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Tibarn was strong.

Big and strong, muscular and safe, the man who fancied himself as a protector.

That was Reyson’s first impression of Tibarn, anyway. He wasn’t… the center of his life or anything dramatic like that. He just was, someone who fawned over his older siblings with an arm around their shoulders and a lazy smile on his face.

When he did that, his hand always opened and closed by his siblings’ glossy golden hair, as if he wanted to ball it in his fists. As if he wanted to take it and tug it and kiss it and love it.

It was obvious. Even Reyson could see it.

But… hmm.

What did it feel like, having someone wrap his arms around his shoulder? What would it feel like if he did tug his hair?

…Well, that much was obvious. It’d hurt. It was just something that Reyson thought about from time to time.

“You’re staring,” Naesala said, and Reyson broke out of his trance.

“Am not.”

Naesala rolled his eyes. “What are you looking so hard at, anyway? It’s Tibarn.”

Jealousy? Reyson smiled. It was nothing to be jealous about. Tibarn didn’t know him like he knew Rafiel and the others. Did he even know Reyson’s name? He had so many siblings, and…

Tibarn suddenly met his eyes as if he was the one who could sense emotions. “Reyson? Is something wrong?”

“……”

Maybe Reyson was being a little harsh on him. Still, they weren’t close. Nothing like that.

They weren’t close at all, and Reyson never expected that to change.

Tibarn wanted to pull his siblings’ hair, but he never really thought about Reyson that way. And that was fine. He had other friends. So he averted his gaze. “It’s nothing.”

“…Alright, then.” With that, Tibarn turned his attention back to Rafiel, and that smile and his urges were back.

Rafiel saw it. Reyson knew that he did. But he let Tibarn’s hand hover by his hair anyway, as if he too was thinking about what it’d be like to have someone pull it.

What would it be like? What was pain, really? He knew about it in some vague way, but here in the Serenes Forest, little ever felled him. He’d never felt the heart-rending despair that books sometimes spoke of. He never felt the sadness that Naesala sometimes did.

He did wonder, though. About what it was like to feel it himself.

“Reyson, you’re staring again,” Naesala said.

“Am not.”

With that, they fell into their familiar bickering.

He thought that bickering would continue forever. He never truly thought that he’d ever feel sadness or pain. They were emotions that others felt. Not him. Never him.

Oh, how wrong he was.

Reyson’s mirror was dusty and cracked, and he had no intention of cleaning it.

He already knew what he looked like, in a vague sort of way. He knew that his hair was long and blond, and a little tangled. It’d been steadily growing back since the fires scorched it.

He knew that his skin was clear and pale and his hands uncalloused. He knew all about the shapes of his eyes and nose, to the point that they hardly registered when he saw them.

All that he’d really see in the mirror was his expression, warped with thoughts and feelings that he never should have had.

How long had it been? Three months? Four?

…A year?

“……”

His mind had been jumbled with the very pain and despair that he had never expected to feel for… however long. Perhaps it was the fires, the burns, the pain and hatred, but for some reason, he’d never quite been sure what had happened.

But by now, Reyson roughly understood.

The humans killed his people. His family. And… Reyson had survived. Why him, though?

That was obvious. It was because of Tibarn.

Reyson wasn’t strong. He couldn’t save himself. In his time of need, the hawk king had come and risked his life for the survival of the heron tribe. He had tried, and he had failed.

Except for Reyson, anyway.

Reyson had lived. Him and him alone.

He closed his eyes.

Time was passing around him, and his cough got better by the day. It didn’t hurt as much as it used to, but… it felt like it should. If it stopped hurting, then what?

He had never expected to feel this way. He had never expected his senses to dull and his mind to cloud over. When hawks spoke, he sometimes didn’t know what they were saying in their broken phrases and thick accents of their common tongue leaking into words that Reyson could (in theory) understand.

“……”

He was just so tired.

The smoke in Reyson’s mind was clearing, for better or worse, but he still wasn’t the same as he had been. He doubted that he would ever be, and frankly, he didn’t want to be.

Tibarn was always coming into his room and checking on him. Every single day, even when Reyson wanted to be alone, Tibarn came to him and looked at him like he wanted to cry. That was what he saw. But he couldn’t feel it, so he wasn’t sure.

His ability to sense emotions seemed to have died with the fire. Maybe it’d come back if the havoc in his mind ever calmed. Maybe it wouldn’t.

Did he care, though?

After all, if it calmed, if he healed, then… what of the pain of his perished family? He couldn’t pretend like he had the right to be happy while they lay dead. Time was ever passing. He often didn’t know how long it had been, but when he asked Tibarn, he was always a little surprised at his answer. Because it didn’t feel that way. It really didn’t.

“How long has it been?” Reyson asked when Tibarn next visited.

“Two years, Reyson.”

“……”

He wanted to say that Tibarn was lying, but he was sure that their shared pain was real, even if he couldn’t feel it for sure.

It took years for Reyson to feel as though he could see his father, but when he did, he didn’t feel the love that he had hoped for. Instead, he felt hatred as he stared down at his unmoving form.

He hadn’t woken since the tragedy. Reyson almost hoped that he never did.

After all, what would happen if he saw Reyson now? Would he feel love?

At this point… Reyson honestly didn’t want to know.

Naesala had never visited, so when Reyson next saw him, it was a complete surprise. For some reason, more than anything—more than when Tibarn told him, at least—he became aware of how much time had really passed.

As much as Reyson wanted to know what he’d been thinking, waiting three years before showing his face to his childhood friend, he couldn’t tell. His senses had died along with the fire.

When they locked eyes, it was Naesala on the other side of the room and Tibarn at his side, a wing twitching protectively by his side.

“……”

Was Naesala feeling this, too? Did he understand what had happened? His eyebrows were furrowed, and his eyes kept flicking from Reyson to Tibarn, and from Tibarn to Reyson.

What did it feel like standing on the other side of the room? It had been years.

“Why now?” Reyson asked.

“I would have come earlier…”

But he didn’t, and he never finished his sentence either.

When it became obvious that he never really had anything to say in the first place, Reyson left.

Would they have talked if he had been Leanne?

Once that thought entered Reyson’s mind, he couldn’t get rid of it.

What if he had been Leanne? What if he had been Rafiel?

“……”

Reyson’s mind went blank.

He thought of his family all the time, and yet, when he did… all that he could do was sigh.

Five years had passed, and the pieces were falling into place. Pieces that he could see clearly. Pieces that everyone else must have seen and known about long before him.

They had to. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t look at him like that when Reyson left his room.

“Prince Reyson,” one of Tibarn’s retainers—Ulki—would say. Tibarn had probably told him to greet Reyson when he left to encourage him to come out more. “How are you feeling?”

“……”

How was he meant to respond to that? What did Ulki want him to say?

…No, what did Tibarn want him to say? Ulki would tell it all to him the first chance he got anyway.

Reyson swallowed a sigh. Nowadays, he spent so much time wondering about those things.

Tibarn had saved him. Reyson had to be grateful to him. And yet… it was so strange, sometimes.

“I am well,” Reyson lied. “I wanted some fresh air…”

Ulki showed him a rare smile. “I will accompany you.”

“Ah, you don’t need to. I can go to the cliffs by myself. I won’t be far away at all.”

“I insist. Our king is away now. If anything were to happen to you…”

Then what? What would Tibarn think? What would he feel?

He was only Reyson, after all. Nothing more.

The truth was that if Reyson hadn’t been a heron, Tibarn would not have saved him.

It wasn’t a hard conclusion to reach, really. Anyone could see it, and really, Reyson could go further: if he hadn’t been Reyson who Tibarn had saved, it would have been better.

If he had been Rafiel then, well, wasn’t that the ideal outcome?

Reyson should have been healing. Every day should have been better than the last.

For some reason, though, it never really felt that way. When he thought of beorc, his vision blurred. From time to time he punched his pillow, pretending it was a soldier, until his hand was bruised and hurt terribly.

When Tibarn saw him, he frowned.

“You’ve hurt your pretty hand. You’re a heron, Reyson. You know that.”

“……”

What if he wasn’t? What if he had never been?

Reyson smiled because he knew the truth.

“Reyson?”

“It’s nothing.”

If he had been a hawk, Tibarn wouldn’t have saved him.

Tibarn was powerful.

If Reyson were that powerful, he wouldn’t have needed anyone to save him. He could have done it himself. Maybe everyone would have lived if they didn’t have to wait for Tibarn to save them.

Reyson was always given everything he wanted, so he never had any reason to beg or steal. But for this to work, he needed meat. So he stole food for the first time in his life.

If he had been a hawk, he wouldn’t have any trouble eating the things that hawks ate and doing the things they did.

If he had been a hawk… if he had been a hawk…

In a sense, it was premeditated. He did go through the trouble to get his hands on it all, after all. But his head was so cloudy when he did it. He almost couldn’t comprehend what he was doing even as he did it.

When he threw up, he felt so powerless.

If he had been a hawk, then… this wouldn’t be happening. None of it.

Tibarn knocked on the door. Ulki had probably told him that he heard Reyson being sick.

“I’m—f—”

He couldn’t stop throwing up, so Tibarn knocked the door down.

“What did you do?” Tibarn asked, annoyed, when he saw Reyson’s unsavory feast.

“I… urgh…”

“Reyson, you’re a heron. You need to act like it,” he said as he pressed a rough hand to Reyson’s back. He probably thought that it was gentle, but the pain sent another wave of nausea through Reyson’s stomach and out of his mouth.

He was a heron. Right. That would never change.

That was the first time that Tibarn ever scolded him.

Tibarn typically avoided talk of the beorc around him, and Reyson knew it.

Tibarn didn’t want to upset him. He didn’t want to make the soft skin between Reyson’s eyebrows furrow. Reyson didn’t care, though. When he slept, he dreamed of humans’ still-beating hearts torn from their bodies with the force of powerful talons and squished like overripe fruit.

Reyson’s ears weren’t like Ulki’s, but he knew when and where Tibarn talked about humans, so nowadays he interrupted as much as possible.

When he did, he always said the same thing: make them suffer.

Tibarn heard him. He heard him loud and clear, and perhaps he even acted on those words. But if he did, he never told Reyson. Instead, he told him not to say such ugly things. He was a heron, for Ashera’s sake.

What did the hawks think when they saw him? What did they think when he spoke?

Reyson couldn’t sense feelings like he used to. It was hard sometimes, trying to figure out what words really meant. He had accomplished much in his studies regarding the common language, but every now and then he truly struggled to say what he meant to say.

It was okay when he was with Tibarn, since he knew well enough of Reyson’s language to have a proper conversation. Janaff and Ulki had always been much harder to talk to. Nowadays, though, it was getting easier. In theory. Because in practice, they were Tibarn’s eyes and ears, and they saw and heard exactly who Reyson was no matter where he was.

He was only Reyson. He would never be anyone else.

Tibarn’s retainers knew that more than anyone, so Reyson usually avoided them to the best of his ability… which was never enough, really, since they always managed to find him anyway.

He was only Reyson… stuck in time, unable to grow, a beautiful but wilted bud unable to bloom, as blood was a poor substitute for water.

When Reyson showed his ugly self with harsh words and coarse language, Tibarn frowned.

“Who taught you those words?”

“You.”

“I didn’t say them just for you to parrot them back at me.”

Reyson nearly rolled his eyes.

“Why don’t you try being more like a heron from time to time?”

Why would he? The heron tribe was dead. Reyson had no obligation to continue a lineage that would never flourish. Even so… he had this fascination with the idea, oddly enough.

He was only Reyson. But what if he was someone else? What if he was a better, realer heron?

What would that be like?

“……”

When Reyson acted pretty, spreading his white wings wide and fluttering them in the morning sun, Tibarn smiled.

At this point, Reyson wasn’t really a real heron, in his opinion. But he did try to abandon the idea of being a real hawk, at the very least. He spoke in the eloquent way that he had been taught and kept his manners as well as he could manage. He had his moments, of course, where he wanted nothing more than to fit in. But he also had his moments of longing for something else. For something more.

Something that only Tibarn could give him.

Something that Tibarn did give him, after a while, in the form of his arm around Reyson’s shoulder, a gesture that he made look natural, but Reyson knew to be wholly practiced. Because he wasn’t Rafiel. He was Reyson, and Tibarn did not see Reyson like he saw a real heron.

Reyson sighed. He wasn’t looking at Tibarn, but he was sure that he wanted to roll his eyes at the sound.

What was wrong this time, Reyson? He was so sure that Tibarn would say that, but it never came. Instead, he saw Tibarn’s hand ball up into a fist around his shoulder.

“……”

What would it feel like if he tugged at Reyson’s golden hair?

It would hurt… wouldn’t it? And Reyson knew damn well what pain was like. He hated it. He never wanted to feel it again.

Yet for some reason, he craved it.

Despite everything, Tibarn still rarely allowed Reyson to hear his talk of humans, a fact that only became more frustrating with time.

“When will you finally start taking me seriously?” Reyson asked in a moment of… weakness, perhaps… or perhaps it was a rare moment of strength. He was tired of pretending to be Tibarn’s doll just so that he would give him the time of day. At the same time, though, he didn’t want him to stop.

Reyson was beautiful. He knew it. All herons knew it, from the moment that they were born. They were beautiful and they were loved. But sometimes—times like now, now and forever more, they were all dead, all but Reyson—they were loved in theory, but in practice, that love was only for an ideal.

Tibarn blinked, as if he had no idea what Reyson was talking about… which was a strong possibility, he supposed. Tibarn wasn’t dense, per se, but he wasn’t the type to think his emotions through day in and day out as Reyson was.

“What do you mean?” Tibarn asked, slow and careful, in an attempt to not upset Reyson further. Because he didn’t like it when Reyson was upset. Because he wasn’t pretty.

And that was all that really mattered, anyway. Reyson sighed. “It’s—”

So hard to explain, to the point where it might not have even been worth it to begin with.

“—nothing, Tibarn.”

Tibarn’s frown deepened. He had to have some idea of what Reyson was trying to say. He had to.

But he didn’t say anything at all. He just shook his head and left.

When he was a child, Naesala had been his gate to the world outside of the forest. He had brought gifts—trinkets, useless little fancies—and gave a couple to Reyson, but far more to Leanne.

He idly wondered if those trinkets were still hiding in the forest, buried under soldiers’ old footsteps. Wondered if Naesala still had the wooden sculpture that Reyson had given him in return.

He doubted it.

Naesala might have had the dried flowers that Leanne had made by pressing their petals into books, but he wholeheartedly doubted that he had kept anything more.

If he had cared that much, he would have visited more.

Yes, the hawks and ravens weren’t on the best of terms, but Naesala had been his best friend of all… but where was he now? What was he doing?

Reyson so seldom heard of the outside world. He really had no idea what Naesala was up to. Not until he was at the castle gates along with Nealuchi, waiting impatiently for an audience with Tibarn.

Reyson almost couldn’t believe what he was seeing. “Naesala?”

At first, Naesala’s expression was blank. As if he had heard a ghost. But then his eyes widened, and he found Reyson’s face. “Reyson!”

“What have you come for?”

“Ah, I… have to speak with Tibarn.”

“With Tibarn,” Reyson repeated.

“Yes. With Tibarn.”

“…I will take you to him.”

It was awkward, more than anything. Their friendship had evidently withered to the point that Reyson was wondering if it ever meant anything to begin with.

Perhaps… he was always just in Naesala’s way, the stubborn thorn stuck to Leanne’s side.

“……”

“It has been so long since I saw you,” Naesala said, breaking Reyson out of thought.

“…True. Some ten years.”

“How have you been?”

“I’m fine.”

“It’s… still strange,” Naesala confessed. “Seeing you here… without Leanne following behind…”

Reyson took a deep breath.

It had been so long since he last felt the emotions of others, but now, he could feel the pang of Naesala’s sadness past his words. It hurt. Not being Leanne hurt.

If even his childhood friend had wished for another, then…

“Here he is.”

Tibarn beckoned Reyson closer when they found him, and eyed Naesala with nothing but suspiciousness. “Reyson, what’s he doing here?”

Reyson left Naesala’s side, and stood at Tibarn’s instead, but when he did, a wave of déjà vu washed over him.

It used to be Rafiel, but now he himself was the heron who Tibarn stood posessively over.

Whether Tibarn truly wanted him or not, if Reyson was destined to live, then perhaps he was meant to adorn his savior’s side regardless of what he or anyone else really thought of it.

But in a sense, he did crave Tibarn’s acknowledgement, he supposed. More than Naesala’s, at least.

He was Tibarn’s wayward heron. If that was the life he was meant to live, then so be it.

Reyson heard it by chance from a man who appeared to be a soldier newly home from an ‘expedition,’ a fancy word for what Reyson assumed was some sort of piracy. He was perched above a roof and quietly watching people pass by, his pure white feathers blending in with the clouds above.

“My brother was injured,” the soldier was telling a woman as they walked through the market just outside of the castle. “I don’t think he’ll make it.”

“That’s horrible…”

“Yeah. He’s the best man I know. But we all know what those humans did. We need to make them pay.”

“That’s true. I’ll visit him as soon as I’m off work,” she promised.

They hadn’t noticed Reyson, he didn’t think. Those were their true words and their true feelings. They didn’t know him, but even so, they wanted the humans to pay.

But for what? For killing Reyson’s kin, or for destroying the hawks’ singular ideal?

“……”

Was that beautiful ideal something that they would give their lives for? For some reason, Reyson doubted it.

Worthy of protection.

Worthy of sacrifice.

Worthy of blood and tears and pain.

Perhaps that was what it meant to be a heron, beautiful or not.

“…I am not pretty,” Reyson said.

It was sudden. He didn’t really mean to say it.

Here was Tibarn, his hand lost in Reyson’s hair in a night spent a little closer than what was customary for them, and despite what Tibarn might think, he was not looking at an ideal.

“What do you mean?”

“I am ugly,” Reyson said, “and I do not mean that to insult myself. If you are to like me—to love me, even—then you must know this. I am not pretty, and I have not been for some time now.”

“…I know that,” Tibarn said, and his fist closed around Reyson’s hair. “I know that, Reyson. You aren’t pretty like the others were. You’re you.”

“……”

Herons were supposed to understand emotions. Why, then, could he not even understand what he himself felt?

“What were the others to you?” Reyson asked.

Tibarn tugged.

“Ah!”

…So that was what that felt like.

“Reyson.”

“What is it?”

It was rare for Tibarn to come to his quarters and address him so suddenly. Nervous energy radiated from Tibarn’s steps. It seemed that Reyson’s senses were returning… for the emotions he wasn’t sure that he wanted to feel, at least.

Tibarn took a deep breath, then sighed. “Sorry.”

“…Excuse me?”

“I understand what you were saying before.”

Somehow, Reyson understood exactly what he meant.

“You aren’t pretty like Rafiel was. Your wings are just as smeared with blood as mine.”

“I…”

“I wish that wasn’t the case, but we can’t change the past. You’re the ugliest heron I’ve ever seen.”

Reyson wanted to speak, to tell Tibarn that he heard and acknowledged what he was saying. But he didn’t know what he wanted to say. He wasn’t even sure that he wanted to say the words he finally managed to choke out. “You’re… right. I’m nothing like them. I’m only me.”

“Only?” Tibarn repeated. “You’re not ‘only’ anything. You’re Reyson.”

Pedestals were for pretty things. Ugly things needed nothing to hold them.

When Reyson told Tibarn that he wanted the humans to suffer for what they had done, he listened, and told Reyson for the first time that he had been working on it.

For the first time, Tibarn let him speak on his modern dreams, but when he did, he kept him close. In a sense, Reyson still felt like Tibarn’s trophy from the massacre, something that had unnaturally fallen into his hands covered in blood.

But that wasn’t something that he needed to waste his time thinking about. It wasn’t Tibarn’s fault that his family had died. It was the humans.

Reyson was a person, ugly as he was. He spoke, and Tibarn had the mind to listen. When his endless words turned to quiet murmurs of the wrongs of the world, Tibarn stepped closer. Reyson closed his eyes and let his face fall to Tibarn’s chest.

“…Thank you for listening,” Reyson said after a moment. “I have… nothing. Nothing but you.”

“That’s not true. You have every hawk of the world on your side. For you, we will make them all pay.”

“For me,” Reyson repeated.

“Yes. For you.”

He wanted the humans to perish, more than anything.

But when he saw his destroyed forest for the first time in twenty years, that wasn’t what happened.

“Leanne!”

Reyson had seen red for so long, but when he saw her, he saw dozens of colors that he had long since forgotten.

There she was: his beloved younger sister who he had always played with as a child. She’d followed him everywhere.

He wasn’t jealous for Naesala’s affections when he saw her. The thought never even entered his mind. He felt only love.

Leanne squeaked when Reyson embraced her, far rougher than a classic heron might have done. She had no idea what had happened. No idea what he had been through these past twenty years or why.

She was alive, and Reyson was just so, so glad. He nearly cried at the sight of her, and the feeling of her soft wings against his hands tested his dry tear ducts for the first time in twenty years.

Tibarn’s strong hand was heavy on his shoulder, a hawkish measure of comfort, and Leanne’s small arms were wrapped around his back and rubbing little circles to try to make him feel better.

Here were two people who saw him like this and wanted him to feel better.

He wasn’t alone.

Leanne was alive. He didn’t have to keep thinking about how it would have been better if she had lived instead of him, because here and now, the truth was obvious: just as Leanne was Leanne, Reyson was himself, and not anyone else.

That was alright, though. It was fine.

Maybe it was even good sometimes.

He was Reyson, and he was alive, and that wasn’t a bad thing.