#noper

A usual morning, all things considered, the King surmised, at least until something fleshy-pink waddled slowly to the table. The Kind set down his cup and stared down the abomination. After closer inspection, it had a head of a black bird, an imposing beak, lacked a scaly tail, and one most certainly would be hardpressed to refer to it as cuddly or cute. The abomination tilted its head to the side and observed the King back with a peculiar kind of intellectual curiosity.

Then it cawed.

And, with a strange flowing melodic cadence, added, “fuck my finger.”

“My love,” the King addressed the Queen, “it seems we have some sort of a new infestation.”

“Is it trying to kill you?” The Queen did not look up from her embroidery. She was at the most stirring point right now and pitied be any fool that made her put away her needles.

“No, love, it told me to fuck its finger.”

“Maybe Gabi is finally taking his necromancy studies with the proper seriousness that befits his age.”

“Fuck my finger,” the abomination repeated waddling closer, much to the King’s chagrin. “Thread!”

“And now it wants thread.”

“There are some silk scraps in the basket I won’t be using, dear, help yourself,” the Queen nodded. After all, she should not be expected to do everything around here.

“Very well, my love,” the King acquiesced and, after choosing the right thread, lowered it towards the abomination. The creature happily clamped its beak on the prize and turned around, right in time for Gabriel to swoop running into its sight. It hopped gleefully in place. Gabriel grabbed it with bandaged fingers while swearing creatively under his breath. “Care to explain, Gabi?”

The young prince looked down at the abomination in his arms and shuffled on his feet.

“I needed feathers for my new cloak so I plucked Muninn and the scoundrel run away?” Gabriel explained fast, ready to bolt. The Queen sighed. There went all hope their offspring finally conformed with the generations-long family tradition of necromancy. Well, it couldn’t be worse than the impromptu interpretative dance recitals.

“Fuck my finger,” the raven agreed and then affectionately pecked one of the young prince’s bandaged fingers.

“Ow, you foul wretched beast, see if I rescue you from the felines again! I’ll put you on display in a cage for all your friends to see and ridicule!”

Suffice to say, the first real forays into the realm of the dedicated art of sewing did not entirely agree with Gabriel.

*

Gabriel also would first be caught dead than admit that he was looking forward to the promised next meeting with the blonde lout just to see his face now, after all the soul-crushing suffering he poured into his new coat adorned with raven feathers. To be frank, Muninn and Huginn were the first of many sacrifices after he decided one too many a time to change his design, and now he had a flock of quite naked ravens to look after back at home.

Alas, after several months of missing the blonde yokel and finding instead scraps of parchment nailed to his door written in illegible chicken scratch (all burned later) and maybe a time or two his bed looked slept in and there was some free chopped firewood (sometimes it did get cold in the woods), Gabriel lost all hope, at least until he heard the happy yipping of the traitorous Ripper mingled together with screeches of one of the wyvern chicks. And then…

“Good doggie, I got something for you!”

“Ha,” Gabriel opened the door to his hut with a bang, “this is you again, and this time I’m going to suck out your life!”

The blonde looked up from Ripper and Little Mean Fucker gorging themselves on some big slab of meat and whistled with appreciation – and no, Gabriel didn’t feel all warm inside, and even if he did, it was the anger, yes, definitely the anger, and maybe a tad extreme dislike.

“Now, this is so much better,” the boy nodded. “It’s almost stylish. And you got gloves. The mask still sucks, though,” he added, petting Ripper absentmindedly. “Besides, the sucking thing, you mean like a vampire? Vampires are not demons, and last time you said soul.”

“You won’t sway me with words this time, trespasser!” Gabriel, remembering their previous exchange, positively bristled. “Your end is coming and no force under the sky will stop me!”

“Right. Name’s Jack,” the blonde boy grinned, extending his hand. Gabriel regarded it with contempt. It was kind of dirty, but when he did look closer, it seemed more like blood, not just grime. There was also a horse standing at the edge of the clearing with a deer strapped to its back.

“Reaper,” Gabriel offered after a long pause, ignoring the hand.

“Right.” Jack squinted at him. “Not Death?”

“What?”

It was at that moment that Little Mean Fucker finally decided to live up to its moniker and chomped on the blonde’s hand.

*

Gabriel was just finishing wrapping up Jack’s hand (with his own linens that he had brought here himself, to boot!) when the simpleton, ignoring all subtle clues, decided it was time for another dim-witted attempt at conversation.

“She’s a feisty girl, ain’t she?”

“Girl?” Gabriel scrunched his face in distaste. “It is naught but a beast!”

“Well, no, she has girl ridges. It’s a girl,” the blonde patted Little Mean Fucker’s head with his left hand. The wyvern was sitting by the table, hunkered down, and visibly considering chomping on the other offending appendage. Silently, Gabriel was kind of, a little, cheering it on.

“Girls are a plague upon this world.”

“Yeah,” Jack squinted again at him which gave his face decidedly dumb expression, not that any other looked better on the blonde, Gabriel was sure. “But they have breasts?”

“The harpy I will not wed has no bosoms!”

“Arranged marriage, huh? I feel you.”

“And what could a lout such as you fathom about the curse that overshadows my desperate life as a prince!?” Gabriel tied off the bandage hard delighting in the wince it earned him.

“I’m a prince too,” Jack snickered, raising one of his eyebrows. “The gentry is everywhere.”

“Prince of yokels, I assume.”

“Meh. So how’s yours like?”

“She is a sniveling wretch that tried to murder me with poison,” Gabe muttered remembering ‘The Shrew, Her-Of-The-Toad-To-Face-Incident’. The prospective presence of possible bosoms was no redeeming quality in his mind.

“Mine is a screaming melodramatic harpy,” Jack sighed, remembering ‘The Bitch, The-One-That-Definitely-Deserved-A-Toad-To-Her-Face’. Nothing excused the hissy fit she threw. Nothing. Jack would never admit he was simply scared of her.

“And it interests me not so you can go now and never come back,” Gabriel narrowed his eyes at the blonde accusingly. “You slept in my bed and I had to air all my sheets to get rid of the smell and fleas!”

“Well, you weren’t there, and it’s your dog that has fleas. They are big bloodthirsty buggers, right.”

“And you ate from my dishes!”

“I washed them up. Your seasonings suck, by the way,” Jack pointed to the shelf. Gabriel looked to his reagents and then at the blonde, with a certain amount of aghast acknowledgment. “One made me burp bubbles for a week.”

“How are you even still alive, you daft imbecile?”

“I’m immortal?”

Any line of questioning Gabriel wanted to pursue was cut short by Mean Little Fucker when she finally decided to go for the prize dangled before her lizard eyes.