Frenzy
Title: Raven Hearts and Human Complications
Song: Out of my League by Stephen Speaks
A raven's heart is a simple thing. It receives deoxygenated blood and sends it to the lungs, after which it will then accept the newly aerated blood to pump it to the rest of the body for use. There isn't anything complicated about it, really.
A human's heart is the same- at least, that's what Diaval thought at first, when he was still unfamiliar with the form. Then one day, a faery changed him into a man to save his life, and suddenly his heart wasn't the unfussy thing that it used to be.
Sometimes, his heartbeat speeds up, even when he's not doing something strenuous. He's known it to occur from time to time during conversations with his mistress, especially the ones they have during sundown, when her eyes gaze towards the skies and the sunlight mixes with the colors in her irises. It is during these moments that Diaval's heartbeat grows erratic and he has to take a deep breath to calm himself down.
There are also times when his heart feels like it's about to explode in his chest, constricting his lungs and making it hard for him to breathe. Diaval associates this with watching his mistress fly, after she's gotten her wings back. He reckons his mistress has always been beautiful, but with wings, she's ethereal. Being able to fly has given her a kind of glow- a kind of joy- that he's never seen in all his years of servitude. Still, he doesn't understand why observing his mistress take to the skies would render him unable to breathe.
The most notable of the human heart oddities, however, come to him whenever his mistress touches him. It was alright when she stroked him as a raven (it was natural that she'd want to stroke his beautiful feathers, after all) but it's different when he's a man. He thinks it may be related to a human's lack of outer covering. As a human, his skin is bare, ergo he is more sensitive to her touches. As a human, he is attuned to every brush of her skin with his and his heart reacts thusly. He's positive his heart almost stops during the times she taps a finger on the back of his hand, when she lays a hand on him to heal his injuries, when she reaches out to slick back the hair that falls on his face, when she slides her palms over his shoulders to smooth out the tension there, and when she pats his cheek out of amusement (the last two, she's done only once, which he's not sure whether to be thankful for or not).
Human hearts are bizarre, Diaval concludes.
Nevertheless, whenever he sees his mistress smile at him, no matter how unnoticeable her smile is, the warmth that originates from the point where his heart should be is enough to convince him human hearts are not entirely a bad thing to have.
A/N: If you follow me on Tumblr or track the Maleval tag there, you might have seen this already.
So uhm, at this point I have nothing else written for this collection, as I've been distracted by the AU plot bunny that became The Flaw in the Plan. I will try to write some more, so I'm still putting this as incomplete, but as of now the regular updates will be on hold.
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Cheers!