If birds could swear, Diaval would be cursing up a storm. The infant had a hold of his wing, several choice feathers tangled securely in sticky, human fingers. His delicate quills about to snap... He was tugged unceremoniously into the cot and stared at by the baby princess who thought he was some kind of magical toy.
Not a toy. Very not a toy.
Diaval wriggled carefully until he managed to free his feathers. To his horror one was a bent out of place and refused to fold back properly. Diaval was well aware that he owed his mistress his life but he wasn't sure he owed her baby sitting duties. That felt like a step too far in his servitude.
The raven hopped side to side, staying out of reach. He had a feeling that raising a baby would be much easier in his human form.
Maleficent tilted her head in a bird-like manner, eyeing a nasty bruise running down Diaval's forearm.
"What happened to my little bird?" she asked, her tone softer than her usual morning growl.
He was tired. Black circles sank beneath his eyes and all Diaval wanted to do was stretch out on a patch of thick grass and sleep through the day. How wonderful the sun would be on his feathers – or skin – whichever his mistress gave him. He didn't even care as long as there was sleep.
"Oh this?" he lifted his arm. Diaval tugged his sleeve down over the angry bruise, shrugged it off then lied, "I flew into a tree."
Maleficent blinked those enormous green eyes at him in amazement. Honestly, she thought he'd learned how to fly by now. "How careless."
"Yes, mistress."
"Don't do it again," she insisted.
That was the trouble with fairies, he realised, they were terribly easy to deceive. "As you wish," he promised. As Diaval turned away he wondered how a soul that had experienced the worst betrayal could accept thinly veiled deceit... He made a promise of his own – that he would become her suspicion as well as her wings.
"No – wait," she crossed in front of him. Maleficent placed her staff against an ancient tree for she needed two hands for this. "Stretch out your arm," Maleficent instructed.
Diaval frowned but did as he was bid, lifting his bruised appendage up for his mistress's inspection. He tensed as warm hands gently gripped the flesh – one at his wrist, the other his elbow. He wasn't sure why he thought her touch would be cold. Diaval watched a green light creep through his veins, pulsing toward the bruise which vanished almost at once.
"These wings are very important to me," she whispered, releasing him.
Diaval stood there – arm stupidly aloft.
There was something about those raven-eyes of his that Maleficent couldn't bear. They tore straight through the storms cast around herself to the quiet, lonely fairy wandering the Moors. She didn't want anyone to know that girl again.
A snap of her fingers and Diaval sank from sight. Her magic and his wings blended into an ebony mist before he collected himself and rose out of the ink, flapping up to a branch, every feather in place.
"It won't stop!" Maleficent lay on a bed of dried leaves, a sturdy wall of roots around her. There were stars dotting through the Spring canopy above and a dense layer of fog pressed down into the ground. Its surface moved like a restless ocean, lapping around the trees of the Moors. Diaval was somewhere close by but she couldn't seem him beneath the impenetrable cover.
How was it possible that the screaming infant's cries made it all the way through the wall of thorns to her sleep but the fairies in the next room had nothing but peaceful dreams?
"Diaval..." she whispered, reaching through the fog for her bird. Man she realised, finding a leg rather than wing. A grunt told her that there was more chance of ending the war than rousing him. "Damn creature – even you can sleep."
With an uneasy glance toward the world of men, Maleficent tugged down a hood to hide her horns and set off into the night.
Diaval frowned.
It had passed the hour for his morning fly over the Moors. He checked his reflection in the water again. A definite human stared back, all weird-looking hair and nose. Certainly no wings.
His mistress was not her elegant self. She lay in a field of grass with a single, drooping oak to keep the morning sun off her pale skin. Diaval thought she looked rather wild. Whatever dreams she found herself in, they were far from the sadness of her world and he had no wish to steal her from them.
Diaval walked the Moors instead and found that life without wings had beauty too. When you were high above you missed the tiny flowers amongst the grass, fish slinking silently under river rocks, fae humming in the thickets and fellow ravens crowing at the morning. Those birds laughed as he ambled by but Diaval merely waved.
"Into a raven. Into a mouse. Into a cricket. Into a fox. Into a man. Into a-"
"Do you mind?" Diaval's eyes were wide. He'd been woken rather rudely from sleep by an indecisive mistress.
Caught, Maleficent's hand hung in the air, fingers twitching with a green aura flickering expectantly.
"Why are you doing that?" he frowned, unable to read her saucer-like eyes.
Practising? Playing?
"Into a raven," she quickly said, before he could press her further.
The bird squawked and perched across the fire from her.