Part 2 of my story is based on @wildfaewhump ‘s fae universe.
CW: minor whump, post entanglement, paranoid whumpee
Uzlo sits on the human’s table. Grubs of fear eat at the rot of his core. He tries to cover himself with what little wings that he has. This human is relatively gentle though, she is calmly washing off the burn wounds on his leg. He does not fully understand what she’s saying to him, but her voice is soft like his sisters.
She must be a friendly human then.
The human hands Uzlo a piece of something. Uzlo raises the small amount of meat up to his nose and sniffs it. The smell of smoked meat blooms in his senses, and he snarfs it down. The human looks surprised and tentatively grabs another scrap from near a fire. She barely gets it close before his pair of small-clawed hands rip it out of her hands. The human gives him a compassionate smile before returning to gently wrapping his leg in cloth.
Uzlo looks out the window behind him and into the woods; his home is back there. Shame washes over him; he should have listened to his sister. When she told him that wandering too far out of the court’s cave would put him in danger, she was right. He scratches at his arm, nervousness crawling up his spine like squirrels and their trees. Uzlo leans towards the opening, feeling the soft kiss of a breeze caress his skin. For a moment, he could almost swear he sees his sister’s dark purplish feather zip through the trees.
The door to the small adobe opens, and a taller male human steps inside. The big human locks eyes with Uzlo and tenses up. He looks at the kind human and says something in a harsh, panicked tone. The friendly human steps between Uzlo and the other human; she says something with a sterner tone than the one she used with him. The other human, who moves his gaze from Uzlo to the kind human, says something. He gestures in Uzlo’s direction and then outside.
He wraps himself tightly in the cloth the kind human wrapped him in. Then, borrowing himself in the fabric, he tries to block out the big human’s voice. The big human is scary. Does the big human want to hurt him? Big humans have hurt his court before; is this human going to hurt him?
The soft human’s voice shoos away some of Uzlo’s fear as she carefully pulls away some of the cloth. Uzlo gives a tiny, startled chirp. Then, the soft human says something that Uzlo has learned means something like It’s okay. The kind human hands Uzlo a small cup of water. He flicks the liquid with his tongue first to make sure it’s water before gulping it down.
He looks past the kind human and back at the scary human, who’s sitting near the fire. The big human doesn’t look angry anymore, just nervous. Uzlo points at the big humans and gives a tiny, confused chirp, and the friendly human pats him on the head and says something. He doesn’t understand what she said, but her words didn’t seem to be angry.
Uzlo looks down at his leg. Remembering the pain of iron scraping against it and burning through the skin, he lets out a fearful noise. The friendly human turns around and gives him a worried look. He curls his claws into the safety of the fabric and bundles himself up.
Looking behind him and out the window, he sees his sister sitting in one of the trees near this little house.