Work Text:
She knew it was rather silly: humans were children of humans, of course, and she'd had a mother and a father herself, only they'd been taken from her too early.
Yet it was just this feeling she couldn't shake off. An early memory, a woman's voice lulling her to sleep, a raven rocking her cradle. She couldn't remember her own parents: maybe that was why she so easily associated a shadow and a crow to those figures.
There was just something so oddly familiar to them. Whenever there was danger, she could hear those croaks and know whereself to be safe: objects that were about to fall onto her were stopped mid-course, branches caught her before she could trip. Sometimes she'd hear that voice again, catch a brief glimpse at something, but that was it.
She spent almost sixteen years calling out to the crow that perched itself near the house, found herself playing games and laughing at its tricks, applauding when it brought her jewelry even if she idly wondered if it had stolen it.
"Is there a difference between ravens and crows?", she asked once, as it pecked at some of the fruits she'd gathered. "And how are you still alive? Do birds live very long?"
It croaked in response, raising its beak towards her.
"Well, I am very glad that you are alive", she added. "I would've probably died of thirst or hunger as a baby without you. Do you have babies of your own? A nest or something?"
She received no response, only a flapping of the wings.
"You are very kind to me", she said last, before Aunt Flora called for her, and she had to hurry back into the cottage.
Sometimes, when she'd insist enough that one of her aunties would let her go to town with her, she'd come across this peculiar man with scars on his face that would meet her eyes and -nod, give a small sign of acknowledgement. How ridiculous, that she'd think of the way the crow would bow to her sometimes, that she'd remember the stories of shapeshifters and fairies that her aunties told her -stories that were often quite confusing, as they all interrupted each other in the middle of sentences-.
And then one day the crow was the man and the man was Diaval, her godmother's servant.
"I've known you since you were a little one", he said.
I've known you my whole life, she thought, feeling giddy, taking in everything. I've known both of you my whole life, and you're real.
Her godmother had pushed away the obstacles in her path and caught her whenever she fell, Diaval had fed her and rocked her bed, played with her when her aunties were arguing.
Like a mother and a father, she realized. Here ever since I was a baby, and here forever now.
"It's everything I'd imagined it would be", she breathed out, turning around to look at her surroundings, the purple lights floating around her, the creatures showing themselves slowly, timidly. The people who had cared for her, standing by her side at last.
It wasn't so silly, really, to take crows for fathers and shadows for mothers.