. There were enough boxes of take out pizza to feed a team of teenage football players (and in fact there would have been some left over for fans as well). The freezer was literally stuffed with gallon boxes of ice cream in as many flavors and the team could find from the traditional vanilla to a very odd new one filled with crumbs from different types of cookies (Beast Boy fell in love with that one).
There were only three events that cast a brief shadow on the evening, and one of these events occurred when Cyborg and Robin brought out the cake with the huge black sugar bird on the top. The moment she set eyes on that bird Raven's face grew strangely dark and somehow sad, as if the thing reminded her of something or someone she would rather have not recalled. However the expression was there for only an instant and was then gone. Only Beast Boy noticed it, but he had no idea why she would react that way. He almost asked her about it, in fact he would have if the party had happened two or three months ago. But Beast Boy had finally figured out, after being exposed to Raven long enough, that there were just some things you could not talk to her about no matter how hard you nagged. He decided to forget about it and enjoy the cake.
Maybe she just does not like seeing ravens and crows mixed up. I can understand that. He thought to himself.
After literally gorging themselves with cake, the team brought out Raven's gifts. The cards were dealt with first, and just as expected all of them contained not only the traditional well wishes but cash in various amounts. The grand total turned out to be around one hundred dollars.However, there was quite a good haul from Raven's teammates: Beast Boy had gotten her a box set of classic monster movies, and not all of them were of the B class either. There were some real good films in that set. Cyborg had braved the local bookstore (a place he only went to under duress, he did not like reading that much) and found some titles he thought might interest Raven. Most of these were of the werewolves, vampires and ghosts genre. Robin had gotten her a big box of her flavor herbal tea, along with an odd item called a "meditation crystal". He had no idea is she could use the thing but it seemed appropriate. Starfire's gift was the oddest of all. It was an odd alien sculpture from some obscure planet that no one had ever heard of except her. However, it was black and seemed to be made primarily of tentacles and looked nice and spooky, so it did suit Raven very well.
The other two packages that did not come from the team were…interesting. The one from the "kids" turned out to be a big box of dark chocolate. Although Raven had never been fond of chocolate she found the fact that they had chosen dark instead of some other flavor as highly ironic.
The present from Jinx did indeed turn out to be a book. In fact it was an encyclopedia. But it was strangely appropriate in that it was entitled The Encyclopedia of Vampires, Werewolves and Other Monsters. Although Raven liked it well enough, she noticed that Beast Boy kept shooting it suspicious looks out of the corner of his eyes every so often, as if he was convinced that it was going to get up and start chasing them around.
After Raven had uncovered the last present (the encyclopedia), Cyborg cleared his throat. He grinned and Raven, a very goofy and proud looking smile that for some reason made her nervous.
"And now," he said with the air of a sports caster announcing the star of the football team "the Coup de Grace!"
He then produced a small square package from somewhere and presented it to Raven.
"It's actually from all of us," Robin explained "we all pitched in to get it, but it was Beast Boy's idea."
For some reason the idea that this…item came from Beast Boy made Raven even more nervous, not less. However, she unwrapped the thing to reveal a jewelry box.
Wondering what in the world they could have "pitched in" to get her, Raven opened the box and was startled into speechlessness.
The team had no way of knowing that a black bird in flight was the symbol of the Makhar, the warrior priests of whom Raven was a member of. They had no way of knowing that the bird on this locket was an almost exact copy of this symbol (although technically the Makhar's bird was a black falcon, not a raven as this bird was obviously meant to be). Logically she knew that they could not possibly know this, but she still touched by the gesture all the same.
She was even more touched when Beast Boy opened the locket and showed her the picture inside. It was all of her friends: Robin, Cyborg, Starfire and Beast Boy in a group photo. Only the fact that Raven had been trained at birth to show as little emotion as possible kept her face reasonably impassive through the entire scene. Deep inside her something really wanted to get up and start distributing hugs (no doubt the "Happy" side of her personality being loud). She ignored it and tried to keep her face as impassive as possible. She did well to, she would have fooled a stranger into to thinking that she was indifferent to the gift, but her friends could tell that she did indeed like it.
"Why?" she managed to say to the room in general, not trusting herself to say anything more than one word.
"Well," said Beast Boy, looking embarrassed "I thought that you might like it." He said, but even in his ears this response sounded lame. What he REALLY wanted to say was: You are always so alone, Raven. I just wanted to make sure that you were never alone again. Even if it is just a necklace at least you have a reminder that we are always with you. He wanted to say this, but he did not know how to say it without sounding strange. So he just kind of grinned at Raven like the goof he was on the surface and did not say what he was really thinking. The fact that the others were echoing his thought did not occur to him, but in truth they all believed that Raven needed something like this.
Raven had no idea how to respond to this. She loved the necklace, but did not know the appropriate response to such a gift. She settled for simply putting it on. As she did so she finally and abruptly came to the decision concerning her night horse.
I should have done this long ago. She thought as she stood up.
"I have something I need to show all of you." She said. "It's probably long overdue."
"What is it?" Robin asked, trying to hold back raging curiosity.
"Look," Raven said, looking at them all to see if they were taking her seriously (they were) "You guys have to promise to be very quite when I show this to you. Don't make any sudden moves or noises. In fact you should probably go up against the window and stay there."
"What is it?" Cyborg repeated Robin's question "It's not something with fangs is it?" he joked.
"Actually he does have fangs," Raven said "But if everyone is quite and doesn't make any sudden moves or loud noises it should be fine."
I hope. Raven thought as she left to retrieve Mithrah. She thought that the best way to handle this was in a place that Mithrah was unfamiliar with. It would actually make him less aggressive if he was in a strange place. It was an odd behavior trait that only belonged to night horses.
While she was gone the others went to the other side of the room and started a little guessing game. They each voiced their own individual opinion on what it could be. Robin was the closest, he believed it was some sort of pet, but he was unprepared for the creature that Raven lead into the room on a strange looking collar and reins. He never would have imagined that Raven had been hiding a big black horse thing with wings, fangs, and horns. It should have looked terrifying, but instead it was one of the most beautiful animals Robin had ever laid eyes on. He was no stranger to fine horses, but this one was the most magnificent he had ever seen in his life, fangs and all. From the rest of the team's reactions he was not the only one who thought this way.
"Ohhhh!" Starfire ooohded at the Mithrah (but fortunately it was a soft, gently oooh and not a loud squealing one) "the creature is beautiful!"
"Awesome!" Beast Boy said with admiration, but the admiration was mainly aimed at the night horse.
"Cool!" Cyborg said enthusiastically, and Mithrah aimed his pointed ears in the young hero's direction. "Now I know why you're not excited by cars, Rae! You're a horse person!"
Raven was only listening to the sounds of approval with half an ear. Most of her attention was diverted to Mithrah. The night horse did not look like he was in a fighting mood. In fact he seemed very relaxed. This was good. As long as he was relaxed there would be not unfortunate incidents.
"Okay everyone," Raven said, suddenly feeling like a lecturer "This is Mithrah. He's a night horse from Azarath. He is a rare magical creature similar to your standard winged horse, only he is a predator. Now night horses like him…"
Robin had never known Raven to talk on and on about anything. In fact it was a chore to get her to say good morning! But apparently night horses were a subject dear to her, and she talked about them in general and Mithrah in particular like Cyborg would talk about the T-Car. Not that what she had to say was not interesting. In fact, Robin found Mithrah fascinating. He had a fondness for horses that went pretty far back, so he listened with great interest.
Once it looked like Raven was ending her night horse lecture, Starfire asked the question that had been on everyone's mind.
"Please, can we pet him?"
Raven was dreading this moment, in fact delaying it had been one of the reasons she had droned on and on. She still was not sure how Mithrah would take being stroked by an alien, a cyborg a…whatever Beast Boy was, and a teenage boy with way too much gel in his hair. However...
Pushing her doubts aside with a mighty mental heave, Raven looked closely at
Starfire to make sure that the alien got the message.
"Yes, I think he will let you, but you must do exactly as I say. Come one at a time. Come slowly and make no sudden moves. Approach him from the front and the front only. Let him sniff you first. If it looks like he is going to bite than back away slowly. Do NOT CROWD HIM. Do all of you understand this?"
Everyone nodded. Starfire was the first to approach the night horse. She followed Raven's instructions to the letter. Mithrah sniffed her with caution. For a long time the creature seemed to think about this strange smelling thing in front of him, then he relaxed and let Starfire stroke his nose and neck. In truth Mithrah did not really like this Other, but he was willing to accept this one in the herd. It was obvious that this was what his "mother" wanted, so he would accept this odd smelling creature as one of them. He signaled this by butting his head underneath Starfire's arm.
"What is he doing?" Starfire asked Raven.
Raven allowed herself to relax. "It means he likes you. He is thinking of you as a member of his "herd". It is actually a very good thing. It means I might not have to lock him back up." Actually it just means he tolerates you Star, but we'll go with like for now. Raven thought to herself.
Mithrah did the same thing when Beast Boy approached him. Mithrah liked this Other a bit more than the first one. This Other smelled of nature and the wild. Mithrah actually liked this one.
Robin, however, smelled different that the other two. This Other smelled like power and authority, and Mithrah was fine with that. If this one was herd leader than that was fine by Mithrah. He signaled this "bowing" with his front feet in front of Robin. Robin did not need to be told that this was the night horse equivalent of a salute to the boss.
It was then that the second shadow was cast over the evening. As Cyborg approached Mithrah the night horse suddenly drew his head up, lifted his lips to show his fangs and made a strange noise that sounded like a combination of a snort and a growl.
"Cyborg, back off!" Raven said "he doesn't like-"
Mithrah lunged for Cyborg with a strange guttural roar. It was not this Other's smell that drove the night horse wild, nor was it the steel covering the Other wore. It was the hum emanating from the Other that made Mithrah angry. It was an annoying hum, and terrible hum, and Mithrah did not like it.
Mithrah would have jumped on Cyborg and savaged him, if Raven had not literally put herself in between the two. She grabbed the wild night horse's horns in both hands and started shouting at him. No one understood what she was saying. It sounded to Robin like a command that you would give a dog, like "down boy" or something like that. At first Robin was afraid that the animal was going to simply trample Raven to get at Cyborg, but whatever she was saying must have done the trick. Mithrah settled down, but he kept looking over at a flabbergasted Cyborg and snorting.
"I don't understand." Cyborg said "I usually get along great with animals. Heck, I hang out with B.B. all the time! What do you think is his problem?"
"It's probably that hum." Raven said without thinking, and instantly regretted those words.
"Hum? What hum? I don't have a hum! My equipment is all highly advanced!" Cyborg shouted.
"Actually all technology gives off a hum for magical people and creatures," Raven said, feeling like a fool "You people just don't listen to it."
"Raven if I had a hum…"
"It's not something you hear." Raven cut Cyborg off "it's something you feel. And it is not just you, Cyborg. This tower, the city, the air itself all gives off a technological hum. You live with it all your lives so you don't notice it, but it is there. I can live with it, but Mithrah is not used to it. Give him some time and maybe-"
"And let him tear of my arm!"
"What would you have me do with him, Cyborg?" Raven said coldly "get rid of him? How precisely? He will not accept any owner other than me. Trust me, I know. So what other solution is there?"
They all knew what other solution there could be, but no one wanted to mention it.
Cyborg sighed. He was starting to dislike Mithrah almost as much as Mithrah disliked him. However, it was Raven's birthday, and he did not want to spoil it for her by making a fuss over her horse.
Heck, if I can win her over I can win her horse over. Even if I do "hum".
"Sorry Raven." Cyborg said "I'm sure he'll get used to me."
"In the meantime just don't press him." Raven said. "I think I can keep him from actively attacking you, but I won't guarantee he won't try to take a bite if you get to close."
A long awkward silence ensued. After two or three minutes, Robin cleared his throat.
"Well, if that is settled than we should get back to the party."
Raven blinked. She assumed that the party was over, but apparently it was not.
"There's more?" she said.
Robin grinned again "You know that big museum downtown?"
Raven nodded.
"Well, I noticed that they were having a special display on magical items and customs this week. I thought it might be something that you would like to see, Raven. I even bought the tickets ahead of time."
Magical items my butt. Raven thought Probably just a bunch of meteor rocks that some fools thought magical and started worshiping. Still, it might be interesting.
And that was how Raven and the Titans ended up in a cataclysmic battle between the forces of good and evil; an adventure involving dragons, monsters, inner dimensional worms, omnipotent semi evil foxes, and a green eyed woman with way too much affection for a pair of axes. With one single museum visit their lives were changed forever.
Funny how these things happen.