#thipuh

A lot can happen in thirty years.

Turning fifty. Learning what a house is. Turning sixty. Getting dragged, kicking and screaming, towards the abstract concept of becoming literate, and picking up a swear or ten along the way. Turning seventy, realizing that not only are you still young, you're not even halfway done yet, and you’re ten years away from living twice as long as most wulvers.

Your parents can die, and one of them can come back with a gimp leg, two extra limbs, and a brain stuck out of time.

A lot can happen in thirty years.

A lot can happen in one.

Corvo Ravenslove tries to visit when he can.

Slovenguard is used to him by now. What little residents make their stay here have been here far too long to blink at the sight of a full grown draconis and his flying island appearing in their skyline. Besides, he always parks it off to the side. It would be rude to scare the chickens.

Ravenslove Tower has a few more rickety floors than the last time Corvo saw it, but the door is still tall enough for him to walk through.

It’s funny. Corvo never even lived here. Never needed to, never planned to. But when Fadir built this house, it thought of him anyway.

A lot can happen in thirty years. But when Corvo sticks his head under the house, antlers threatening to scratch the roof of the little porch that’s been built into the foundations, Fadir is still just barely large enough to use Corvo’s wrist as a perch. Somehow, the father-son ratio of Corvo’s childhood years has stayed exactly the same.

“You’re lucky Lynel is at school right now,” Fadir tiredly smiles. “I told them you come over, but-” It makes a vague noise.

“Kiasi, le,” Corvo finishes for it. “I get it. The landing always looks way scarier than it actually is.”

“And be-sides,” Fadir continues, “I want to take care of your shopping before you an’ them start fightin’ over scraps.”

Corvo sputters. “Ahba- ahba, I wouldn’t throw hands with a child!”

“After last year, I don’t believe you.”

There is a silence.

“The seagulls deserved it,” Corvo quickly says.

“County fair turkey leg, le,” Fadir deadpans.

“I would fight a seagull in the back alley of a taotie buffet,” Corvo insists. “Those birds are a menace to society.”

To this day, Corvo doesn’t know how Fadir manages to look so concernedly done with his shit while wearing the most perfectly gentle smile on its face. Which is absolutely unfair. Corvo has seen this old man’s raven body size up a bear in defense of a tossed bag of fries.

“You look like Talon when you make that face,” Corvo says instead. “And it managed that with half its beak missing.”

Fadir snorts. “Xylem always translated for it well enough.” Fadir’s head casts to the side. “Did I ever tell you how we met? Th’ five of us, le. Ravens don’t have big pairs like that.”

“The other ravens would always look at you a little funny when you were all together,” Corvo recalls. “But only those horny teenagers would be shitty about it.”

Fadir scoffs to itself as it stands and stretches, walking off towards the garden. The cane by its seat stays at its simple perch- Fadir doesn't need to be told the lay of its own land, not anymore.

“No one knew what t’ do with your egg when we first found you,” Fadir starts. “Xylem an’ Talon, ah- vo-lun-teered t’ take what-ever was going t’ hatch. They raised most o’ their last children already, ne? All the time in the world.” Fadir smiles sharply. “Morrow took that personally.”

Corvo ducks his head low as they pass the wisteria tree, as if this time his face wouldn’t get pelted with flowers. “Morrow took everything personally, ahba.”

Fadir shrugs. “We didn’t know how long you would be a child. Morrow wanted younger mates t’ see to it. I said such a big egg would need more than two mates watchin’ it if either of us wanted t’ see our children next spring.” Its foot grabs at a cuttlebone in the ground and tosses it towards the chickens grazing by the glowberries. “Suppose I won out, ‘cus that’s what we did. We waited for you t’ hatch. An’ by the time your second spring came, we- we were nestin’ our chicks to-gether.”

Its face softens.

“Fry was young. Tried t’ court all four of us at once, le!” A small laugh. “But it was always good to th’ chicks, and… it would fly out to the sea, every year, just to bring back pretty stones. Crazy bird.” A pause. “Course, I only know that ‘cus I did the same thing.”

“And then Xylem died,” Corvo gently continues. “Foraging accident, ne?”

“Dui. Morrow an’ I did our best t’ take care o’ Talon after, but…” Fadir sighs. “It couldn’t live with that. Not without Xylem.”

“And then Morrow died.”

“And then I… died.” Fadir’s voice trails quiet. “And then I didn’t.”

Corvo remembers those days. Him and Fry had barely even processed being unable to find Fadir’s body before something stumbled out of the woods- skin like silver, talons like blood, a prophet’s ravensign swallowing its face like a solar fucking eclipse, only recognizable by the stilted voice of a dead raven that could barely stutter its own name out of a forcibly restructured syrinx.

Fadir died with Morrow that spring afternoon. The Sunraven that walked out of Pando in the summer was never quite the same, and it and Corvo both know that.

“Never stopped Fry from visiting,” Corvo allows. “It’d bring you those stones until you could fly to the ocean again.”

“Every year on my birthday.” Fadir stops by a carved stone in the garden. “Every year.”

Corvo doesn’t ask about the writing on the stone. He already knows what’s buried there.

(He donated that headstone itself.)

“I know why y’ don’t visit,” Fadir quietly admits. “I know it’s hard.”

Corvo’s wings snap shut like a tarp as his body stiffens. “I- I try when I can-”

“No,” Fadir softly corrects. “Y’ don’t.” It tilts its head towards Corvo’s eyes, bone-deep weariness locked into its gently frozen smile. “It’s alright, le. You were still very young. I think- I think it was not fair, that you were still so young.”

Corvo looks off to the side. “Plenty of people lost their parents younger than I did.”

“An’ you waited every day for twenty years before y’ gave up on wonderin’ if I would die all over again,” Fadir bluntly says.

“Because you’re not going to die, ahba,” Corvo insists. “You- you basically can’t.”

“May-be so. I think I want t’ live for a very long time. Or not. I just want to live!” Fadir kneels against the ground, body turning towards the headstone in its garden. “But sometimes, I think- I think it is because this body is so far away from these terrible things. I died. And you didn’t. It’s okay, I think, if that makes you sad.” Its knobbled hand hovers around the stone, never quite touching. “It just means you were still alive.”

And maybe it’s twenty years too late to realize for every slip and fall and painstakingly relearned word, Fadir had been just as there and aware and done with it all as Corvo was. But Fadir lived anyway, and so did he.

That will have to be enough.

“Let’s go out to eat this time,” Corvo decides. “Forget the shopping trip, le.”

Fadir’s smoldering black wings puff up with surprise. “I like to cook for you!”

“I keep destroying your entire pantry in a day!” Corvo nearly wheezes. “I feel so bad! I don’t want to scare the new kid!”

“Maybe we call up the taotie buf-fet,” Fadir sarcastically offers. “So your new ahdi can watch you fight a seagull.”

Corvo chuffs loudly enough to stir a light breeze. “Jokes on you, I’d pay to make that happen. And I probably will. I’ll-” He raises a single defiant claw. “I’ll fight you.”

“And I would let you win because I missed my son ve-ry much,” Fadir sweetly croons. It starts to walk back to the house. “I go text Lynel about dinner. They always buy snacks after school, le.”

Oh, Corvo silently realizes. I missed you.

“Hey,” he softly calls out, stopping Fadir just short of the porch stairs. “Happy birthday.”

Fadir’s eyes widen for a second, almost turning pitch black. It blinks, and squints to itself.

“That’s the first time you called it my birthday,” it whispers. “Kamsia.”

It’s head snaps away, and it stiffly walks up the stairs. Bit of an awkward response, really. Corvo wasn’t sure what he expected.