I Just Ran Into A Window

Serathis Morthis was a large raven, dark as oiled slate, with beauty that had long since calcified into authority. She did not raise her voice, nor did a situation arise that required her to do so. Her children learned early that the temperature of a room changed when she entered it, and that the particular quality of her silence was more frightening than any growl she might have made. She led the family the way her mother had, and her mother before that, with the flat certainty of someone who had never been given cause to consider alternatives. She had four children. Three of them were, by any reasonable measure, exactly what a Morthis ought to be.

Ferin, the eldest, had their mother's composure and their grandfather's tactical patience. Dassio was charming in a way that made other Altanians feel clever for liking him. Tinaris, the youngest, was willful and warm and considerably louder than any Morthis had a right to be. Despite that, she had enough of the family steel underneath that Serathis had, so far, elected to regard this as a manageable eccentricity rather than a character flaw.

Then there was Icarus. White as sea foam. Pink-eyed. Smaller by half a wingspan compared to Ferin at the same age. His beak darkened only at the tip, as if pigment had never even made an attempt to make him normal. Serathis provided for him anyway. She fed him, clothed him in family colors, placed him in proper circles, and ensured he understood the weight of the Morthis name. She followed her principles without deviation. He almost respected her for it. However, the treatment was far from motherly, and closer to that of ornamental. As if he were a decorative heirloom—preserved for appearances, not affection.

On the other hand, his father, Ovris Morthis offered something else: kindness. This was… not nothing. By the time he was twelve, Icarus had catalogued enough households to understand that kindness in a father was not something to be taken for granted. His father called him little frost and laughed at his cleverer observations. On evenings when the roost was quiet and Serathis had retired early, he sat with Icarus over second-rate autumn nectar and inquired about what he'd been reading, as if he had not been the one to lend him the book. These were the best times Icarus could remember from his early life. Kindness, however, came with a cost.

The trouble with his father was never malice. In fact, he didn’t believe his father was capable of such. The trouble was simpler and in some ways harder to forgive: Ovris Morthis had calculated, at some early and apparently final point in his life, that the things he might win by arguing with his wife were worth less than the peace he preserved by declining quarrel. Over time, that commitment softened him, rounding every edge that might have resisted.

Icarus had watched this happen with the careful attention of a young man studying a cautionary example, and had arrived at a stout conclusion: he would rather lose a battle than surrender without fighting. Defeat, you could learn from. Surrender was simply defeat without the lesson. He loved his father, but he had no intention of becoming him.